Free The Savage Gun by Jory Sherman Page A

forelegs and let its rump descend as it took back to its cool, soft bed in the pines.
    Had Hobart seen the deer, he might have shot it. Not for food, but just for sport, just to satisfy that inner bloodlust, that fascination with death that he had owned since he was a boy with strange, compelling urges that he could not explain, but thought were normal. He killed his first cat when he was four years old, a kitten, actually, squeezing its neck with his tiny hands, shutting off its airway. He had watched it squirm and wriggle in his grasp, try desperately to escape its death. But he had mashed its throat with his thumbs, squeezing, squeezing until it grew feeble and its hind legs stopped clawing at his arms. He squeezed its neck until all movement stopped and felt a surge of heat in his veins, a satisfying drum throb at his temples, an exhilaratingly fast tempo to his heartbeat. A feeling of warmth and satisfaction suffused him. He had never forgotten that first thrill when he had taken life, nor had he since denied that lust to kill when it came over him.
    Ollie never regretted killing anything, not the cats, the dogs, the birds, the wild game, and when he was almost at maturity, a girl who had called him a name for making unwanted advances. He had picked up a rock and smashed her head, thrilling to the massive amount of blood that poured from a scalp wound and trickled down her face. He had smashed her again and again, delighting in the crunching sound of her skull as it caved in, the ooze of her brains into her long yellow hair, and the glassy look in her eyes when she finally breathed her last.
    Ollie added torture to his list of experiments on human beings. He tied hapless victims up, burned them with matches and cigarettes, choked them with water poured down their throats, cut them with knives so that they slowly bled to death, affording him an opportunity to observe their final moments, to exult in his power over life and death. Hobart practiced his cruelty and when he could handle a gun, he took pleasure in ending a man’s life in that manner. Shooting a man to death had its own rewards. As long as he could see the light fade from his eyes, in a single second, an hour, or a day, he drew satisfaction from the killing.
    And Hobart had never been caught.
    They halted their horses in the clearing where they had camped before raiding the miners on the creek. The horses snorted and blew, whinnied as they recognized a former home.
    â€œGive the gold sacks to me, Red,” Ollie said. “I’ll keep them until we get to Pueblo.”
    â€œCan’t we divide it up now?” Fritz asked. “I mean, we got it and we’re all here.”
    â€œNo. We’ll cash in the dust in Pueblo, like we planned,” Ollie said. “Then we’ll split up the money.”
    â€œAw, shit,” Pete Rutter complained.
    â€œYeah, let’s do it now,” Luke Wilkins growled, his eyes lit with a feral glow.
    â€œShut up, all of you,” Ollie said, and his voice carried an authority that froze the men in their saddles. “What I say goes. Anybody who doesn’t like it can light a shuck. But you’ll go away without any dust in your poke. I mean it.”
    Ollie’s hand rested on the butt of his pistol. And every man there knew that none of their company could beat him to the draw.
    â€œAnybody?” Ollie said, meeting each man’s gaze with his own steely stare.
    â€œHell, no, Ollie. That was the agreement,” Pete said. “I just got the itch is all.”
    â€œWell, scratch in Pueblo, Pete.”
    The others laughed.
    Ollie nudged his horse against Red’s, held out his left hand.
    â€œLet’s have it, Red. You, too, Mort. Empty your saddlebags.”
    The two men dug in their saddlebags, hefted the sacks of gold. Red handed his over, a sack at a time. Ollie slid them into one of his saddlebags, then the other, for balance.
    â€œA goodly sum, I’d say.”