Read .45-Caliber Widow Maker for Free Online

cautious glance up the hill at the constable, then around the men gathered about her.
    The lead rider—lanky, with long, dark brown hair, mustache, and goatee, and with a broad, scarred nose—spit a fleck of trail dust from his lips and narrowed a dark eye. “Afternoon, Constable.”
    Ardai felt as though the copper eagle on his cracked leather vest were burning a hole through his skin. He only nodded. His gloved hand resting atop the .44 was sweating profusely.
    The lead rider straightened his head and frowned, a sneering, defiant note in his voice while his eyes acquired a mock-serious cast. “Say, you haven’t seen a jail wagon around here somewheres, have you? A jail wagon driven by two deputy U.S. marshals and carrying the meanest, ugliest-lookin’ quartet of bastards you’ve ever seen in your ill-fated, too-short life?”
    The other men chuckled and slid their sneering gazes from Ardai to the lead rider and back again. One of them had a long, nasty gash across the nub of his left cheek. A horse nickered. The stream curving off to the left made a soft rushing noise on the other side of the poplars.
    “Well, now,” Ardai said, cocking his head to one side and trying to put some authority into his voice, “why would you fellas be trailin’ a jail wagon loaded with federal prisoners?”
    The group looked around at each other as though at a secret joke.
    Then the leader turned back toward Ardai. As though in response to the dumbest question he’d ever heard, he said, “Why, to run ’em down, kill the marshals, and spring our three amigos. Whadoya think we’re trackin’ ’em for—to offer ’em a drink and fresh-cut roses?”
    More snickers and chuckles from the men around the leader. Nervously, the girl flicked her eyes back and forth between the constable and the lead desperado, her features tense and apprehensive.
    Ardai held the leader’s sneering, level, faintly challenging gaze. The man had slid the wings of his duster back behind a brace of big .45s. He leaned smugly forward on his saddle horn.
    The constable’s heart thudded so hard he thought it would crack a rib. The dreamy effect of his pull on the whiskey bottle had worn off entirely, leaving him washed out, sluggish, and scared as hell. He’d never faced a pack of trail dogs as obviously feral as the ones he faced now. Buffalo Flats was a relatively quiet little town. And Ardai had no real training as a lawman. Before, he’d sold whiskey to remote northern Colorado roadhouses and trading posts and pimped his own whores on the side.
    He considered lifting his hand from his weapon, turning his horse around, and riding back the way he’d come. Screw pride. He was getting paid only twenty dollars a month, and he spent that much on girls, cards, and whiskey. But, if he gave these men his back, they’d beef him from behind.
    He was stuck between a rock and sheer mountain wall.
    Flicking his gaze around the sneering riders down the hill before him, he tightened his hand around his .44. Maybe he could kill one or two and set the group’s horses leaping and befouling the aims of the other shooters. Deep down, he didn’t think it would work, but his anxious mind was reeling too fast for rational thought.
    As if from far away, Ardai heard himself give a savage, unpremeditated yell as he slipped the revolver from its holster and thumbed back the hammer.
    But he had the gun only half raised before the lead rider, in a blur of lightning-quick motion, drew his matched Colts from their cross-draw holsters, raised them above his horse’s head, and angled them up the hill.
    Both Colts roared, belching smoke and fire, at the same time.

    A red-tailed hawk perched on the toe of the dead man’s right boot, staring at Cuno Massey with proprietary anger in its gold-speckled, copper eyes.
    Cuno swung down from Renegade’s back, dropped the reins, and looking around warily with one hand on his .45’s grip, sidled over to the dead man.
    The body lay belly up