Talon & Chantry 07 - North To The Rails (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page A

respected by Sparrow.
    Two people had apparently tried to kill Chantry, one of them a girl, one a man. A girl had just mounted the stairs to the rooms and offices across the way, and it was unlikely that there would be two young women out in the rain on such a night. And where was the man?
    This was the only hotel in town, and anyone looking for a homeless man would be likely to come to it. Anyone wishing to kill such a man would not be likely to come by the front door, for he would be seen and remembered.
    Mobile made a neat stack of his cards and got to his feet. A glance told him the light in the back hallway was out, and he could smell the faint fumes left by a coal-oil lamp that has recently been blown out. Somebody wanted it dark, and Mobile Callahan was not going to walk along a dark hallway looking for a killer. His mother had raised no foolish children.
    His own room was the first on the right side of the hall, Chantry’s next to the last on the left side. Mobile stretched and yawned noisily. “Looks like a chance to catch up on some sleep,” he said to the clerk. “I think I’ll turn in.”
    He walked back to his room, ignoring the bit of dark hall that lay beyond the light from the lobby, and opened his door. He went in, closing the door, then promptly eased it open a fraction of an inch.
    Standing in the darkness with a drawn gun, Mobile listened and heard a faint creak from down the hall, then another. Gently, he eased his door open a little more. By standing tight against the wall he could look along the door and down the passage. At first he could see nothing, and then he made out a darker shadow, and from it a hand that took hold of the knob on Chantry’s door and tried it, ever so carefully. Turned it, and pushed…nothing happened.
    Mobile heard a muffled curse, then the man put a shoulder to the door and lunged against it, but it did not give. Chantry had put a chair under the knob and braced the door.
    What happened next was completely unexpected, and ready as Mobile was for almost anything, he was not ready for this.
    The man stepped back, drew his gun, and suddenly opened fire.
    He held his gun low and Mobile saw the stab of flame in the darkness even as he heard the thunder of the gun in the narrow hall.
    Caught flat-footed, it was an instant before he could react, an instant in which the unknown gunman got off at least two shots.
    Leaping into the hall, Mobile fired. The gunman wheeled, fired one quick shot at him, and fled. Mobile fired again as the man went through the door.
    Doors burst open, the clerk came running. Sparrow, gun in hand, appeared in a door in his long-johns. Mobile ran to him. “He tried to kill him,” he said to Sparrow. “I’ll light up.”
    He scarcely noticed the warmth of the lamp chimney as he removed it and applied a match to the wick of the hall lamp.
    A dozen men were gathered outside Chantry’s door, while Sparrow hammered on it. “Chantry? Are you all right?” he called.
    The wall near the door was of one-inch pine boards, and it held three bullet holes. A .44 could penetrate several inches of pine, and the bullets had been fired to strike a man lying on the bed.
    For a moment there was no sound inside the room; then a chair scraped on the floor and the door opened. Tom Chantry looked out.
    “Are you all right?” Sparrow asked again. As Chantry stepped back, Sparrow entered, followed by Mobile.
    “I’m all right. I was lying on my back. If I’d been on my side he’d have gotten me.”
    Mobile glanced at the bullet holes, then at the wall opposite. In the light from the bedroom lamp he pointed out a bullet buried in a washstand, another that had gone through the wall on the opposite side of the room.
    When the others had left, Mobile told about the girl he had seen climbing the steps across the street.
    “That’s Webb Taylor’s office,” Sparrow said. “He’s an attorney, but so far as I know he’s out of town.”
    After the two men had gone