Shotgun Charlie Read Online Free PDF Page B

in no hurry at all.
    Charlie had been happy to ride bareback, but Pap had insisted he use a spare saddle the boys had scrounged up from somewhere and had lashed to their gear pile. It had proven to be a comfortable ride, despite his initial misgivings about riding another animal. And best of all, Nub didn’t seem to mind being stuck with Charlie on his back.
    â€œI’m not one to pry,” said Pap, rubbing his chin. “But I’ll go ahead and ask you something, and if you don’t care to answer, well, know that I won’t be offended in the least. Okay, then?”
    â€œAw, Pap. I ain’t got no secrets. Ask me anything.”
    â€œOkay, then, I will. Where you from? What’s your story? I’m a curious sort, and I like to know the folks I’m riding the trail with, if you get me.”
    So Charlie told him. Told him all about his gran, the farm, Teacup, his childhood, what he knew of his daddy. . . . He talked on and on while the horses carried them slowly on up the trail to where, Charlie had no idea, nor did he particularly care. He was pleased to have companionship, especially with someone who didn’t seem to want anything from him, except for him to natter on like an old hen. After a while he stopped, reddened, and looked away.
    â€œWell,” said Pap, after fashion, “seems to me you’ve led a busy life, Charlie Chilton. I hope me and the boys don’t bore you none.”
    Charlie looked up, eyes wide, only to find Pap winking at him.
    Far ahead, bars of sunlight sifted through the tall ponderosa pines and lit the trail as if they were in a church and a thousand candles were glowing.
    â€œNow, ain’t that pretty?” said Pap.
    Charlie could only nod and smile.

Chapter 6
    The first bullet plowed a furrow, unearthing a trench of fresh-splintered mahogany six inches long and half an inch deep. The slug finally lodged, a hot, spent devilish thing, out of sight in the bar top. But no one noticed.
    The second bullet had already done what it was born to do—it stopped a living thing from ever moving forward again. That thing was one Rupert McGinley, town fireman, avid reader of books, amateur gunsmith, and on this particular day, a man not blessed with the best of luck.
    Spelling his barkeep pal, John Otis, whom he was visiting on this not-very-busy Saturday morning, so Otis might visit Mae’s Dining Emporium for a bite before the long, busy day grew that way, McGinley had little time to regret his decision before the bullet drove through his left cheek, through his brain, and caromed off his skull, angling downward with considerably less force, before exiting his head where his hairline stopped and the back of his neck began.
    No one knew if he died right away or if he somehow managed to see the man who’d felled him. Likely all he saw were the boots the stranger wore, stovepipes with dog ears at the tops for tugging on, filmed with trail dust, the cracked heels caked with dung. They were like a thousand other pairs of boots that had stomped in and out of the Blue Bird Bar over the years.
    But these boots belonged to Grady Haskell, a man known by an increasing number of people from Old Mexico to Oregon, and not a one of them recalled the meetings with Haskell favorably. The ones who survived them, that is.
    If anyone other than Rupert McGinley had been in the Blue Bird that dark Saturday morning, they might have wondered why Haskell had shot the local fellow, known by all as a decent sort, reliable when friends knocked for help, steady in his work, uncomplaining, and true.
    McGinley had turned smiling eyes on the stranger and asked what he might do for him, already reaching for a coffee mug, it being assumed by the man that the early hour meant the stranger might be more interested in a wake-up than the numbing effects of liquor.
    They might well have wondered all this, but they too would have been shot. For Haskell took great pains never