Lassiter Tough
Authors: Loren Zane Grey
LASSITER SAW SANLEE'S MAN CROSS THE STREET, AND WENT TO HIM . . .
Lassiter said, “I want my gun.”
“Don't know what the hell you're talking about,” he snarled. He started to step away, but Lassiter blocked him.
“You took my gun. I want it.”
Drinkers had come out of the saloon to stare at them.
“You're crazy as hell,” the man blustered. “I never took no gun.”
Lassiter's eyes finally lowered to the man's holster. He saw a familiar gun butt with black grips protruding from the leather.
“It's a good gun,” Lassiter went on. “You must think it is too. You're wearing it.”
The man looked at him for a moment, then his thick lips stretched tight in a grin. “Try an' take it . . .”
That was as far as he got. The .45 Lassiter borrowed appeared in his hand, the hammer eared back. The man came to his toes, a look of surprise on the brutal face.
“Don't bother to hand it over,” Lassiter said softly. “I'll just take it. . . .”
Other
Leisure
books by Loren Zane Grey:
LASSITER GOLD
A GRAVE FOR LASSITER
AMBUSH FOR LASSITER
LASSITER
TOUGH
LOREN ZANE GREY
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DORCHESTER PUBLISHING
Published by special arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency.
Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
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New York, NY 10016
Copyright © 1986 by Loren Grey
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Trade ISBN: 978-1-4285-1859-9
E-book ISBN: 978-1-4285-0298-7
First Dorchester Publishing, Co., Inc. edition: August 2007
The “DP” logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
Printed in the United States of America.
Visit us online at
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.
TOUGH
1
Twice in one week Lassiter had been recognized in unlikely places. Once in New Mexico, with tragic results. And now here, deep in the Texas brush country, the brasada, a bearded stranger was calling out his name. The man had just entered O'Leary's Saloon, where Lassiter stood alone at the far end of the long and nearly deserted bar. Lassiter had been sipping whiskey while reflecting on the end of his search for a killer, which he felt was near. He was bone-weary, thinned down from the long, fast ride from New Mexico.
Upon entering the saloon, the big stranger had started toward a small group of men at the other end of the bar. Then he saw Lassiter standing alone.
“You're Lassiter,” the man said in a low voice. The barkeep was reading a newspaper near the five other drinkers. A spring rain had been falling and the windows of the saloon that overlooked the business district of Santos were streaked.
“Yeah, I'm Lassiter.” His nerves were tight because,
so far as he was concerned, this was enemy territory.
“I seen you in action once. The day you stood up to Doc Kelmmer.”
“
That
day.”
“You got to admit Kelmmer was damn good. But you outdrew him.”
“He called me. I had no choice.”
“But you got him. That's the main thing. I never seen anything so fast in my life.”
“Another minute and you'll turn my head with flattery,” Lassiter said with a hard smile. He wondered where this was leading, but decided to keep his mouth shut and wait. There were too many loose ends here in the brasada for a mistake to be made.
“The minute I seen you standin' there, I says to myself, now there's the man for me.”
Lassiter watched the man fetch paper and pencil from a pocket of his brush jacket and write on it. The man pushed the small piece of paper across the bar under Lassiter's nose. “Here's three names,” he said.
“What about 'em?” Lassiter looked into the man's eyes, a peculiar shade of gray. They were fringed with reddish lashes. His eyebrows were the same color, coarse and tangled. What could be seen of his mouth through his reddish beard was thinned down, as if it had tasted mostly bitterness.
“I want 'em dead,” the stranger said softly, pointing at the three names.
“I'm not a murderer.” Unlighted brass lamps dangled from rough-cut ceiling beams on rusted chains. Yesterday the town had been full, the rotund barkeep had confided when Lassiter ordered his whiskey. But roundup was getting closer by the hour and men had left to prepare for itâa fact Lassiter well knew. He
had been offered a job as ramrod here in the brasada, a job that had formerly been held by his late friend, his murdered friend.
“I want you to meet these three hombres like you done Kelmmer,” the stranger said quietly, indicating the names he had written, Kilhaven, Rooney and Tate. “But meet 'em one at a time, of course.” The man gave a hard laugh. “Don't reckon even Lassiter is good enough to face down three men at one time. Or maybe you are.”
Lassiter tossed down the last of his drink and turned to go. But the man laid a strong hand on his arm. It caused Lassiter's eyes to suddenly turn cold as blue ice in a face that was long, darkened from years of sun. He had a wide mouth below a strong nose. He was one inch under six feet, with strong shoulders and long, powerful legs. Gently, he reached out and removed the stranger's hand from his arm.
