Free Play a Lone Hand by Luke; Short Page A

Giff thought of another thing, too. The hotel room door had been open when they argued. And another door had closed softly as they went into the corridor, Giff remembered now.
    Without a word, he turned and tramped out. Looking upstreet, he saw the puncher hurrying up the boardwalk. Increasing his pace, Giff kept the puncher in sight in the late afternoon crowd.
    The puncher was in a hurry. Two doors below the Plains Bar, he cut across the road, heading for the hotel. Now Giff moved to a dog trot, so that as he reached the lobby he saw the puncher starting to take to the stairs. At the landing, Giff slowed, and saw the man turn right at the head of the stairs, toward the front of the hotel. Then he lunged up the steps three at a time and was just in time to see the door of the room adjoining Welling’s close.
    He stood motionless a moment, coming to his decision, then he followed. At the door he paused long enough to lift Cass’s gun out, then he softly palmed the knob. The door wasn’t locked, and he threw it open, stepping inside.
    Traff lay on one the beds, a towel pressed to the side of his swollen face. Sebree sat at the desk chair, listening to the puncher’s report. A couple of riders, chairs tilted against the wall, swiveled their heads at his entrance.
    In unison, both punchers brought their chairs down to all four legs, and Giff lifted his gun in their direction, “Sit still!”
    His glance shuttled to Sebree, and he asked thinly, “What do you think of it?”
    Sebree said pleasantly. “I haven’t heard it all yet.”
    â€œI’ll finish it for him,” Giff said. “Welling wants to fire me. I’m still working for him. I’ll work for him as long as he stays.”
    â€œThat’s interesting, but not very,” Sebree murmured.
    â€œOne more thing.”
    Sebree waited.
    â€œThey shouldn’t have kicked me,” Giff said slowly. “That was a mistake. I’ll make it a mistake.”
    Sebree didn’t comment, and Giff backed out, closing the door behind him.
    As soon as the door was closed, both punchers lunged out of their chairs, headed for it.
    â€œNo!” Sebree said sharply. The two halted, and looked sullenly at him. “Go downstairs and wait, all of you.”
    The three went out, and Sebree made a slow circle of the room, head lowered on his chest. When he hauled up beside the bed, he looked down at Traff and said, “Can you talk, Gus?”
    â€œIt hurts like hell to,” Traff said in a muffled, dull voice.
    Sebree said, almost musingly, “A drunk and a hardcase—and they hate each other. If the drunk shoots the hardcase, that can’t be helped, can it, Gus?”
    Traff’s eyes rolled toward him, and he looked at Sebree for several seconds. “Welling isn’t the man to do it.”
    Sebree smiled, and shook his head once. “No, he isn’t. But load him with whiskey some night, and in the morning he’ll believe he did.”

3
    Taltal was a stage stop in the high pines before the last long haul to the pass for Taos. Night was kind to it, for it was a small raffish collection of adobe buildings, and pole corrals and log barns beside the creek. The big building was a hotel of sorts; it served meals that a man could forget in the bar that opened off the dining room, but in the half-dozen shoddy rooms above, sleep was made impossible by the constant rush of the creek whose sound was magnified and thrown back by the steep walls of the narrow canyon in which the hotel was located.
    Tonight, as Sebree approached it, he reined in before he crossed the creek, not wanting his horse to announce his presence yet on the noisy planks of the bridge. He saw no horses at the saloon’s tie rail, and the up-stage had already passed. But he knew that the nameless fiddle-footed drifters, the shifty riders who traveled the back trails, and the small-time rustlers often stopped at the place for a