A Fistful of Trouble (Outlaws of the Galaxy Book 2) Paul Tomlinson (reading strategies book .TXT) 📖

told me you were a friend of his.”

I nodded and that stirred up the pain in my head.

“You want some aspirin?” he asked.

“A bucketful.”

Deputy Cole grinned. “I’ll fetch you some. Sheriff asked me to let him know when you was awake.”

Sheriff Galton brought me the painkillers and a mug of cold water.

“How you feeling?” he asked.

“You hit me,” I said.

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“You hit me really hard.”

“Again, sorry.” I think he genuinely regretted having to hurt me.

“You hit me with the butt of my own gun.” My tone was a combination of pouty and accusatory. With a pinch of self-pity. Because my head hurt.

“I thought it was preferable to watching Hodge’s men kill you,” the sheriff said. He was staring down at his feet.

“What happened to your boots?” I asked. He was wearing ratty old sneakers.

Sheriff Galton sighed. “No good deed goes unpunished. You feel well enough to eat something?”

I touched my fingers lightly to the back of my skull.

“Doc Larsson checked you over,” the sheriff said.

“He did? When? I don’t remember it.”

“This morning. Tall man, thin face, black suit?”

“I thought he was an undertaker.”

“He is. But before you die, he’s the doctor.”

“What’s my prognosis?” I asked.

“Larsson won’t be selling you a coffin anytime soon.”

“Pity,” I said. “I’ve got nothing to live for.”

“That’s not true.”

“Really? Tell me one good thing I have to look forward to.”

“Madam Fifi sent you lunch,” the sheriff said. “She also sent over dinner last night, but you took one look at it and...” He looked down sadly at his sneakers.

“Sorry about your boots.”

Sheriff Galton shrugged. “You want to try the chicken pie? It’s good.”

“You can have it if you want it.”

“I’ll have it,” said a voice from the next cage.

The sheriff ignored it. “Already had mine,” he said. “She sent over a whole pie. A perk of having a celebrity prisoner in my jail.”

“I’ll try a small piece,” I said. “Give the rest to my fellow inmate.”

The man in the next cage stirred and sat up. It was Deke. One side of his face was swollen like a pumpkin. Did I do that?

“The doc check him out too?” I asked.

“He’ll live,” the sheriff said. He went off to get our chicken pie.

“What did they get you for?” I asked.

“I punched the Mayor,” Deke said. “It was an accident.”

“Which mayor?”

“Ours.”

“Pity,” I said. “I’d have liked to see the other one thumped.”

“Would it make you feel better to know that Happy Hawkins got shot in the ass?”

That did make me smile. “How’d that happen?”

“He said the wrong thing to Casey. Happy should know better.”

“Wish I’d seen it.”

“He grabbed his butt and was hopping around and hollerin’. You’d have laughed yourself sick.” Deke got up off his bunk and showed me how the old robot trader had danced and shouted.

Sheriff Galton chose that moment to return with two plates of chicken pie. He looked at Deke and raised an eyebrow. Seeing this, Deke stopped prancing around and sank back down on his bed looking a bit sheepish.

“Happy Hawkins?” the sheriff asked.

I nodded.

The sheriff’s moustache hid his lips but I knew he was smiling. “Can’t tell you how often I’ve wanted to shoot that little turd in the ass,” he said. “I pity poor Doc Larsson – he had to dig the slug out of Happy’s scrawny butt.”

Given the day I’d had yesterday, it was a relief to be able to smile at someone else’s misfortune.

As soon as Sheriff Galton passed through the plate, Deke attacked the pie and began wolfing it down. I picked at mine, but once I started eating I discovered that I really was hungry. Unloading the contents of your stomach can do that to you.

“Is Happy sticking around for a while?” I asked.

The sheriff shook his head. “Got himself one of those inflatable rings, got in his truck, and drove off. Good riddance to him.”

“Did he take my robot with him?”

“Your robot?” the sheriff asked.

“He and I were together a long time,” I said. “I still think of him as mine.”

“Happy loaded him in the back of his truck before he went,” Sheriff Galton said.

I set down my plate, no longer hungry.

“You not going to finish that?” Deke asked.

I slid my plate under the bars to him.

“Doesn’t it hurt when you chew?” I asked.

“Sure does,” Deke said. “But I’m eating on the other side.” He shoved more pastry into his face and it did sort of even up the two sides. He looked like a hamster.

When the pie was gone, the sheriff took away the plates. He came back with two tin mugs filled with coffee and told us we’d get nothing more until supper. Then he left us.

Deke looked at his watch – counting the number of hours until suppertime, I assumed. “You should come back with me to the Colonel’s,” he said. “We can always use a good man.”

“I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere for some time,” I said.

As soon as Sheriff Galton fed my details into Saphira’s criminal database, bells would start ringing. And pretty soon after that, the chimes would go off on more than a dozen other planets.

“I’m getting out of here tonight,” Deke said.

“The Colonel will bail you out?”

“Something like that,” he said, grinning broadly.

I glanced nervously towards Sheriff Galton’s office.

“Don’t worry about him,” Deke said. “The sheriff knows better than to stand in the way.”

Danny had told me that there were a lot of dead sheriffs in the town cemetery. I didn’t blame Galton for wanting to avoid a place next to them.

“You really break Casey’s arm?” Deke asked.

“Yep. Hit him with a bat.”

Deke thought about this, nodding slowly. “Don’t think I ever saw someone hurt him before. I think he respects you for it.”

“I think he wants me dead.”

Deke nodded. “That too. He said you also trashed six of the Colonel’s robots.”

“I had help with that.”

“The big blue robot?”

“The skinny white bitch,” I said.

“Harmony?”

“You know her?”

“She broke Ned’s hand when he tried to touch her bazoom.”

“That sounds like her,” I said.

“Damn!” Deke said. “Six robots!”

“They