Free Mojave Crossing (1964) by Louis - Sackett's L'amour

it."
    Stepping over to his desk, I leaned across it, and I am a tall man. "Mister," I spoke mighty gentle, "you do what you're told."
    He got mad then, and he started to get up.
    Oh, he was a man used to having his own way; it was written all over him. He was a big man and strong, and he was mad. So he started to get up, and when he was off the chair with both his hands on the arms, I caught him by the front of his shirt and vest and jerked him toward me to get him off balance, and then I shoved him back, hard.
    He hit that chair and both of them went over on the floor, and I stepped quick to that door and jerked it open. Two bullets came through, their reports one right behind the other, but I was well over to one side and both missed.
    That man inside the room, he had just shot into the opening door, taking no aim at all, nor seeing anything to shoot at.
    "Next time," I said, "I'm going to shoot back. You going to drop that gun, or are you going to die?"
    He didn't seem to like the choice much. I heard him shift his feet, and I said, "You got you two bullets. You might nail me, but I've got five and I'm not about to miss."
    "I've nothing of yours," he said, and with my gun up I took a long chance and stepped into the door with my gun in my hand.
    He had a notion to shoot, but when he saw that big six in my hand he had another notion that beat that first one all hollow. He taken a long look at that gun and he stepped back and dropped his pistol.
    "I ain't about to pick it up," I said, "and you go ahead, if you're of a mind to."
    Behind me I heard a stirring on the floor, and I moved so I could keep half an eye on that big man on the floor, too.
    "Mister," I said, "my outfit has been taken. My horses and gold are gone. Now, I aim to have them all back. You boys can start talking or start shooting, and I ain't of a mind to care which."
    The big man got up off the floor, but carefully, holding himself with knowledge that I might have a touchy finger on a hair-trigger. With my gun muzzle for a pointer I moved the second man over alongside the first.
    "We know nothing about it," the big man said.
    "I have no idea what you are talking about."
    "I think you're a liar," I said, "and if it proves out I'm wrong, I'll apologize and welcome. But this gent who taken some shots at me, he was there. He was in the desert."
    "You've got me all wrong!"
    "I sure have. And being in the desert, you know I ain't a-fooling when I hold this gun. I want my outfit, and I'm going to have it."
    "You're a fool," the big man said contemptuously. "You have that gun on us, but when you leave the law will be on you, and if you shoot us, you'll hang."
    "Before I hang," I said, "I'll do some talking."
    They didn't like that. They didn't like it even a little. Suddenly I had a feeling that if they hadn't already marked me down for killing, I had just moved myself to the head of the list.
    "Watch him, Dayton," the smaller man said, "he's good with that gun."
    Dayton smiled, and it was not a nice smile.
    "My advice to you, my friend, is to get out of town, and get fast."
    "Why, I might do that ... given my outfit."
    Dayton glanced at the other man. "What about it, Oliphant? Do you know anything about it?"
    Oliphant touched his lips with his tongue.
    "We figured him for dead. Of course we brought his horses in."
    "And thirty pounds of gold," I said.
    Oliphant shifted his feet. "I don't know--was "That's quite a lot, Oliphant," Dayton suggested coolly. "I'd rather like to know about that myself."
    "I don't know anything about the gold,"
    Oliphant said. "I--was Well, I just eared back the hammer on that gun of mine. "You just jog your memory, friend,"
    I said. "You just jog it a mite. If you don't, I'll be asking questions of somebody else."
    Oh, he was sweating, all right! He was right-down scared, and not only of me. Apparently he, and maybe some of those others, had just kept still about that gold. But there was still fight in him.
    "You'll not talk so loud," he