Hardcase

by Short, Luke;

  A woman screamed, and Beal dropped on his face. Warburton cringed away, and the prosecutor dived under a table.

  Maitland said savagely, “Go over and get him!”

  Wallace started for the judge’s bench.

  And then Ernie’s voice bawled out, “Catch, Dave!”

  His gun went lobbing over the heads of the standing crowd the whole length of the room. It hit the front wall and caromed down behind the bench.

  It didn’t strike the board floor, and Wallace, as well as every man in that room, knew that Dave had caught it.

  Wallace didn’t hesitate. He turned and ran for the window. Maitland jumped; Ernie ducked out the back door. Wallace achieved the sill, and then Dave’s voice rapped out, “Turn around and take it, Wallace!”

  Wallace wheeled, standing in the window, to send one snap shot at Dave before he jumped.

  And then Dave’s gun opened with one sustained roar. Wallace screamed and tried to grab for the window frame. But the bullets from Dave’s gun, all five of them, had broken his arm and smashed into his body. He toppled slowly over, blood already gushing from his mouth, and then he fell. They heard the heavy, lifeless thud of his body on the roof, heard it slide, then heard it drop dully to the ground, like a sack of dropped oats.

  Ernie piled out onto the stair landing just as Maitland left the window for the roof. Ernie vaulted the railing and hit the roof thirty feet from Maitland just one second later. Maitland rolled, fell, landed on his feet in the passageway between the two buildings, then ran for the alley.

  Ernie raced along the roof. When Maitland broke out into the alley he turned left, coming in behind the building Ernie was on. Ernie, hauling up at the edge of the roof, saw Maitland below. Scarcely pausing in his stride, he jumped. Five shots racketed out from the courtroom in quick succession.

  Maitland took four full steps, and then Ernie landed astride his shoulders with the impact of a ton of rock.

  Maitland didn’t even cry out. He simply caved in under Ernie’s weight. And Ernie just sat on him and bawled, “Come and get him!”

  They found Ernie that way, sitting on Maitland’s head, yelling at the top of his lungs.

  Maitland was carried to the jail, and Beal, with Dave and McFee on either side of him, Judge Warburton behind him, and Carol and Lily lost in the howling mob somewhere behind, followed. Ernie had Maitland slung over his shoulder, and he marched through the office into the cell block and deposited Maitland on a cot.

  This time Beal and Ernie really had a fight to keep the townspeople out. But this time Beal was serious, and it didn’t take long.

  When the howling mob was on the other side of the steel door Beal came back to the cell where Ernie was working over Maitland, throwing the water from the drinking pail in Maitland’s face in measured slops.

  McFee, Dave, and Beal stood over him, and Ernie slapped Maitland’s face.

  Maitland’s eyes opened, and he looked gravely at the four of them. Then his eyes rested on McFee a long moment and then slid away.

  “I’m sorry, Bruce,” he murmured. “I almost had you.”

  “But why?” McFee cried. “Why did you do it?”

  Maitland shut his eyes and said softly, “Money, money, more money, power, everything. Why does a man want what he wants?” He opened his eyes now, and they settled on Dave. “I—I misjudged you too. I should have killed you. I almost did, when you were talking with Ernie. I should have known.”

  Beal said tonelessly, “Want a doctor?”

  Maitland made a wry face and whispered, “It’s too late—too late for everything.”

  He suddenly sighed, and his head rolled over, and he looked as if he were asleep, at peace with all the world. He was dead.

  Ernie shuddered and turned and went out. Beal, Dave, and McFee followed. Once in the corridor the four of them looked at each other.

  “Who starts first?” Beal asked, and his cherubic face broke into a smile. He said to Dave, “If you’d look at me just once without sneerin’ I’d ask to shake your hand.”

  Dave grinned then, and Beal put out his hand. “Hell, I been wrong. Been wrong most of my life, I reckon. But I’ll promise you one thing, Coyle. I’ll git that reward lifted from you if I have to hold the Governor up to do it.” They shook hands on that.

  McFee said quietly, “This last reward is lifted automatically. As for the seven thousand, I put three of it on him myself.” He smiled at Dave. “That’s off now. And if I know my politics, the rest will come off.”

  “Politics?” Ernie echoed.

  McFee nodded and smiled gently. “Governor Johns and Maitland hated each other like poison. I know that, because I’m a friend of both. And now that Maitland is gone—well, Johns steps in to take over the territory. I think Johns will be properly thankful for the man who turned up Maitland’s crooked work.”

  Ernie looked at Dave and grinned. “How does it sound?”

  Before Dave could answer there was a hammering on the door, a persistent hammering. Ernie broke away and went to the corridor door and opened it.

  Carol and Lily Sholto, the crowd in the corridor shoving them, came in. Their dresses were ruffled, and Carol’s cheeks were flushed with excitement.

  “Dad!” she cried. She ran into McFee’s arms and hugged him, and he hugged her, close to tears.

  Carol broke away from him and looked at Dave.

