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hand of Lucy Johnson and asked her to be his wife, was gone. An empty, useless wooden stairway still anchored to the north wall of the lower level storage area was all that remained. The storeroom, where he, Bart, Ben Samuels, Merle Chesterton and a host of others had played their marathon poker games, had three walls standing. |
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Gleason circled the mountain of destruction once then paused next to the twisted wreckage of the old beer cooler. Idly he wondered how many times he had walked around the bar, listened to Gladys Ann's churlish reprimands for doing so and gotten his own beer. ''Suppose someone would see the sheriff goin' back there and gettin' his own beer," the old woman would complain. "Pretty soon they'll all be a thinkin' they can do it." |
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Gleason took off his hat and used his index finger to wipe the sweat off of his sunburned forehead. He loosened his tie and began the trek back to his patrol car. There he flipped on the radio, waited for the channel to clear and began drawling out instructions. "Patch me through to Port Isabel and get me the latest availability report. I'm still lookin' for Doc Freeman and Bart Miller. If you see Miller, better tell him the Gull House got hit pretty hard. If he walks in cold out here, he'll get the shock of his life." |
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The dispatcher put him through to his |
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