Outlaw Train Read Free Page B

yourself,” Stamps said. “Everybody should.”
    “I ain’t much for reading. A few yaller novels from time to time is about it for me.”
    “Well, you ought to read your Bible. It’ll change your life. Look at me, if you don’t believe it!”
    Jimmy couldn’t argue with that. Dewitt Stamps indeed was a much-changed man since the religious conversion that had made him the talk of the town four years earlier. Dewitt had spent much ofhis adult life as the town drunk of Wiles, Kansas. Shunned and scorned by the righteous church folk, he’d been much loved by his fellow residents of the town’s underbelly because of his innately generous nature. When he had liquor, he shared it. Now that he had religion, he was eager to share that as well, so his former drinking cohorts fled his presence like demons before an exorcist.
    Jimmy left his place behind the front desk and walked over near Dewitt.
    “I have to admit, Dewitt, you really aren’t the man you used to be. You remember when Mr. Gable was always throwing you out of this very lobby because you’d be in here drunk? Sometimes even this time of morning? And now you’re sober as a judge every day, and instead of staggering in here to pass out, you’re in here reading your Bible. Different world, huh, Dewitt?”
    “Grace of God, Jimmy. Grace of God.”
    Just then a woman in a pale red dress stepped onto the landing of the staircase overlooking the lobby, catching the eyes of the two males.
    The woman’s name, at least according to the hotel register she had signed, was Katrina Haus. She was remarkably pretty and buxom, and Jimmy could not tear his eyes away from her bosom, the size of which was emphasized by its contrast with her slender waist.
    Jimmy tried not to stare, not wanting to offend the woman, but when he remembered the men who had climbed the stairs to her floor during the night, he decided she was unlikely to take offense simply at being stared at. Her dress obviously was designedto emphasize her feminine attributes. Katrina Haus was a woman who sought to attract stares, not turn them away.
    But when Jimmy glanced back over at Dewitt, Dewitt wasn’t staring at her. His eyes were fixed downward, on the big, weather-beaten Bible that was his constant companion for the past few years. Stamps seemed tense, nervous. Only when Katrina Haus was out of the hotel and the door had closed behind her did he relax and let out a slow, long breath.
    “Son, that there was a powerful temptation. Lust-of-the-eyes kind of temptation,” Dewitt said.
    “Yes, sir, and I gave in to it something fierce,” Jimmy said, grinning. Dewitt was not amused. He looked seriously at the younger man.
    “You ought not joke about that which can damn a man’s soul,” Stamps lectured. “Jesus hisself said that to look on a woman with lust is the same as committing adultery with her. I can show you right here in this Bible where he said that.”
    “Don’t bother…I’ve heard it before. And that’s why I can’t ever be like you and get religion down to the bone, Dewitt. It’s just too hard. Too much to give up. And hell, it just don’t make good common sense to me that a man would be damned just for being a man. Just for seeing a pretty woman and enjoying it.”
    “God’s law may not make sense to you, Jimmy, but it’s God’s law all the same. Break it and you die. But you can swap death for life. That’s the exchange I made.”
    “Yeah…well, you were drinking yourself into the grave. Me, I got no big sins like that to repentfrom. I’m just a regular, normal, little-sins kind of gent. And you can preach about lust and such all you want, Dewitt, but there ain’t no normal man alive who can see what come down those stairs just now and not think sinful thoughts. I mean…” He cupped his hands over his chest and moved them up and down. “Did you see them things? Each one of them hanging off her all big and bouncy…wouldn’t you like to just reach out to them