Stallion Gate Read Online Free PDF

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    “Don’t warn me!” Joe ripped away the bough over Augustino’s head and then swung the Winchester against the trunk. The rifle cracked in half. Barrel and breech flew away while the stock stayed in his hand. He threw it aside. “Don’t warn me.”
    “Go on,” Captain Augustino said, his tone changed. He hadn’t budged when the rifle had sliced over his head, though the color went from his face, making the half-moons under his eyes even darker.
    Joe started across the snow for the elk cow. The topof her neck was blown off and her legs sprawled in every direction, but her eyes were still wet and alive. The pregnant belly rose distended and hard above the rest of her.
    “Let me tell you,” Joe yelled. “Your wife says you have a prick the size of a wet inchworm. It’s got to be twice the size of your brains.”
    He walked faster in the snow, unbuckling his coat away from the .45 that rode inside his belt. He felt Augustino raising the rifle behind him. Heart shot? Head shot? With the .45 free he took the last ten steps on the run. When Augustino shot, he was already diving.
    The cow kicked as the second bullet hit. He landed on the other side and rolled back against the elk. Captain Augustino stood, disdaining cover, and levered another round into the breech. Joe rested the .45 on the cow and put the captain in the square notch of the gun’s sights, for all the good it would do, considering the accuracy of an automatic. He squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked and a branch exploded five feet above Augustino’s head. “Shit!” He squeezed off another. Bark blew off a tree next to the captain.
    Augustino slipped behind branches. All Joe could see of him was the vapor of his breath and the tip of the rifle. His own breath came like the steam of an engine. The cow was too small. If Augustino started to stalk and come at him from a different angle, he was dead.
    The rifle barrel leveled again, but aimed at where the bucks had vanished. Then Joe saw two men in blankets and snowshoes coming out of the pines, their faces andhands blackened with paint, long hair unbraided and loose. Although the first was stooped with age, he led the second with a long cord tied to the wrist, as if the man behind were blind. Following, he shouldered a net stuffed with dead bluejays; the net looked like a brilliant blue wing. There was also an owl in the net, and a nighthawk, birds that could only be netted against a moon. The men must have heard the shots, probably saw them fired, but they crossed the meadow between the elk and the trees where Augustino hid, neither quickening nor stopping, slowly trudging down the snowy slope with the prizes of their own hunt. Though they seemed to be headed in the direction of Santiago, Joe didn’t recognize them. They moved like an apparition, or a short parade from another world. Then they reached a line of aspen at the bottom of the slope and were gone.
    “Sergeant!” Augustino called out. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to kill you. I do want to kill you, but I have more important things to do.”
    “The hell you do.”
    “I have duties to perform.” Augustino stepped forward into the clearing, his rifle in his left hand, barrel up. “I can’t allow myself to be distracted, to enjoy mere personal vindication, to sink to your level.”
    “It was your idea to come here.”
    “Shoot an officer and it’s your life, Sergeant.” Augustino dropped the rifle as he approached. “We came for an elk and we shot one, that’s all that transpired. Nothing else really happened.”
    “Because you missed.”
    “But you’re not in a position to publicly accuse me of anything, not a sergeant fornicating with the wife of the officer he accuses. This is an experience to put behind us. A morning’s hunt is all.” He stopped twenty feet short of Joe.
    “You don’t shoot a cow that’s carrying.” Joe aimed. Head shot? At this range, a .45 would take off the captain’s head