"SHOWDOWN AT YELLOW BUTTE" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

to smile. Women never failed to twice, and when their eyes met his their hearts pounded,
a of which Tom Kedrick was totally unaware. He knew women
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Louis L'AMoUR
seemed to like him, but it never failed to leave him mildly astonished.
The street he watched was crowded with buckboards, freight wagons, a newly arrived
stage and one about to depart. All the hitch-rails were lined with saddled horses
wearing a variety .of brands.
Kedrick, suddenly aware that a young man stood beside him, glanced up. The fellow
was scarcely more than a boy and he had soft brown eyes and .hair that needed cutting.
"Cap'n Kedrick?" he inquired. "John Gunter sent me. I'm Dornie Shaw."
"Oh, yes!" Kedrick got to his feet, smiling, and thrust out his
hand. "Nice to know you, Shaw. Are you working for Gunter?"
Shaw's brown eyes were faintly ironic. "With him," he corrected. "I work for no man."
"I see."
Kedrick did not see at all, but he was prepared to wait and find
out. There was something oddly disturbing about this young man, something that had
Kedrick on edge and queerly alert. "Where's Gunter now?"
"Down the street. He asked me to cheek an' see if you were
here, an' if you were, to ask you to stick around close to the hotel.
He'll be along soon."
"All right. Sit down, why don't you?"
Shaw glanced briefly at the chairs. "I'll stand. I never sit in no
chair with arms on them. Apt to get in the way."
"In the way?" Kedrick glanced up, and then his eyes fell to the
two guns Shaw wore, their butts hanging wide. "Oh, yes! I see."
He nodded at the guns. "The town marshal doesn't object?"
Dornie Shaw looked at him, smiling slowly. "Not to me, he
don't. Wouldn't do him no good if he did."
"Anyway," he added after a minute, "not in Mustang. Too
many hard cases. I never seen a marshal could make it stick in
this town."
Kedrick smiled. "Hickok? Earp? Masterson?"
"Maybe," Dornie Shaw was openly skeptical, "but I doubt it. Allison's here. So's
Ketehum. Billy the Kid's been around, and some of that crowd. A marshal in this town
would have to be mighty fast, an' prove it ever' day.'"
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SHOWDOWN AT YELLOW BUTTE
3
you're right." He studied Shaw surreptitiously. What it about him that was so disturbing?
Not the two guns, for he seen many men who wore guns, had been reared among
in fact. No, it was something else, some quality he could define, but it was a sort
of lurking menace, an odd feeling
such a calm-eyed young man.
got some good men," Shaw volunteered, after a min;. "Picked up a couple today. Laredo
Shad's goin' to be one of
best, I'm thinkin'. He's a tough hand, an' gun wise as all get
more come in today. Fessenden, Poinsett an' Goff."
from the manner in which he spoke, the names much to Shaw, but they meant exactly