Free Winchester 1887 by William W. Johnstone Page B

Ask anyone in Fort Worth, and ye’ll hear it true. Flannery Finn doesn’t beat up children.”
    â€œBe glad you didn’t.” The coin dropped into the Irishman’s ham-sized palm. Millard picked up his grip, and backed out of the café, never lowering the Winchester’s barrel until he was out the door.

    An hour later, Millard Mann sat on a bench in the shade at the depot, grip at his side, ’73 Winchester across his lap.
    He had found Clanton at the doctor’s office above the bank next to the mercantile on Weatherford Street. He had given Millard the news . . . as best as he could with his jaw broken and teeth busted, plus four broken ribs and a fractured skull.
    After Clanton finished his confession, Millard decided the hobo had been lucky. He would probably have killed the bum.
    According to Clanton, James had boarded the boxcar at the water tank by Comanche Springs. They had gone maybe a mile or two before the boy leaped off. Clanton didn’t say why, but Millard knew. The sorry cuss had probably tried to rob James of everything he had, which wouldn’t have amounted to much—except for the Winchester ’86 rifle.
    A mile or two from the stop, and just a few miles from home. And there sat Millard, some three hundred miles south of McAdam. He prayed that the frightening experience with Clanton would have ended James’s dreams of . . . of . . . of whatever he planned on doing and sent the boy back home.
    Yet even as he closed his eyes and clasped his hands, even as he prayed his hardest to God, he knew James would not have gone home. He would have taken off.
    But where?

C HAPTER E IGHT
    Along the north fork of the Red River, Texas
    â€œReckon that twister blowed his carcass here?”
    Spit. “Else he sprouted from all that thar rain.” Spit.
    â€œIs he dead?”
    â€œShore oughta be.”
    Instantly, James Mann came awake, realizing that those voices were not from a dream and that he wasn’t dead. He fought to grip the Winchester, trying to find the lever, but slammed his head into something hard, which knocked him back down onto the cold, soft, soaking ground.
    He remembered he had found shelter underneath a wagon out on the Llano Estacado.
    As stars and blazes of orange and white and red circled around him, laughter rang louder than the sudden pounding in his head.
    Har! Har! Har!
    Har! Har! Har!
    Forcing his vision to clear, James made himself lift his head and shoulders, and the rifle. Two figures squatted just ahead of him on the wet ground, between the two left wheels of the wagon. When he had stumbled onto the wagon during the fierce storm, he had thought the vehicle was some old abandoned relic from those wild and woolly days. The two figures told him otherwise.
    Both wore buckskins and slouch hats still soaking wet from the rain. One had a full beard—thick, greasy, and silver—and no teeth. The other, much, much younger, had a mouth full of pearly whites and no beard, not even stubble. Just mud. His unkempt hair was the color of corn silk, his eyes a deep blue. The old man had only one eye.
    James wished he would put a patch over that hole in his face.
    â€œCareful with that cannon, bub,” the old man said, pointing a finger—or what was left of a finger, the pointer missing the first two joints—at the Winchester. “Barrel’s clogged with mud. Pull that thar trigger, an’ I expect she’ll blows up in yer face.”
    The younger one cleared his throat. “Iffen we wanted you dead, the devil ’d be introducin’ hisself to you by now.”
    Said the old man, “Name’s Lamar. Wildcat Lamar. This here’s me boy, Robin.” Slowly the old man rose, knees popping like gunfire, reaching for the front wheel to help him find his feet. His boots were caked with reddish mud. “Got coffee boilin’. Jerked venison and cold biscuits. Ain’t much of a feast to celebrate