Lay Down My Sword and Shield

Informationen zum Autor James Lee Burke Klappentext From the best-selling author of Sunset Limited, now available in mass market: a classic tale of a man haunted by memories of the Korean War, the ancestors he was named after, and the man he used to be.Hack Holland's a hard drinker, a lawyer, and a wealthy progressive Democrat. He's also a disillusioned man, running a half-hearted campaign for a Texas congressional seat. But when his efforts to help an old war buddy culminate in his unwitting involvement in a civil rights conflict, Hack finds himself rebuilding his life.Lay Down My SWORD and SHIELD CHAPTER 1 A LMOST NINETY YEARS ago during the Sutton-Taylor feud, John Wesley Hardin drilled a half-dozen .44 pistol balls into one of the wood columns on my front porch. My grandfather, Old Hack, lived in the house then, and he used to describe how Wes Hardin had ridden drunk all night from San Antonio when he had heard that Hack had promised to lock him in jail if he ever came back into DeWitt County again. The sun had just risen, and it was raining slightly when Hardin rode into the yard, his black suit streaked with mud, horse sweat, and whiskey; he had a shotgun tied across his saddle horn with a strip of leather and his navy Colt was already cocked in his hand. “You, Hack! Get out here. And don’t bring none of your Lincoln niggers with you or I’ll kill them, too.” (My grandfather was sheriff and justice of the peace, and the Reconstruction government had forced him to take on two Negro federal soldiers as deputies. Of the forty-two men that Hardin eventually killed, many were Negroes, whom he hated as much as he did carpetbaggers and law officers.) Hardin began shooting at the front porch, cocking and firing while the horse reared and pitched sideways with each explosion in its ears. Wes’s face was red with whiskey, his eyes were dilated, and when the horse whirled in a circle he whipped the pistol down between its ears. He emptied the rest of the chambers, the fire and black powder smoke roaring from the barrel, and all six shots hit the wood column in a neat vertical line. Hack had been up early that morning with one of his mares that was in foal, and when he saw Wes Hardin through the barn window he took the Winchester from the leather saddle scabbard nailed against the wall and waited for Wes to empty his pistol. Then he stepped out into the lot, his cotton nightshirt tucked inside his trousers, blood and membrane on his hands and forearms, and pumped a shell into the chamber. Wes jerked around backward in the saddle when he heard the action work behind him. “You goddamn sonofabitch,” Hack said. “Start to untie that shotgun and I’ll put a new asshole in the middle of your face.” Hardin laid his pistol against his thigh and turned his horse in a half circle. “You come up behind me, do you?” he said. “Get your pistol and let me reload and I’ll pay them nigger deputies for burying you.” “I told you not to come back to DeWitt. Now you shot up my house and probably run off half my Mexicans. I’m going to put you in jail and wrap chains all over you, then I’m taking you into my court for attempted assault on a law officer. Move off that horse.” Wes looked steadily at Hack, his killer’s eyes intent and frozen as though he were staring into a flame. Then he brought his boots out of the stirrups, slashed his spurs into the horse’s sides, and bent low over the neck with his fingers in the mane as the horse charged toward the front gate. But Hack leaped forward at the same time and swung the Winchester barrel down with both hands on Hardin’s head and knocked him sideways out of the saddle into the mud. There was a three-inch split in his scalp at the base of the hairline...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: James Lee Burke
• Editore: Pocket Books USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 16.02.2010
• EAN: 9781439165454
• ISBN: 978-1-4391-6545-4
• Dimensioni: 135 mm x 210 mm x 22 mm
• Serie: A Holland Family Novel; A Holland Family Novel; Holland Family Novel
• Categoria: Narrativa > Gialli > Polizieschi, thriller, spionaggio