Читать книгу Settling The Score - George McLane Wood - Страница 54

Chapter Seventeen

The night was still and quiet. Jeff heard the fire as it began to crackle, and then someone inside the house yelled “Fire,” and there was more yelling. Jeff stood up. He shot the first man who ran out the front door; the man crumpled and lay still. It wasn’t Murphy. Good, Jeff wanted Murphy alive for now. Next came Skinny; he came out with two guns blazing. The first bullet hit the barn wall near Jeff’s head; another bullet smacked the wall right over Ed’s head. Ed hit the dirt, facedown, and stayed there.

Skinny was light blinded when he hit the front door. He’d got off his two shots when Jeff shot him in the chest. The .44-40 bullet hit Skinny just under the center of his rib cage; it clipped off the lower part of his heart and shattered Skinny’s spine when it left him. Winnie put a going out hole in Skinny the size of a silver quarter. Skinny was dead before he hit the ground and Jeff was glad. Although he didn’t care whether Skinny suffered or not, Jeff didn’t much like the idea of a tied down six-gun shootist trading shots with him across the short distance of a barnyard. Now there was silence. The only sounds were the crackling of flames from the burning house.