Way with a Gun
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
Keeping Up Appearances
“Of course I’ve had sex,” she told him. “But we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about your reputation with the ladies.”
“I didn’t know I had a reputation with the ladies,” he said.
“You think all people talk about is how fast the Gunsmith is with a gun?” she asked. “Then you haven’t heard your own stories, have you?”
“To tell you the truth, I try not to listen to them,” he told her.
“Well, believe me,” she said, “that reputation is considerable.” She leaned forward, placed her elbows on the table, and lowered her voice. “In fact, that’s the one I’m interested in right now.”
“Are you telling me that’s what you want to interview me about?” he asked.
“Actually,” she said, touching the back of his hand, “I was thinking about . . . research.”
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WAY WITH A GUN
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
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Jove edition / October 2007
Copyright © 2007 by Robert J. Randisi.
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ONE
Tell Barlow stared across the table at his two colleagues. Jerry Corbett was in his early thirties, the youngest of the three men. He somehow always managed to look like he was fresh-shaven. Newly Yates was the oldest, in his early forties, and always had a dark stubble growing around a toothpick.
Tell was thirty-five, dressed better than the other two, who always seemed to be in trail clothes—Corbett’s clean, Newly’s dirty. The other two were like night and day, with Tell somewhere in the middle. The one thing they all had in common was that they made their way with a gun. There were no two ways about it, these men were killers. They did it well, and for money.
But they had something else in common too.
They were bored with their lives.
They were in the Five Aces saloon in Selkirk, Arizona. There was no one else in the place except for the bartender. That was because these three men, just by their presence, scared away other patrons, who preferred to drink somewhere else while they were in town.
Tell, Newly, and Corbett were playing poker and talking about how bored they were.
“Let’s raise the stakes,” Newly said.
“What for?” Tell asked. “We all charge a lot for our services. We should all have enough money put away that we wouldn’t even have to work if we didn’t want to.”
Newly and Corbett looked at each other.
“Well, I do,” Tell said. “Raising the stakes of a god-damned poker game ain’t gonna make no differ
ence to me.”
“Then what will?” Corbett asked.
“I don’t know.” Tell threw his cards down on the table. “Somethin’ that’ll make a difference.”
“Like what?” Newly asked.
Tell slid his chair back angrily and said, “Jesus, can’t you fellas come up with anything but questions? I’m gettin’ another beer.”
“Can I get one?” Newly asked.
“Me too,” Corbett said.
“Jesus . . .”
Tell went to the bar and told the bartender to let him have three more beers.
“And make these cold ones,” he added.
“Yessir.”
Tell was disgusted with his life. His last half-dozen jobs had been so easy it was laughable. He wanted to feel challenged. All he had to do was figure out how.
When he got back to the table, Newly was cackling, have just taken a hand from Corbett. Tell pushed their beers at them, spilling some of each on the table.
“Hey!” Newly said. He grabbed the cards before they could get soaked with beer.
“Think of somethin’, damn it!” Tell said.
“Jesus, Tell,” Corbett said, “what the hell . . .”
“How good are you with a gun, Newly?”
“Damned good.”
“Fast?”
“Not fast, but I hit what I aim at.”
“I’m fast,” Corbett said.
“How fast?” Tell asked.
“Faster than you.”
“You sure?”
Corbett hesitated, then said, “Yeah,” in a less-than-confident voice.
“Sure enough to bet?”
“Bet what?”
“That you can outdraw me.”
“I mean, what are we bettin’?”
“Whatever,” Tell said. “Money? Horses? How about your life?”
“My life?” Corbett asked.
“Our lives,” Tell said. “You against me. Winner takes all. Loser dies.”
“That’s crazy, Tell,” Newly said.
“It’d be interestin’,” Tell said.
“Crazy interestin’,” Newly said. “Why don’t you find some other way to find out who’s faster?”
“Like what?” Tell asked. “What other way?”
“Pick somebody else,” Newly said. “Somebody you can both face. No, wait, you still die if you lose—”
“Wait,” Tell said. “Wait, wait, you’ve got a good idea here.”
“What’d I say?”
“Here’s what we do,” Tell said. “We pick somebody and make a bet. Whoever kills him wins the money.”
“How much money?” Newly asked, interested now.
“Yeah, how much?” Corbett echoed.
“I don’t know,” Tell said. “We can come up with a figure.”
“If it’s enough,” Newly said, “I’ll want in—as long as we ain’t facin’ each other.”
“No,” Tell said, “not each other. Somebody else.”
“Who?” Corbett asked.
Tell smiled. “That’s the part that’s gonna make it interestin’.”
TWO
Clint Adams slid his hands beneath the woman’s naked buttocks, lifted her up, and pressed her against the wall. She gasped as he pushed deeper into her, wrapping her legs around his waist, taking some of her weight out of his hands. Not that she was heavy. Angela Desmond was only about five feet four and, for the most part, slender, except for an impressive butt. Her breasts were small and round, like ripe peaches, and if anything her weight was pleasant.
