"Phyllis Eisenstein - In the Western Tradition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eisenstein Phyllis)

Whitney turned to face him just as Thompson fired both barrels. At
point-blank range, the blast caught the hapless sheriff full in the chest.
The sound of the shot, earsplitting in such close quarters, rocked Alison
and me back in our chairs; my pulse lurched wildly, while her knee
slammed the underside of the console, and she clutched it, growling
curses. Holland, evidently expecting the shot, was unruffled.
Whitney had fallen back into Earp's arms. Above the pounding of my
heart I heard him gasp, "I'm done. Get me home."
Thompson had run back into the saloon. But there were hundreds of
other people in the street now, most of them with drawn guns, and more
were gushing from the hotels, the stores, the saloons with every passing
moment. At last both Thompsons strode out of Brennan's, guns waving
from one side to the other, and walked to the nearest rail where horses
were hitched.
"Those are their friends," said Holland, pointing to a group that was
gathering in front of the Grand Central Hotel. "Peshaur, Pierce, Kane,
GoodтАФ"
"All right," said Alison, one hand still massaging her knee. "You don't
have to name them all. I just work here."
Holland threw her an injured glance, then sighed. "Sorry. Still, you have
to know some of them, for future reference."
'They can't all be important."
"That depends on how many times my grant is renewed."
Alison shook her head. "I won't remember most of them. Not from a
single session."
"Very well," said Holland. "I'll try to keep to the crucial ones."
The sheriff had friends, too, it turned out, inside Beebe's. They bore his
barely breathing body off. Earp and Logan backed into the doorway once
more. Within a couple of minutes, a third face peeped out between them.
"Morco," said Holland. "Deputy marshal."
 The deputy elbowed Logan aside and peered into the street. The
Thompsons were facing the other way, engrossed in their guns.
"Jump out and get them now," Earp said to Morco.
Morco shook his head. "Those fellows across the street might get me."
"You'd get both Thompsons first."
"Not me, friend."
An expression of disgust passed over Earp's face.
Bill Thompson rode out of town, and Ben Thompson covered his retreat
by stalking up and down the street with half a hundred armed men at his
back. One of them fired his gun into the air and crowed, "I'll give a
thousand dollars to anybody who'll knock off another lawman!"
Holland chuckled then. "Watch this next piece of frontier bravery. Here
comes the mayor." Appearing from our side of the Bubble, the mayor
edged along the wall of Beebe's as if magnetized to it. He slid into the
doorway, crowding Logan and Earp. "And there's the marshalтАФthat new
face just behind Logan. He came in the back.тАЭ
"You've really picked the center of the action. Dr. Holland," said Alison.
He hushed her with a sharp gesture, and we spent the next few minutes
listening to the mayor try, unsuccessfully, to talk the marshal and his
deputy into arresting Ben Thompson. At the end of his tether, the mayor