[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

the cuffs, I damned near slipped twice. I came so
close once that he raised the reins for a second, but I
caught myself, getting a better purchase on the buggy
step. I raised the gun. He put the reins back down.
When I was steady on the ground, I said,  Now
come around here with that key of yours and get
these cuffs off me.
 Yeah? he said, all his features lost in the deep
shadow of the buggy.  Then what?
 We ll see.
 What if I won t do it?
 Then I ll kill you right now and drag your ass out
of the buggy and go through your pockets till I find
the key.
 I could take the key and throw it out in the brush
somewhere.
 You want to see if you can move faster than my
bullet?
 You fucking sonofabitch.
 C mon, Wickham. Get your ass over here.
I didn t give him the break he d maybe expected.
As he started to get down, I moved through the
moonlight on the deserted sandy road. By the time he
reached the ground, I was standing right there. I
hadn t given him any chance to run away.
In the dime novels it s always dramatic, but in re-
ality it s almost never dramatic. You just get it over
with. He knew that, too.
 The key, I said.
 I m sorry I killed your brother.
 The key.
Cavalry Man: The Killing Machine 259
It could have been a sob. I couldn t tell for sure.
Maybe it was indigestion of some kind. It was just
some kind of noise in him, some old-man noise
maybe, coming out of him just ahead of the key com-
ing out of his pocket.
He took the key out and said,  When?
 I figure along about now.
 That s what I figure, too.
I shot him three times in the chest.
Chapter 23
B'
he first train out arrived just before dawn. Jane
waited on the platform with me. We d had several
Tcups of coffee and were edgy with it by the time
the train pulled in.
 What will you do now? she asked.
 Whatever they tell me to.
She smiled.  Still the good soldier.
 I suppose. I ve been in harness so long I don t
know what else to do.
She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
 Thanks for listening to me go on so long about
David this morning.
 What s six hours between friends?
She laughed.  It probably seemed like six hours.
 The gun s safe. That s what matters. I said it sort
of gruff. I wanted to say something to her she was
awfully damn pretty and almost frail there in her
nurse s cape and cowl but whatever came out
would just embarrass me later when I thought about
it. So I talked about work. Work talk is always some-
thing you can hide inside of.  I had it put in a special
part of the storage car. I ll check it every stop or so.
Cavalry Man: The Killing Machine 261
Then the conductor was calling   board. He was
silhouetted in the frosty dawn against a gold-
streaked sky. The backyard roosters in town had
started getting noisy.
 Take care of yourself, she said.
 You do the same, Jane.
You d think that two grown-up people could think
of something more original to say at times like these,
but somehow we seldom do.
I squeezed her hand and then picked up my suit-
case and walked to the train. When I got seated in-
side, we waved to each other and then the train
lurched and started moving away from the platform.
About thirty morning miles down the track I thought
of a couple of things I should have said. But after
sixty miles I was just as glad I hadn t said them.
Acknowledgments
My great thanks to Linda Siebels,
for her help with the manuscript.
About the Author
ED GORMAN s
western fiction has won the Spur Award and his crime fic-
tion has won the Shamus and Anthony Awards and has
been shortlisted for the Edgar® Award. In addition, his writ-
ing has appeared in Redbook, the New York Times, Ellery
Queen Magazine, Poetry Today, and other publications.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information
on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents are products of the author s imagination or are
used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
CAVALRY MAN: The Killing Machine. Copyright ©
2005 by Ed Gorman. All rights reserved under
International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have
been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right
to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No
part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-
loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or
introduced into any information storage and retrieval
system, in any form or by any means, whether
electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter
invented, without the express written permission of
HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader January 2007
ISBN 978-0-06-135441-0
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900
Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.uk.harpercollinsebooks.com
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]