Massacre Canyon Read Free Page B

the second drawer he found a big stack of the posters.
    He didn’t have to flip through them for very long before he came across one with a drawing of Rudolph Kroll on it. The man staring out balefully from the penciled likeness was considerably older than Mordecai, but Luke could see a slight resemblance in their craggy faces. Rudolph was dark where his younger brother was fair. His nose was bigger, and underneath it was a thick, dark mustache that drooped over the corners of his mouth. If anything, Rudolph Kroll looked even meaner and more filled with hate than Mordecai, although such a thing didn’t seem possible at first glance.
    Luke found posters on some of the other members of the Kroll gang in the stack: Fred Martin, Calvin Dodge, Pete Markwell, a handful more. All of them ruthless, hard-bitten, dangerous men, even if their reputations weren’t quite as bad as that of the Kroll brothers’. Luke had no doubt that any one of them would have killed him in an instant if given the chance.
    He didn’t intend to provide them with that opportunity.
    â€œHey!” Mordecai called from the cell block. “Hey, Marshal, you still out there?”
    Luke put the wanted posters back in the desk drawer and closed it. He stood up and went over to the cell block door to ask through the barred window in it, “What do you want, Kroll?”
    â€œThat you, Jensen? Where’s the marshal?”
    â€œBusy. If you don’t want anything, shut up.”
    â€œI didn’t say that. I could use some coffee. My head really hurts where some big dumb son of a bitch walloped it with a pistol.”
    He chuckled at his own cleverness, or what he regarded as cleverness, anyway.
    Luke had already noticed the coffeepot staying warm on a pot-bellied iron stove in a corner of the office. Several tin cups sat on a small shelf to the side. He supposed it wouldn’t do any harm, and since there was a good chance he would have to stay awake all night to guard the prisoner, he decided he ought to have a cup for himself.
    â€œAll right, but don’t try anything,” he told Mordecai. “I’d just as soon put a bullet in you as look at you.”
    He poured thick, black coffee into one of the cups and took it over to the desk where he picked up the key ring. He had seen which key Dunlap used to lock the cell block, so it was simple to unlock it. He drew one of his guns as he used the other hand to carry the coffee into the cell block.
    Mordecai was in the first cell on the left. Luke told him, “Back off all the way over there under the window. Take a step in this direction before I tell you to and I’ll blow your kneecap to hell. You’ll have a bad limp when you walk to the gallows.”
    â€œYou’re mighty confident,” Mordecai said as he backed over to the far wall. “I’m gonna enjoy watchin’ you die.”
    Luke just grunted. He bent, reached through the bars, and placed the cup of coffee on the cell’s stone floor. Then he backed up well out of reach and said, “All right, you can go ahead and get it now.”
    Mordecai did so. He took a sip and made a face, then said, “Has the marshal been boilin’ this stuff for a week? It tastes like it.”
    â€œI wouldn’t know,” Luke said. “I can take it back—”
    â€œNo, no, that’s fine.”
    Mordecai sat down on the bunk, took another sip, and sighed.
    Luke had encountered scores of outlaws during his career as a bounty hunter, and few if any of them had ever given much thought to the havoc they wreaked in innocent lives. Despite knowing that, he asked, “Doesn’t it bother you that you killed that girl?”
    â€œIt wasn’t my intention that she come to any harm. I just planned on killin’ you.”
    â€œBecause you saw me following you?”
    â€œYeah. See, you thought I was drunk . . . and I was. But I got highly developed instincts, like a