Read Broken Star (2006) for Free Online

to the wooden floor. Coming up fast, he saw Michael Poole moving in on him, throwing another mighty punch. Vejar hoisted the table by its legs. Unable to stop the punch he was throwing, the tall Poole brother yelled out in pain as his fist crashed into the tabletop, crunching the bones of his hand.
    With his left eye rapidly closing, Vejar lunged at Michael Poole, who was holding his damaged hand, his face twisted in agony. He was unable to defend himself, and Vejar felled him with a terrific right-hand punch.
    Out of the fight completely, Michael Poole lay unconscious on the floor. But his brother Lew came up on Vejar’s blind side, using a bottle to club him to the floor. Fighting to remain conscious, Vejar scrambled away fromthe kicks Lew Poole was aiming at him. He rose up, ready to deal with Lew, but Ben Poole, his face a bloody pulp, came up behind Vejar to catch him in a bear hug, pinioning his arms to his sides.
    Grinning happily, Lew Poole stepped forward to smash punch after punch at the helpless Vejar. With blood from cuts inflicted by the punches completing his blindness, Vejar slumped and would have fallen if Ben Poole hadn’t been holding him.
    Exhausted by the non-stop battering he was giving Vejar, Lew Poole stopped and nodded to his brother, who let Vejar drop to the floor. Peering up one-eyed through a veil of blood, Vejar saw Ben Poole drawing his gun, aiming it at him.
    ‘You lived like a dog, Vejar,’ Lew Poole snarled. ‘Now you can die like a dog.’
    Cursing his stupidity in taking off his gunbelt in the first place, Vejar was watching Poole squeeze the trigger, when a shot rang out. Staggering sideways, Lew Poole dropped his gun and clapped his hand to his neck. A bullet had grazed him, drawing blood but otherwise causing no real injury.
    Unable to believe his luck, Vejar saw a smile tweak at the corners of Dan Matthews’ mouth. Then George Harker was reaching down to puta hand in Vejar’s armpit and pull him to his feet.
    ‘I guess that you’ll have company in the jailhouse tonight, Fallon,’ the sheriff quipped.

FOUR
    ‘So you’ve heard of George Harker, Ken?’
    Gloria Malone asked the question as she sat in brilliant noon sunshine, cleaning and oiling her handgun. The gang had taken over an abandoned line shack in the foothills some thirty miles from Yancey. The shack stood on a grassy rise, alone and as desolate as a desert island. When she had told Klugg the name of Yancey’s sheriff, Gloria had noticed that the outlaw had shown not fear, which would have been out of character, but a certain apprehension that intrigued her. This Harker had to be some hombre to make Ken Klugg react in that way.
    Not answering until his daily period of quick-draw practice had been completed, Ken Klugg holstered his .45 and walked over to sit beside her on the grass close to one side of the shack.
    ‘You must be the only one who’s never heard of Harker, Gloria,’ he remarked.
    ‘He’s that good?’
    ‘Better than good, much better.’
    ‘How does that affect our plan for Yancey?’ Gloria enquired.
    She waited for a reply that she suspected would never come. Klugg had become unfriendly towards her in their present situation. She missed Fallon Vejar terribly. Since Vejar had left, Klugg had been trying to get closer to her. Having repelled him every time he made a move, she knew that he had grown increasingly angry at being rejected. She guessed it would have resulted in a showdown between them before now, except for the fact she had filled Vejar’s position as the most valuable member of the gang. Klugg just couldn’t afford to lose her. The other four, though competent with firearms and not lacking in courage, were incapable of performing without supervision. Maybe that wasn’t true of Richie Deere, the youngest of them, a kid who had become Vejar’s protégé, and who had been morose from the moment Vejar, his friend and idol, had ridden out.
    ‘The only difference it makes,’ Klugg