“Oh, God,” she said as he drove into her, pressing her flat against the wall, the hard surface giving him the maximum penetration that a mattress would not have offered.
They had been in this room at the Blanchard Hotel in Virginia City, Montana, for two days, and had made love on every surface imaginable. This was the first time, however, that he had pinned her against the wall next to the window that overlooked the muddy main street. They had been taking their meals inside, going out only for short walks to stretch their legs, and then it was right back into the room again.
They’d had a discussion the first night they had met, which had started out as simple, honest flirtation, and had developed into something of a challenge.
A sexual challenge . . .
Angela was a confident woman in her late twenties who had come to Virginia City to run the newspaper, The Madisonian. Clint was just passing through, and had gotten into a poker game at the Nugget Saloon. Word got around town that the Gunsmith was playing poker at the Nugget. That was all Angela had to hear. She made her way to the saloon to watch and wait, and Clint noticed her.
When the game broke up, Clint had taken all the money at the table, plus a bag full of small gold nuggets from a miner. To show there were no hard feelings, he asked the other four players to drink with him. He was buying. Three of the players took him up on the offer, but the miner stormed out. Apparently, he’d had to work many hours for that small sack of nuggets, and had no desire to drink with the man who had taken them away from him.
“Don’t mind him,” Angela said to Clint as the miner— a man named Pearce—stormed out. “He’s obviously just a sore loser.”
Clint turned away from the other three men to face her. She had long brown hair and pale skin, a nose that tilted up just slightly, and a wide, generous mouth that made him think of the word “luscious.” He’d noticed her across the room, but was momentarily stunned at how truly lovely she was up close.
She took immediate advantage of the situation.
“My name is Angela Desmond, editor, writer, and sweeper at The Madisonian.”
“The Madisonian?”
“The local newspaper.”
“Oh.” Clint knew instantly what she was going to ask. “Listen, Miss Desmond—”
“Angela, please.”
“Angela. I can’t really—”
“You think I’m going to ask you for an interview, don’t you, Mr. Adams?” she asked.
“Well, yes . . .” He felt momentarily embarrassed. Was that not her intention? Was he starting to believe in his own reputation? “And the name’s Clint.”
“Well, Clint, you’re right,” she said. “I am going to ask for an interview. Now, I know you’ve probably been asked many times before. . . .”
“Yes,” he said, “many times.”
“This would be different,” she said. “I promise you.”
“How?” he asked. “How would it be different?”
She opened her mouth to say something, then stopped short, made a fist, and said to him, “Gimme a minute.”
“Miss Desmond—”
“Angela.”
“Angela,” he said. “I really don’t give interviews. I’ve had bad experiences with the ones I have given—”
“That’s because people ask you the wrong questions,” she said. “They ask about your reputation. About how and why you came to be called the Gunsmith.”
He knew she was thinking fast on her feet, but he liked her for it.
“And you wouldn’t?”
“No,” she said. “I want to learn about the real you. Clint Adams, not the Gunsmith.”
“And what would you ask?”
“Well . . . has anyone ever asked you your favorite food?”
“Well, no . . .”
“What you like to drink?”
“No . . .”
“If you read? And if you do read, what you read?”
“Well ...”
“And what about women?” she asked.
“What about them?”
“What kinds do you like?”
“Well, right about now,” he said, “pretty, brown-haired newspaper reporters are high on my list.”
That stopped her. She flushed and looked down, momentarily embarrassed.
“That was sweet,” she said, “but see, that’s the kind of thing I’d ask. How you talk to and interact with women . . .”
“What about you?” he as
ked.
“I—what about me?”
“What kind of men do you like?”
“Well, at the moment,” she said, “tall, handsome men who apparently don’t deserve the reputation they have are high in my list.”
“Would you have supper with me?”
The question stopped her.
“Uh, well, it’s kind of late, I don’t think anyone is serving food right now. . . .”
“I meant tomorrow,” he said. “Have supper with me tomorrow.”
“I don’t know. . . .” she said hesitantly.
“I need somebody to show me where to get a good steak in town.”
“Um, well,” she said, pushing back a lock of her hair from her forehead, “will I be able to interview you while we eat?”
“We can talk about it.”
“Talk about the interview?”
“We can talk about whether or not there should be an interview,” he said, then added, “and we can continue flirting.”
“Flirting?” she asked, frowning. “Is that what we’re doing?”
“Well,” he answered, “if we’re not, then I’m reading all of the signs wrong.”
“And do you usually do that?”
“Do what?”
“Read the signs right?”
“Almost always.”
“Well . . .” she said, “then I guess we can talk about that too.”
“At supper tomorrow?”
She nodded and said, “At supper tomorrow.”
THREE
At supper the next evening the flirtation continued. In fact, it progressed and became bolder and bolder.
Angela took him to a restaurant called Goldy’s. She said the name came from the fact that the owner opened it with gold he took out of a mine.
“He decided he had enough gold to open this place, and he sold the mine to someone else.”
“Wasn’t that foolhardy?”