Read Colonel Rutherford's Colt for Free Online Page B

part of her ribcage was a tattoo depicting a red-and-purple serpent with hands who looked to be standing on its tail and holding out an apple. It was real good work. The style was old-fashioned, kind of like a Nineteenth Century engraving, but the colors were bright. Down below, she was shaved hairless.
    â€œUh-oh,” he said. “How much trouble am I in?”
    She cocked her left hip, rested a hand on it. “Trouble don’t even say it.”
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    Friday night had been unkind to Loretta Snow. As she approached the Guy Guns table at ten o’clock the next morning, no more than a minute or two after the doors had opened, she fiddled with her purse strap, cast nervous glances to the side, and appeared generally unsteady. The bruised-looking skin beneath her eyes was darker and puffier; her buttermilk complexion had acquired a gray undertone. Jimmy thought she looked pretty nonetheless, wearing an ankle-length cotton print with an Empire waist. Rita, who was badly hungover, moaned when she saw the woman coming and laid her head down on a display case. Jimmy got to his feet and smiled and said, “Morning.”
    Without pleasantry or preamble, Ms. Snow said, “I need to have my gun back.” She held out a hand like a child demanding a quarter.
    â€œI ain’t even put it on display,” said Jimmy, disconcerted.
    â€œI’m sorry.” Ms. Snow’s chin trembled. “I need it back.”
    â€œWell, it’s your gun, but I think you rushing things.” Jimmy came out from behind the table, hitched his thumbs in his back pockets. “Man’s traveling down from Pullman to look at it next week. You might get your four outa him. Maybe a little more.”
    She perked up for a second, hearing that, but then seemed to shrink down inside herself. “I can’t wait that long.”
    â€œI’ll give it to you,” he said. “That’s not a problem. But you oughta hear about this fella before you jump. Whyn’t we grab us a cup of coffee, and I’ll fill you in? You want the Colt back after, I’ll hand her over.”
    She hesitated. “All right. But I don’t know if anything can change my mind.”
    Rita’s head was still down. Jimmy bent close to her and said, “Need you to watch the table for a half-hour. Okay?”
    â€œJust give her the damn gun,” she said wearily, voice muffled by her arm.
    He put his mouth to her ear and whispered, “I ain’t finished my story! You can handle the table. Hardly anybody’s here.”
    She flapped a hand at him. “Go on.”
    â€œWant me bring you back something?”
    â€œBring me a fucking cure for pain,” she said.
    Jimmy steered Ms. Snow by the elbow along the empty aisles, past dealers slumped in folding chairs behind mounds of T-shirts, some gazing bleakly at the walls, others lethargically sorting their change, or talking on cell phones, or rummaging through boxes of stock. Everyone in the show looked to be in about the same shape as Rita, except for Hardy and Rosalie Castin, a Christian couple who stood jauntily at the ready behind display cases arrayed with shiny new handguns and semi-autos and speed loaders, the good soldiers in an otherwise dissolute army. Once Jimmy had paid for the coffee, he and Ms. Snow found an unoccupied bench at the edge of the parking lot that faced toward a Key Bank and made themselves comfortable. The green humps of the Cascades lifted beyond the bank, their summits aglow in a sunstruck mist.
    â€œThis fella I told you about,” Jimmy said, “teaches up at State and writes books about the white power movement and the militias. Few years ago he talked the university into funding a collection of memorabilia. I had this rifle I couldn’t move. It was used by the Branch Davidians down there in Waco. Reason I couldn’t move it, I didn’t have much in the way of authentication. I had a letter