The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six by Louis L’Amour

room and Sixte looked quickly through the hole in the cheap dividing wall. The room beyond was empty. He smashed again with the stool, then went through the hole, and opened the door. Phyllis came out, looking at him quickly—he had not tried to trap her.
    The door to the alley was locked tight. The door to the club was locked.
    The alley door was metal and tightly fitted, solid as the wall itself. The door to the club was not so tight, and breaking it down might attract help from the club itself. From the patrons…he heard footsteps coming along the hall.
    “Behind the door,” he told her, “get them under the gun when they come in.”
    Her eyes were small and tight. There was an inner streak of viciousness in this girl. He was accepted as her ally at least momentarily. She looked at him and said, “Don’t worry about Kurt. He’s yellow.”
    A key sounded in the lock and Sixte dropped his right hand to the back of a chair. It was a heavy oak chair and he tilted it, ever so slightly.
    Montesori stepped inside, behind him were Kurt and two other men. Startled, Montesori looked at him, then beyond him at the smashed panels of the wall. His face went white around the mouth.
    “You busted my wall!”
    Kurt stepped in, looking at Sixte like he had never seen him before. Rubio followed. “Where’s she? Where’s the girl?”
    “Get over by the wall, Vince. You, too, Kurt. All of you.” Phyllis stepped out with the gun.
    Only the man in the gray suit remained in the door. Sixte gambled. He had the chair balanced and he shoved down hard on the corner of the back. The chair legs slid, shooting out from under his hand on the slick floor. The man tried to jump, but the heavy chair smashed him across the knees and he fell over it, into the room.
    Tom Sixte went over him in a long dive and hit the floor sliding. Somebody yelled behind him and there was a shot, then another. Fists started pounding on the alley door, and Sixte scrambled to his feet only to be tackled from behind. Turning, with a chance to fight back for the first time, Sixte hooked a short, wicked left that caught Rubio as he scrambled to get up.
    The blow smashed his nose and showered him with blood. He staggered, his eyes wide, his mouth flapping like a frightened chicken, and then Sixte was on him. Rubio tried to fight back, but Sixte was swinging with both hands. Rubio scuttled backwards into the chair and the gray-suited man who sat very still on the floor, clutching his shin, his face utterly calm.
    Vince Montesori jumped through the door, scrambling over the chair, and tried to break past Sixte, but Tom Sixte was in the middle of the hall and he caught the running man coming in with a right that jolted him clear to the spine when it landed. Vince went back and down, and Sixte turned to run but suddenly the room was filled with officers in uniform.
    Tom Sixte crouched over, his breath coming in gasps. Looking through the open hall door he could see Kurt lying on the floor inside. His throat had been torn by a bullet and there was a bigger hole behind his ear where it had come out.
    Phyllis was handing her gun to an officer, and a big man in plainclothes walked up to Sixte. The man had rusty hair and a freckled face. He looked very tired. “You Sixte?”
    “Yeah?”
    Frost smiled wryly. “I’m Mike Frost. Glad to see you…. Heck, I’m glad to see you alive.”

Time of Terror
    W hen I looked up from the menu, I was staring into the eyes of a man who had been dead for three years.
    Only he was not dead now. He was alive, sitting on the other side of the horseshoe coffee counter, just half a room away, and he was staring at me.
    Three years ago I had identified a charred body found in a wrecked car as this man. The car had been his. The remains of the suit he wore were a suit I recognized. The charred driver’s license in his wallet was that of Richard Marmer. The size, the weight, the facial contours, the structure of the burned body, all were those