  McFee said, “Don’t thank him yet, girl. I haven’t had my say.”

  He looked over at Dave and smiled wryly. “Well, youngster, you’ve called me a jug head, a knot head, Grandpa, thickheaded, bullheaded, stubborn, hardhearted, a miser, a bully, and a fraud. I’d like to shake your hand.” He extended his hand.

  Dave looked at it and then at him, and he said suspiciously, “You would? Why?”

  “Because I was all of that and considerably more too. I’m goin’ to spend the rest of my life makin’ up for what I spent most of it doin’. I’m goin’ to hunt up Lacey Thornton first and offer to throw in with him again. Then I’m goin’ to hunt me a new foreman.” He looked steadily at Dave. “You lookin’ for work?”

  Beal said quickly, “Just a warnin’, Dave. You can’t leave the county until this reward business is settled.”

  “But—”

  “I know,” Lily said, a faint teasing malice in her eyes. “You can’t just drift now, can you, Dave?”

  Dave glared at her.

  “Better take it,” Ernie said. “We mean business when we say that, don’t we, Harve?”

  Beal looked at him and laughed. “Did you say we?”

  Ernie’s face fell. He remembered that tonight he was through, fired. “Well, I can say it up till midnight,” he said truculently.

  Beal laughed. “Ernie, you can say it till next year and the year after, so far’s I’m concerned.”

  Ernie, grinning, looked at Lily and nodded his head to Dave and Carol, and Lily said, “I feel very faint,” with astonishing abruptness.

  “Why, lady,” Ernie said, “it’s hot in here. Let’s get out of this jail before you faint.”

  He took Lily’s arm and McFee’s arm and started out with them, saying to McFee, “You look faint too, Mac. How’d a drink go?”

  And that was the way Lily and Ernie, more observant and considerably more understanding than Beal and McFee, at last left Carol and Dave some privacy.

  Beal, at the door, turned and had his mouth open to call Dave, when Ernie yanked him through the door and slammed it. “This is my night to howl,” Ernie said pointedly. “I’m doin’ it. Man, I don’t see why I work for such a dumb man.” And he grinned—and Beal did too.

  In the cell block Carol said, “Well, we’d better go too.”

  Dave said nothing, only looked at her.

  Then he said abruptly, “You reckon all women are alike, Carol?”

  Carol looked at him strangely. “What a queer question. I don’t know. Why?”

  “Lily claims they are,” Dave said. It was hard for him to talk, but he was slog
ging away at it.

  “Does she?” Carol said blankly.

  “You take her,” Dave said. “She married a murderer. She knew it. You think she’s crazy?”

  “Why—not if she loved him, no.”

  Dave gulped, and his hands were fisted until the knuckles were white. “You think Jim Sholto had a right to ask her to marry him?”

  “What are you talking about?” Carol said impatiently.

  “Oh hell,” Dave said miserably. “I dunno myself.”

  “But what were you trying to say, Dave?”

  Dave took a deep breath. He said swifty, agonizingly, “Lily married a murderer. Did you—could you—do you think a woman—well, does a girl—”

  “You mean,” Carol said quietly, “If Lily would marry a murderer, do I think I could marry an outlaw?”

  “How’d you know?” Dave blurted out.

  “Oh, Dave!” Carol said impatiently. “You’ve shied all around it for ten minutes. Can’t you speak plain?”

  “Sure. Will you marry me?”

  “Of course. Why didn’t—?”

  Dave didn’t wait for the rest. He had done a lot of unorthodox things in a jail, but this was the first time in one he had ever asked a woman to marry him. And been accepted.

  About the Author

  Luke Short is the pen name of Frederick Dilley Glidden (1908–1975), the bestselling, award-winning author of over fifty classic western novels and hundreds of short stories. Renowned for their action-packed story lines, multidimensional characters, and vibrant dialogue, Glidden’s novels sold over thirty million copies. Ten of his novels, including Blood on the Moon, Coroner Creek, and Ramrod, were adapted for the screen. Glidden was the winner of a special Western Heritage Trustees Award and the Levi Strauss Golden Saddleman Award from the Western Writers of America.

  Born in Kewanee, Illinois, Glidden graduated in 1930 from the University of Missouri where he studied journalism. After working for several newspapers, he became a trapper in Canada and, later, an archaeologist’s assistant in New Mexico. His first story, “Six-Gun Lawyer,” was published in Cowboy Stories magazine in 1935 under the name F. D. Glidden. At the suggestion of his publisher, he used the pseudonym Luke Short, not realizing it was the name of a real gunman and gambler who was a friend of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. In addition to his prolific writing career, Glidden worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. He moved to Aspen, Colorado, in 1946, and became an active member of the Aspen Town Council, where he initiated the zoning laws that helped preserve the town.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1941, 1942 by Frederick D. Glidden

  Copyright © 1970 by Frederick D. Glidden

  Cover design by Andy Ross

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-3982-6

  This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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