Read The Last Ride of German Freddie for Free Online Page A

another house owned by a man named Harwood.
    There were five of them, Freddie saw. Ike and his brother Billy, Tom and Frank McLaury, and their young friend Billy Claiborne, who like almost every young Billy in the West was known as “Billy the Kid,” after another, more famous outlaw who was dead and could not dispute the title. Tom McLaury led a horse by the reins. The group stood in the vacant lot in the midst of a disagreement. When he saw Freddie walking toward him, Billy Claiborne looked relieved.
    “Freddie!” he said. “Thank God! You help me talk some sense into these men!”
    Ike looked at Freddie with a broad grin. “We're going to kill Doc Holliday!” he said cheerfully. “We're going to wait for him to come home, then blow his head off!”
    Freddie glanced up at Fly's boarding house, with its little photographic studio out back, then returned his gaze to Ike. He tried to concentrate against the chorus of euphoric angels that sang in his mind. “Doc won't be coming back till late,” he said. “You might as well go home.”
    Ike shook his head vigorously. “No,” he said. “I'm gonna kill Doc Holliday!”
    “Ike,” Freddie pointed out, “you don't even have a gun.”
    Ike turned red. “It's only because that son of a bitch Spangenburg wouldn't sell me one!”
    “You can't kill Holliday without a gun,” Freddie said. “You might as well come back to the hotel with me.” He reached out to take Ike's arm.
    “Now wait a minute, Freddie,” said Ike's brother Billy. “ I've  got a gun.” He pulled back his coat to show his revolver. “And I think killing Holliday is a sound enough idea. It'll hurt the Earps. And no one 'round here likes Doc—nobody's going to care if he gets killed.”
    “Holliday and half the town know you're standing here ready to kill him,” Freddie said. “He's heeled and so are the Earps. Your ambush is going to fail.”
    “That's what I've been trying to tell them!” Billy Claiborne added, and then moaned, “Oh Lord, they'll make a blue fist of it!”
    “Hell,” said Tom McLaury. The side of his head was swollen where Wyatt Earp had clouted him. “We've got to fight the Earps sooner or later. Might as well do it now.”
    “I agree you should fight,” Freddie said. “But this is not the time or the place.”
    “This place is good as any other!” Tom said. “That bastard Earp hit me for no reason, and I'm going to put a bullet in him.”
    “I'm with my brother on this,” said Frank McLaury.
    “Nobody can stand up to us!” Ike said. “With us five and Freddie here, the Earps had better start praying.”
    Exasperation overwhelmed the exaltation that sang in Freddie's skull. With the ferocious clarity that was an aspect of his euphoria, he could see exactly what would happen. The Earps were professional lawmen—they did not chew their own tobacco, as Brocius would say—and when they came they would be ready. They might come with a crowd of vigilantes. The Cowboys, half unarmed, would stand wondering what to do, would have no leader, would wait too long to reach a decision, and then they would be cut down.
    “I have no gun!” Freddie told Ike. “ You  have no gun. And the Kid here has no gun. Three of you cannot fight a whole town, I think. You should go home and wait for a better time. Wait till Bill Brocius' trial is over, and get John Ringo to join you.”
    “You only say that 'cause you're a coward!” Ike said. “You're a kraut-eating yellowbelly! You won't stand by your friends!”
    Murder sang a song of fury in Freddie's blood. His hand clawed as if it held a gun—and the fact that there was no gun did not matter, the claw could as easily seize Ike's throat. Ike took a step backward at the savage glint in Freddie's eyes. Then Freddie shook his head, and said, “This is folly. I wash my hands of it.” He turned and began to walk away.
    “Freddie!” Behan yelped. He sprang in front of Freddie, bouncing on his neat polished brown boots.