A Good Day to Die Read Online Free Page A

Street stood the courthouse and the jail, Hangtown’s only stone buildings, built in the 1850s. The courthouse fronted east, a two-story brown sandstone structure with a clock tower. The jail fronted north, its long walls running north-south, a one-story brick building with iron bars on the windows. South central of town a jumble of adobe houses and wooden huts grouped around an oval plaza. Mextown.
    Southwest of town was a grassy open field with a stream running through it. A wagon train was camped there, with more than two dozen wagons arranged in a circle. Horses and oxen were pastured nearby. Smoke rose from cooking fires. People moved to and fro, youngsters weaving in and out around them.
    Johnny and Luke rode down the ridge into town. It was a little past ten o’clock in the morning.
    Saturdays were usually busy in Hangtown. Ranchers and their families from all over the county came in to trade, barter, or buy. The fine late June weather had brought them out in big numbers. Wagons lined boardwalk sidewalks fronting the stores on both sides of Trail Street. Groups of kids ran up and down the street, playing tag.
    Many cowboys and ranch hands worked only a half day on Saturday; they would start coming in after twelve noon. The week’s wages burned a hole in their pockets, itching to be spent on whiskey, women, and gambling.
    Johnny and Luke put their horses up at Hobson’s Livery stables and corral, which was south of the jail. Once the horses were squared away, Johnny said, “Let’s get some chow.”
    â€œHell, let’s get a drink,” Luke said.
    â€œChow first. It’s early yet.”
    Luke gave in with poor grace and they went into Mabel’s Café. They sat at a table, ordered breakfast, and soon were digging into a big meal of steak and eggs, biscuits, and coffee.
    Fortified, they exited the restaurant a few minutes later. Johnny reached into an inside breast pocket of his jacket for one of several long, thin cigars he kept there. He bit the end off, spat it out, and lit up. Luke used a penknife to cut a chaw off a plug of tobacco, stuck it in the side of his mouth, and commenced to work on it.
    They moved on, north to Trail Street. With his crutch wedged under his left arm, Luke swung along with the facility that comes with much practice. Men with missing limbs were a commonplace throughout the land in the war’s aftermath.
    Johnny padded along at a nice easy pace so as not to get Luke winded. Besides, he was in no hurry. Turning left at Trail Street, they went west along its south side, nodding to acquaintances, saying hello in passing. Johnny smoked his cigar, trailing blue-gray smoke. Luke squirted tobacco juice from time to time.
    Johnny liked to watch the passing parade, especially the pretty girls, the town misses, and ranchers’ daughters. They were bright eyed, with well-scrubbed shining faces.
    Their wayward sisters, denizens of the saloons and the houses, were mostly still abed, not yet astir. Johnny liked them well enough, too—perhaps too well. But they belonged to a half world of gamblers, barkeeps, whores, hardcases, and thrill seekers—sinners all. They were nightbirds who flew when the sun went down.
    At ten-thirty in the morning, respectable folk held sway, crowding the wooden plank sidewalks fronting the stores. Luke flattened against a wall to dodge a gang of kids chasing each other, shouting back and forth. He and Johnny made their way west, sidestepping knots of people.
    â€œLot of strangers in town,” Luke said.
    â€œMust come from that wagon train, Major Adams’s outfit,” Johnny said.
    The strangers were a rough-hewn lot, decent-seeming enough, but bearing the look of having done a lot of hard traveling with a long way yet to go. Some were staring, others shy, but all had the aspect of wayfarers. Pilgrims.
    â€œWhere’re they going, Johnny?”
    â€œWest to Anvil Flats and then across the plains to the Santa