Free Journey into Violence by William W. Johnstone Page A

Now I may need your rifle right here in Dodge.”
    Trace grinned. “Suits me fine, Ma.”
    Despite the crowded dining room, Frank had spotted a tall, slender man he’d pegged as a prime example of arrogant gun bullies that had plagued the frontier the last two decades. Since the shootist was eating breakfast and minding his own business, Frank dismissed him and paid him no further attention.
    When the man rose to his feet just as Kate left her chair, her silk dress rustling, Frank stepped beside her, putting himself between them. He was conscious of Trace at his side, relaxed and unaware, chewing on a half-eaten biscuit.
    Sporting a wide-brimmed hat of a tan color, the tall man wore a beaded and fringed buckskin jacket that covered his hips, and under that a white shirt set off by the red puff tie at his throat. His checked pants were shoved into expensive leather boots adorned with yellow butterflies. Two ivory-handled Colts rode butt forward in a tooled gun rig that showed evidence of wear. A fastidiously trimmed imperial and long black hair cascading over his shoulders gave the man a rakish look. In all, he cut a handsome, dashing figure and he knew it.
    As Kate attempted to step past him, the man stretched out a blocking arm and grabbed her by the upper arm. “Not so fast, little gal. I got five dollars burning a hole in my pocket. Catch my drift?”
    Before Kate could speak, Frank said, “The lady is with me.”
    The gunman turned his head slowly . . . slowly . . . taking his time. He stared at Frank like a man looking at cow dung on his boots as he’s about to step into church. “Go away, cowboy.”
    Frank didn’t move. “I said, the lady is with me.”
    â€œAnd she’s my mother,” Trace said, his eyes angry.
    As heads turned in their direction, the man grinned. “And what do you say, little lady?”
    â€œI say get your dirty hand off me,” Kate said.
    â€œFive dollars,” the gunman said. “Hell, that’s more money than you make in a week.”
    As Frank moved closer to Kate, the man made a bad mistake—a serious mistake a less arrogant man would not have made. He said, “I told you to git, cowboy,” and he pushed Frank hard in the chest.
    Frank Cobb had been around gunmen most of his life and he wasn’t in the least bashful. His hand dropped to his revolver, and the Colt came up very fast and slammed into the man’s head just above his left ear. As the buffalo went, Frank’s was one of the best. The thud of blue steel against bone was heard all over the dining room. The gunman groaned and dropped like a felled oak, his eyes rolling in their sockets.
    Frank bent, stripped off the man’s gun belt, and hung it over his shoulder.
    â€œHere, that won’t do.” The hotel manager, a balding, harried-looking man named Featherstone stepped beside Frank and glanced at the unconscious man stretched out on the rug. “What happened here?”
    â€œThe . . . um . . . gentleman insulted Mrs. Kerrigan,” Frank said. “He offered her money to prostitute herself. As a Texas gentleman myself, I could not let such an insult stand.”
    Featherstone knew Kate was a rancher, a guest of the hotel, and paying plenty for that privilege, but he hesitated a moment.
    It wasn’t until a respectable-looking man yelled, “The cowboy is right. He was defending the lady’s honor,” that Featherstone made up his mind.
    â€œThat is an outrage, madam,” he said to Kate. “Such a thing has never happened in this hotel before and I assure you that it won’t happen again.”
    Kate decided to let the squirming manager off the hook. “These things happen in the best-run places. Mr. Featherstone, I am convinced that your management skills are perfectly adequate and I am prepared to testify to that fact, even to the Texas Cattlemen’s Association.”
    Featherstone, justifiably