The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 2 Read Free Page B

don’t look so bad,” he added. “Have a full canteen?”
    â€œNo. I’d have been a goner. But my mother was an Apache. A bunch of them got caught in the Sink once. That never happened twice to no Apache. They found this water hole then, and one down below. I made the one below, an’ then I was finished. She was a dry hole. But then water began to run in from a crack in the rock.”
    â€œYeah?” Marone looked at him again. “You got any coffee?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œWell,” Shad said as he holstered his gun, “I’ve got a fire.”

The Town No Guns Could Tame
    CHAPTER 1
    The miner called Perry stepped from the bucket and leaned his pick and shovel against a boulder. He was a big man with broad shoulders and narrow hips. Despite the wet, clinging diggin’ clothes, he moved with the ease and freedom of a big cat. His greenish eyes turned toward Doc Greenley, banker, postmaster, and saloon man of Basin City, who was talking with the other townsmen.
    Perry’s head and arms were bare, and the woolen undershirt failed to cover the mighty muscles that rippled along his back and shoulders. One of the men, noting the powerful arms and the strong neck, turned and said something to the others. They nodded, together.
    â€œHey, Perry,” Doc Greenley called, “drift over here, will you? Me and these two gents want to make a proposition to you.”
    Casually, Perry picked up the spare pick handle leaning against the boulder and walked over, his wet clothes sloshing as he moved. He stopped when he reached the trio, and his eyes studied them, coldly penetrating. The three men shifted uneasily.
    â€œGo ahead with it, then,” Perry said shortly.
    â€œIt’s like this,” Doc explained. “Buff McCarty”—he nodded toward the larger of his two companions—“and Wade Manning, here, and myself have been worried about the rough element from the mines. They seem to be taking over the town. No respectable citizen or their womenfolk are safe. And as for the hold-ups that have been raising hell with us businessmen …” Doc Greenley mopped his brow with a fresh bandanna handkerchief, letting the sentence go unfinished.
    â€œWe want you to help us, Perry,” the heavy-set, honest-faced McCarty put in. “Manning, here, runs the freight line and I have the general supply outfit. We’re all substantial citizens and need a man of your type for town marshal.”
    â€œAs soon as I heard you were here, I told the boys you were just the man for us,” Greenley put in eagerly.
    Perry’s green eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “I see.” His gaze shifted from Doc Greenley, the most prominent and wealthiest man there, to the stolid McCarty, and then to the young townsman, Wade Manning. He smiled a little. “The town fathers, out in force, eh?” He glanced at Wade, looking at him thoughtfully. “But where’s Rafe Landon, owner of the Sluice Box Bar?”
    â€œRafe Landon?” Doc Greenley’s eyes glinted. “Why, his bar is the hangout for this tough crowd! In fact, we have reason to suspect—”
    â€œBetter let Perry form his own suspicions, Doc,” Wade Manning interrupted. “I’m not at all sure about Rafe.”
    â€œYou may not be,” Greenley snapped, “but I am! Perry, I’m convinced that Landon is the ringleader of the whole kit an’ caboodle of the killers and renegades we’re trying to clean out!”
    â€œWhy,” Perry said suddenly, “do you choose this particular time to pick a marshal? There must be a reason.”
    â€œThere is,” Wade Manning agreed. “You probably know about the volume of gold production here. Anyway, Doc has better than two hundred thousand in his big vault now. I have about half that much. There’s a rumor around of a plot to loot the stage of the whole load.”
    â€œIt’s