“I'm willin' to pay for what I want done,” the man went on in a low voice. “Three thousand. More'n you can make most weeks.”
“No,” Lassiter said.
The stranger's gray eyes showed displeasure. “I want you to meet 'em in a fair fight,” he persisted, “before witnesses. A man like you can figure out some excuse to get 'em to face up to you.”
“I'm not your man.”
The stranger's large teeth showed through his beard. “I know, you're waitin' for me to up the ante. An' I guess maybe you're right. A job like I want done don't come cheap. I'll pay four thousand. Not a nickel more. What do you say to that, Lassiter?”
“I'm not interested.” And if I did agree, Lassiter thought, you'd figure some way to get your money back.
“Damn it, a man like you? Hell, I heard you'll do anything for money.”
“You heard wrong.”
Again Lassiter started away. The stranger put out a restraining hand. But this time there was pressure in the fingers that gripped Lassiter's upper arm.
“Take your hand off,” Lassiter warned coldly. Or they'll be sweeping your teeth off the floor, he thought, but he didn't say it. His eyes spoke for him.
The man straightened up, releasing Lassiter's arm. He was taller, heavier through the shoulders. At the far end of the big room a giant of a man stepped away from the other four drinkers. He stood with his thumbs hooked in a shell belt, a hat on the back of his round skull.
“Everything all right up there, Brad?” he called.
“Yeah,” Brad said with a harsh laugh. “For now.” Then he leaned close to Lassiter. “I ask you once more. Take my deal.”
“Sorry.” Lassiter wasn't sorry. It was just a handy word. But the man wasn't through. He tried twice more, then gave up.
“If you figure to tell anybody about the proposition I made you, I'll deny everything,” the man said through his teeth. “Who you reckon they'll believe around here? You or me?”
At which point the man gave his full name, as if to impress Lassiter. It did, but not in the way the man thought.
Lassiter's shoulders stiffened under a black wool shirt and for just a moment anger altered his features. He smoothed them out. The man gave him a hard stare.
“You acted like you got somethin' against me all of a sudden!”
I heard your name. That was enough
.
“I hadn't made up my mind about Rep Chandler's job as his ramrod,” Lassiter said, hardly able to contain his rage. “Now I think I'll take it.”
He threw a coin on the bar that rattled in the stillness. He took his time walking out of the saloon.
Lassiter felt the eyes of the seven men, including the barkeep, drilling his back. He got his horse from the hitching post, mounted, and turned east in the direction of Rep Chandler's Box C Ranch. It was a street lined with adobe and frame buildings, all showing age, some from a time when Texas had been ruled by Mexico.
His heart pounded with cold excitement as he repeated the name of the stranger through his mind again and again. Although he had been debating whether or not to take the job Chandler offered, now his mind was made up. He looked forward to settling the score for his dead friend, a very good friend.
It had stopped raining and the sun was out. He thought back on the proposition that had been put to him in O'Leary's Saloon. The arrogant bastard wanted to eliminate three men whose names were written in pencil on a scrap of paper, wanting someone to blame, once the job was done. Who else but Lassiter? No thanks.
Dogs sought spring noonday shade under wagons, the pups springing to chase occasional bits of paper blowing along the rutted street. In a blacksmith shop smelling of charcoal and hot metal, a smithy sang in a rich baritone as he hammered a muleshoe into shape. He paused to wipe his face as Lassiter rode past. The perspiring man stared at the lean figure astride a black horse, noting aquiline features
somewhat spoiled by a beaklike nose. The man rode with the grace of a Comanche warrior. When he saw the gun in the low-cut holster, a little shiver ran down his back.
As Lassiter rode out, two men were summoned from the group of five drinking at the end of the bar in O'Leary's. One of them was the big man, Shorty Doane, the other Doug Krinkle, with a narrow, heavily freckled face.
“Doug, you an' Shorty teach that bastard a good lesson,” said the bearded man. “Says he aims to work for Chandler. I say no.”
“They'll have to ship that hombre outta Texas on a stretcher, Brad,” Doane said with a grin and clenched oversized fists.
“Or in a pine box,” Krinkle laughed and took a hitch at his gun belt.
When the two men left the saloon, Lassiter was already far down the road that threaded its way through walls of brush high as a rider.
Exactly one week prior to his arrival in Texas, Lassiter was ending a long ride, all the way down from the Mogollons. That day he had been ready for a bottle, a meal and whatever delights the border town of Ardon, New Mexico, might offer. But from the looks of it, huddled at the foot of bleak hills in the last light of what had been a trying day, he didn't have much hope.
He was just instructing a stable hand in the care of his weary black horse when a man came running across a weed-grown lot, shouting his name.