Kilkenny 02 - A Man Called Trent (v5.0) Read Free Page B

They want to know if you’ve throwed in with Chet Lord. They want to know if you was scared out. Then you tangle with that wildcat, Tana Steele…”
    “Webb Steele’s daughter? I thought so. Noticed the name of Tana Steele on a package in the buckboard.”
    “Yeah. That’s her, and trouble on wheels, pard. She’ll never forgive, and, before she’s through, she’ll make you eat your words. She never quits.”
    “What do you know about this hombre , Polti?” asked Lance.
    “Bert Polti? He’s a sidewinder. Always has money, never does nothin’. He’s plumb bad, an’ plenty fast with that shootin’ iron.”
    “He hangs out at the Spur?”
    “Mostly. Him and them pards of his…Joe Daniels, Skimp Ellis, and Henry Bates. They’re bad, all of them, and the bartender at the Spur is tough as a boot.”
    Lance started for the door. Rusty stared after him for an instant, then shrugged.
    “Well,” he said, “I’m buyin’ a ticket. This is one ride I want to take.” And he swung along after Lance.
    Lance walked up on the boardwalk and shoved open the batwing doors of the Spur. Bert Polti had been looking for trouble, and now Lance was. Slow to anger, it mounted in him now like a tide, the memory of those small, vicious eyes and the tenseness of the man as he stood, set to make a kill.
    Never a troublemaker, Lance had always resented being bullied, nevertheless, and he resented seeing others pushed around. It was this, as much as a debt to pay, that had brought him to Botalla. There was as yet no tangible clue to what the trouble here was all about. He had only Steve Lord’s version, one that seemingly ignored the rights of Mort Davis. Yet now Polti was buying in. Polti had deliberately tried to frame him with a killing. Lance hadn’t a doubt but that Polti had planned to plant gold dust in his saddlebags.

Chapter III
    A half dozen men were loitering about the bar when Lance walked in, turned, and looked around.
    “Where’s Polti?” he demanded.
    One of the men he had seen talking to Polti was sitting at a table nearby, another stood at the bar.
    There was no reply. “I said,” Lance repeated sharply, “where’s Polti?”
    “You won’t find out nothin’ here, stranger,” the seated man drawled, his tone insulting. “When Polti wants you, he’ll get you.”
    Lance took a quick step toward him and, catching a flicker of triumph in the man’s eye, wheeled to see an upraised bottle aimed at his head. Before the man who held it could throw, Lance’s gun fairly leaped from its holster. It roared and the shot caught the bottle just as it left the man’s hand.
    Liquor flew in all directions, and the man sprang back, splattered by it.
    Holstering his gun, Lance stepped in and caught the man by the shirt and jerked him around. Instantly the fellow swung. Turning him loose, Lance hooked a short left to the chin, then stabbed two fast jabs to the face. He feinted, and threw a high hard right. The fellow went down and rolled over on the floor.
    Without a second’s warning, Lance whirled around and grabbed the wrist of the man at the chair, spun him around, and hurled him to the floor.
    “All right!” he snapped. “Talk, or take a beatin’! Where’s Polti?”
    “The devil with you!” Lance’s latest victim snarled. “I’ll kill you!”
    Then Lance had him off the floor, slammed him against the bar, and proceeded to slap and backhand him seven times so fast the eye could scarcely follow. His grip was like iron, and before that strength the man against the bar felt impotent and helpless.
    “Talk, cuss you!” Lance barked, and slapped him again. The man’s head bobbed with the force of the blow. “I’m not talkin’ for fun!” Lance said. “I want an answer!”
    “Apple Cañon,” the man muttered surlily, “and I hope he kills you.”
    Lance slammed him to the floor alongside the first man, then spun on his heel, and walked out. As he came through the door, he saw Rusty Gates standing