Maverick Marshall Read Online Free Page A

tell you different.” Frank backed his dun out of the light from the door.
    He’d been lucky! There was sweat all over him. His hands got to shaking till he had to grab hold of the horn to keep them quiet when he thought of what a fool he’d been to go and brace that jigger with his back wide open. If Tularosa had come up or been around someplace watching — Frank bitterly swore.
    He picked up his reins and sent the dun toward the street. A glance swiveled over his shoulder at Minnie’s revealed nothing suspicious. He drew a ragged breath. Worry could do a man in sure as anything! He fetched his face around for a look at the Chuckwagon. It was off there ahead of him, its canvas top a dirty blur against the lantern beneath its fly.
    He fetched Honey back into mind, recalling the soft exciting feel of her with her heart pounding wildly and the smell of her tumbled hair whipping round him. The job was worth this risk if it would do what he wanted.
    He wasn’t sure it would. But let him once get this town to eating out of his hand and a proper respect slapped into these trail crews and he guessed not many doors would stay shut against him.
    This was still a young land where what you did was more important than who you were or where you’d come from. Old W. T. wasn’t a man to forget that. If half the stories were true
his
start wouldn’t bear much looking into either.
    Frank was forty yards from the subdued shine of the flapping canvas when he became aware of the stopped wagon. There was a girl holding the reins, and a horse-backer talking to her. This was about all Frank could make out, the moon being under a cloud at the moment. A little wind had sprung up, whipping their words away. He likely wouldn’t have noticed them at all if he had been less edgy and they hadn’t been caught against the light from the Blue Flag.
    With Honey on his mind they took immediate hold of his interest. He kneed the dun toward them, remembering the wagon from Bar 40 at the Mercantile. He got nearer. He saw the girl shake her head and sway away from the fellow, saw the man’s arm come up as he bent after her from the saddle. The girl reached for the whip. Snorting contemptuously, the fellow grabbed her.
    Frank didn’t wait to see any more. He slammed the dun into the other man’s mount, catching him by the coat at the shoulder, yanking him back with an uncaring roughness that mighty near dumped him onto the ground. “Ma’am, is this galoot bothering you?”
    In Frank’s grip the man, who seemed to be on the bony side, was in no position to do much of anything, suspended as he was halfway out of the saddle. His horse snorted nervously, dancing a little.
    “Why, no, not particularly.” Her voice was pleasant. It wasn’t Honey’s. She was new here. She didn’t seem much excited — appeared more like she was smiling. It kind of made Frank feel foolish.
    Perhaps she sensed his resentment. “I wouldn’t want you to drop him under those hoofs.”
    Frank very nearly did. For, just then, the moon came out. The fellow twisted his head, and Frank felt like Jonah in the belly of the whale.
    The “galoot” he had hold of was Tularosa.
    Frank had time only to realize this — when young Church, taut with fury, yelled:
    “Frank!”
    Frank saw the glint of metal in Church’s lifting hand. Tularosa began to struggle, trying to get leverage, trying to pull his far leg across the drag of the saddle. Frank was in a bad spot. He slapped the gunfighter savagely. Then he growled at Church, “Will, keep out of this.”
    “Don’t use that tone on me, you bastard!”
    Frank half turned the frozen mask of his face. In that fleeting fragment of time his mind absorbed details without conscious understanding or realization of it even: the still look of the girl, the forward clump of Church’s boots, the collecting crowd closing in about them. Yet never for an instant did Frank’s glance quit the man he had hold of. While Church in his drunken