McAllister Makes War Read Free

three shots to Malloy’s one, but it was Jack who was dead when the smoke blew away. That put Art right out on top. Nobody was ready to buck the man who had killed Wild Jack Little.”
    â€œWe have a whole lot of men to look at.”
    â€œYou said it.”
    â€œJack Little had two brothers. All three were pretty close.”
    After a little more talk, Carson went off to his bed. McAllister sat thinking. He had seen the Little brothers one time down in Fort Worth. A tough mean trio if ever he had seen one. He wondered if either Marve or Frank Little were in town. He hoped they weren’t. He didn’t fancy facing those two hombres. They were gun artists of the top rank.
    He finished his coffee and went for a look at the town.
    He didn’t think much of it, though it was growing and showed all the signs of being big some day. Right now most of the town was made of green lumber that was already warping, but there was still some adobe and even soddy about. Here and there some enterprising soul had introduced brick. The banker was one of these. The bank stood at an angle of forty-five degrees from the marshal office, away to the left. It looked stark and bare against the shabby spread of the rest of the town. The banker was opening his door even as McAllister stepped onto what was the beginning of a sidewalk in town.
    He strolled along Lincoln and found the place stirring. An ox wagon lumbered down the center of the street, the slow animals walking behind their teamster, a bearded giant of a man with his long whip on his shoulder. A horse-drawn wagon with a team of four rattled by, swaying on the rutted street. A horse-backer or two went by, cantering; a buggy rattled past him. The Longhorns was open, for it never closed. The swamper was at work with mop and broom, working his way around the early drinkers or those who had not stopped drinking since the night before.
    McAllister turned into Garrett and had a look at the Golden Fleece owned by the Darcy Brothers who had had a run-in with Art Malloy. Already the paint was flaking off the painting of the golden fleece that decorated its false-front. A drooping man stood outside on the sidewalk surveying the morning. He was flashily dressed in clawhammer coat and silk vest, but he looked as though he had slept in his clothes. His fine gray pants were tucked into polished knee-high boots. This McAllister knew was Fred Darcy. Known throughout Texas and the west.
    A hasty passionate man whose appearance belied his character. To look at he could be a Methodist preacher with a sad face. But he was a heller. Somewhere in Texas he had a wife and three children. In Combville he kept a mistress, drank and ate hearty and made money. He always made money. And lost it. Men said he would gamble on where a fly would fall and they were probably right. He had served as a sergeant in the Texas cavalry during the war, had killed a fellow sergeant and somehow got away with it and had deserted before the end of the war. A good many sheriffs wanted him in his native State and several outside it, but he managed to stay a free man in Kansas. His saloon was accepted as the meeting place of Texas men coming up the trail with cattle. He had won the saloon in a game of poker. His brother Johnny was a weaker and, if possible, wilder version of himself. Fred was continually getting his younger brother out of scrapes.
    Darcy now called to McAllister: “Mornin’, friend.”
    McAllister crossed to him. As he drew close, Darcy’s eyes opened wide in recognition.
    â€œWa-al, if’n it ain’t Rem McAllister.” They shook. “How’ve you been, boy?”
    They chatted of this and that, Darcy telling proudly of how well he was doing in this benighted northern town and what a pleasure it was to be making his pile from the hated Yankees. Which wasn’t what McAllister had heard. It seemed that Darcy made most of his money from the cattlemen of Texas. Finally,