The Sunshine Killers Read Free Page B

work? Are they hunters? Prospectors?”
    â€œThey don’t work. They just stay.”
    â€œHow long they been here?”
    The boy shrugged. “Pretty long.”
    â€œA week? A month?”
    â€œI don’t know. Pretty long. They don’t buy me no wheesky.”
    â€œThey just sit around here all day?”
    â€œI think,” the boy said, “that they’re pretty bad men. Yes, I think maybe they pretty bad. I think maybe they already kill one man maybe two.”
    â€œWhat for? Did they rob him?”
    â€œWho can say? Maybe they kill somebody. Maybe not.” The boy’s face suddenly brightened. “You buy me more drink of wheesky?”
    â€œNot now,” Saulter said. “You go on.”
    After the boy was gone Saulter reached in his pocket and took out a little deerskin shot bag. He emptied the contents in his hand. It was all the money he had and he counted it laboriously. Then he clinked it meditatively in his hand. After a second he put it back in the bag and the bag back in his pocket. He sat there thinking that he needed to rest and recuperate, but that he wouldn’t be able to do it long in such a place on eight dollars. Well, there really had been no reason for him to have only eight dollars. His pride had been the only reason. But it was too late for that now. Then he sat awhile longer, thinking about this place, this Sunshine town. There was something going on here, something he didn’t quite understand. He was not curious about it except as it applied to himself, but the hell of it was that it looked as if it were going to involve him. They didn’t want him here. They’d made that plain. For whatever reason. But he was hurt and he was going to have to stop off awhile until he healed. But they’d said one night. That was what the man behind him, at the table, Billy he guessed it was, had told the bartender. Well, he couldn’t leave. It was a long way to nowhere across that frozen desert and neither he nor his horse were up to it yet.
    So, he guessed, there’d be trouble. He didn’t understand it and he probably wouldn’t understand it when it came, but he’d handle it. The image of Tomlain ran through his through his mind. He’d seen his kind in camps and bars all over the country. The man wouldn’t quit pushing until it came down to guns. He expected he’d have to kill Tomlain. He might have it out with all of them if it came to that, but he hoped not. He tried to think how many there were. There’d been three that morning, but there were others. Five or six, he guessed. Well, he was in kind of a fix, a little bit of a tight place. For whatever reason, they seemed too set on making him leave, but they ought to realize that he couldn’t. He’d walk as quietly as he could, but he didn’t think it was going to do much good.
    He got up and left the bunkhouse and went in the store. The others were there and he took a table in a corner, off by himself. They watched him steadily, all of them. From behind the bar Schmidt called to ask if he wanted coffee. “Yes,” Saulter said. He got out one of the little thin, black cigars and lit it, the strong smoke biting him deep in the lungs. Through it he could see Tomlain watching him, not taking his eyes off him even when he turned his head to spit.
    When Schmidt brought his coffee, he asked what he could have to eat for breakfast.
    â€œBeans,” the owner said. “Or bacon.”
    â€œDo you have any eggs?”
    Schmidt laughed, loudly. “Did you hear that?” he called to the other men. “He wants eggs.”
    â€œTell him to go lay one,” Tomlain said.
    Saulter did not respond. He sat there, not looking at anything particular, breathing shallowly because his ribs hurt otherwise. The wound itself hadn’t been so bad; it had missed his lungs by a good inch or two. If it just hadn’t broken those two ribs. It pulled