Free Trigger Fast by J. T. Edson Page A

to your neglecting your work?’
    ‘He’ll turn the air blue and blister my hide, but he’ll be behind me all the way and if this thing blows too big he’ll get help here, happen we send for it. Now get in the buggy — and remember, gal, you’ve just been made to sell your home. Act like it, don’t look so all-fired pleased with yourself.’
    When Freda entered Roylan’s store she looked dejected almost on the verge of tears. Matt Roylan, sleeves rolled up to expose his muscular arms, leaned his big bulky, powerful frame on the counter and looked across the room towards the door. The lean, gun-hung hard-case with the deputy’s badge also looked. He leaned by the cracker barrel into which he dipped his hand at regular intervals. His eyes studied the girl, then went to Dusty who followed on her heels.
    ‘Supply her,’ Dusty ordered as they reached the counter.
    ‘Says which?’ asked the gunman.
    ‘You want to see the paper?’
    Dusty made his reply with a cold smile flickering on his lips. The lanky gunman studied Dusty, reading the signs in the matched guns, in those well-made holsters and the workmanship of the gunbelt. He knew quality when he saw it — and he saw it in the small Texan. Without knowing who Dusty was, the gunman knew what he was. Dusty belonged to the real fast guns, one off the magic handed group who could draw and shoot in less than half a second.
    For his part Dusty tried to give the impression of being a typical hired hard-case, a man who used a brace of real fast guns to off-set his lack of inches. From the looks on the gunman and Roylan’s faces Dusty had made his point, they took him at face value.
    ‘You one of the boys from the spread?’ asked the gunman, meaning to be sociable. ‘Mallick hire you?’
    ‘Go ask him,’ Dusty answered in an uncompromising tone.
    Watching from the corner of her eye Freda felt amazed at the change in Dusty. He seemed, to be able to turn himself from an insignificant cowhand to any part he wanted to play. Right now, happen she didn’t know him, she would have taken him for a brash, cocky and tough hired gunhand who knew he had the other man over a barrel in more ways than one. She saw that neither Roylan nor the deputy doubted that Dusty brought her from Mallick’s office after forcing her father to sell out.
    ‘You and your father are leaving after all, Freda,’ Roylan said, a touch of sadness in his voice as he looked at the note Dusty tossed in a contemptuous manner before him. His voice held such genuine sadness that Freda felt guilty at having to deceive him, yet she knew she did not dare take a chance on letting hint of her true position slip out.
    ‘She’s leaving, hombre,’ answered Dusty, saving Freda from needing to lie. ‘So shake the bull-droppings from your socks and make with some service.’
    In his own right Matt Roylan could be a tough, hard man. However he knew the futility of tangling with Double K in what now amounted to their town. He might jump the two hired hard-cases, lick them, although the small one looked fast enough to throw lead into him before he could bat an eye. Even if he did manage to lick the two men and throw them out, the Double K held his bank-note and would foreclose on him.
    So Roylan stared to collect the order Freda gave him. Yet somehow, as he worked, Roylan got the feeling that Freda was not quite so grief-stricken as she tried to appear. The girl could not act well enough to continue her pose, at least not well enough to fool an old friend like Roylan. The storekeeper noticed this and felt puzzled by it. He threw a glance at Dusty who sat by the counter and dipped a hand into the candy jar to take one out. Roylan couldn’t think how, but somehow Freda had gathered the note from Mallick, the girl was all right and things not so black as they looked. That would be impossible — unless the small Texan was not what he seemed. Yet he had the mannerisms of a tough hard-case hired gun.
    One-thing Roylan