Dead Man's Hand (Caden Chronicles, The) Read Online Free Page B

hardly heard my sister because I was already halfway across the saloon. I slammed my shoulder into the door and burst into the alley, looking left, then right. No Jesse James. No one at all except the person pressing the barrel of a gun against my temple.
    “One wrong move and you die.”

CHAPTER FOUR
DEPUTIZED
    “ S cared you, didn’t I?” the young woman said.
    I felt her remove the gun from my head and turned. In the ambient light of dusk I made a quick assessment.
My height, my age. Reddish-blonde bangs and ponytail. Freckled cheeks under the pale sombrero. Not bad looking, even though the revolver in her hand is a huge turn off
.
    I said, “Would you please put that thing away?”
    “Is it making you uncomfortable?”
    “Yes, a little.”
    “See that sign?” She gestured toward a wooden notice mounted on a post at the entrance to the alley. TRESPASSERS SHOT ON SITE. “Means you can’t be out here.”
    “Shouldn’t that be ‘sight’?” I asked.
    “You know what it means,” she said, tucking the gun into its holster. The blue denim shirt fit the rough and tumbleweed tomboy look but did little to suppress the more pronounced features of her cowgirl frame.
    “S-i-t-e means a place, location,” I explained. “S-i-g-h-t has to do with vision.”
    “All I know is you’re not supposed to be out here. We have a strict policy. No one allowed on the back lot.”
    “You’re here.”
    “I work here, Jethro.”
    “Name’s Nick.”
    “I
know
what your name is. Uncle Walt’s told me all about you.”
    “Uncle Walt?”
    “Marshal Buckleberry.”
    The niece in charge of maintaining the out-of-date website. Probably in charge of signage too
.
    I said, “Aren’t you a little young to be a peace officer?”
    “Bet I’m older than you.”
    “Doubt it. I turn fifteen next month.”
    Beaming, she announced, “Me too. What day?”
    I pointed to the revolver on her hip. “Is that thing loaded?”
    “Need a permit to carry a loaded weapon and I don’t have one. Impressive, isn’t it? Replica of a Colt Six-Shooter. Fires 9 mm blanks as fast as you can cock the hammer. Here, try it out.”
    Before I could tell her I wasn’t interested, she moved next to me and took my right wrist, placing the gun in my hand.Together we raised the weapon slowly. “Now, aim at something and—”
    The sound of the gun blast startled me. Quickly, she thumbed back the hammer, readying it again. “Block out the distractions,” she said, her cheek nearly touching mine, “and you’ll hit the target every time.”
    “But it’s shooting blanks.”
    “Still doesn’t hurt to practice.”
    She curled her fingers over my hand and I realized how uncomfortable I felt standing so close to her.
    Cooing into my ear she said, “Now, try again.”
    The saloon door flung open and we untangled ourselves.
    Marshal Buckleberry stepped out. “What’s going on out here?”
    Taking the weapon from me, the young woman returned the revolver to its holster. “Just showing this clodhopper how we do things in Deadwood.”
    “You know better than to let a guest handle your sidearm. Now get back inside and help bus those tables.”
    “That’s what the kitchen staff is for.”
    “For crying out loud, Annie. For once would you just do what I ask you to do without arguing?”
    “Fine,” she said, yanking open the door. “But if Mom was here she wouldn’t make me—”
    “Inside!”
    “Seventeenth,” she called over her shoulder. “My birthday is the seventeenth.”
    “Got you by three days,” I answered.
    “You haven’t got me at all, Nick Caden. Not by a longshot.” The door banged shut, leaving me alone in the alley with the marshal.
    “If I were you, son, I’d steer clear of my niece. She’s a brush fire in a dry wind.”
    “That brush fire got a name?”
    “Annie. Annabel Nora Lancaster. Named after my sister, God rest her soul. But now she calls herself Annie Oakley.”
    “Like the Old West exhibition