Maverick Marshall Read Free Page A

the fence.
    Church’s head snapped back with all his features screwed together. The off-balanced weight of chest and head abruptly toppled him. He hit the floor on his back and skidded into the bar, the bottle jaggedly breaking against the brass foot rail.
    Will Church climbed to his feet groggily shaking his head. He discovered the splattered whisky and his stare, coming up, found Frank. He let out a shout and came at Frank with the bottle neck.
    Church was big, even bigger than Frank, with a bulging swell of chest and arm and the hatred of balked arrogance baring his teeth. He shortened his grip on the neck of the bottle to give more reach to the jagged shard. He looked like an ape above the glitter of the glass.
    Frank asked quietly, “Sure you want to go on with this, Will?”
    Church showed the brawn of a gorilla and about as much reason as he stood there shifting his weight, breathing heavily. Men were crowding in through the batwings as word of the fight ran down the street. Frank got hold of the back of a chair.
    “Mind the mirrors!” the barkeep yelled. Somebody’s laugh was a sound of hysteria. The faces around Frank grew tense and avid as he brought the chair up in front of him.
    Now Will leaped, throwing up a hand to ward off the chair, attempting to dive in under it. One spur hooked into the cloth of a pant’s leg and he went down, cursing viciously. Frank, prodded by past injustices, brought the chair up over his head; but something stayed him and he reluctantly stepped back, allowing the man to regain his feet.
    It was while Church was trying to get up that the racket of shots came — five of them, close-spaced, whipping Frank around, scowling.
    He let go of the chair. The batwings were blocked by a solid crush of onlookers. He put his weight against the edge of the crowd. “Make way!” He shoved the nearest man roughly, driving broad shoulders into the wedge, hurling them back with the ram of his elbows.
    Someone swung at him, knocking his hat off. He could feel them stiffening. A man swung at Frank, yelling wickedly. Frank hurled him back into the crowd with black fury. He tore the gun from a fist and beat his way clear with it, leaving behind the wild sound of their temper. He stumbled into the night, his shirt hanging in ribbons.
    He ran around the back end of the pool hall and came into Gurden’s with the gun still in hand. He backed out almost at once, finding no sign of trouble, sprinting down the passage between the Opal and Bernie’s gun shop. Coming onto the walk he caught the sharp bark of two additional shots and swore in exasperation. It was nothing more alarming than a string of whooping ranch hands letting go at the moon as they roared out of town.
    Frank threw the pistol away and remembered his hat. For ten years that hat had been a part of himself but he didn’t go back after it. He tramped instead into the Mercantile and bought himself a new one, black this time, and a dark shield-fronted shirt, going — out of deference to female shoppers — into the back room to get into it.
    Coming out he looked around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Honey, having noticed a Bar 40 wagon out front. While he was looking Krantz grabbed his elbow. “You get him?”
    “Get who?”
    “Tularosa.” The lamps’ shine winked off the thick lenses of the storekeeper’s spectacles. “He vas in mine blace.”
    Frank, swearing, bundled the discarded shirt into Krantz’s hands and hurried through the front door. He stopped under the overhang, avoiding the stippling of light from the windows. He found it hard to make out anyone, what with so much in shadow and all the dust stirred up by the traffic. He looked for five minutes and decided to try Minnie’s.
    He got his horse from the rack, the big dun he’d come in on, a
bayo coyote
with black mane and tail and a stripe down its spine in addition to smudges about the knees. A black horse in this job would have probably been smarter but Frank, like most of