Trail of the Twisted Cros by Buck Sanders Page A

but he thought it was a woman holding the rifle. But that hardly mattered now, for once again Slayton
     was a target at Colin Hays’ spread.
    Instead of running toward the gum tree, which would have been expected by his assailant, Slayton rushed the house itself,
     fanning the trigger latch of his revolver, ducking and weaving inside the shots.
    Glass shattered, and he heard a woman scream. The shots stopped.
    Slayton quickly reloaded. It was time to enter Colin Hays’ parlor.

Chapter Eight
    TREALAW, South Wales, United Kingdom,
    10 September.
    The finest lodgings to be had in the Rhondda Valley village of Trealaw are the second-floor rooms of a pub called the Colliers
     Arms. Conveniently enough, it is also the only place a wayfarer can find lodgings.
    For the townsfolk, the Colliers Arms is the center of village commerce—most of it legal—after dark, and it is the center of
     village gossip, most of which the place creates each night before the next day’s news events unfold.
    Presiding over it all are the unlikely combination of Jack and Mavis Warry. Jack, the slow-moving, cheerful sort with drooping
     eyelids, has the blessing of an unexpected quick wit, often called to battle in dealings with his wife. Mavis Warry is a hyperkinetic,
     tart-tongued woman who, despite her sometimes bristling manner, is like most other women, desirous of the safe harbor of a
     strong, passionate man.
    Her husband comes close to filling the bill, as close as Mavis will allow any man to come to her own ideal. Unlike most other
     men, Jack is not afraid of her. When she harangues him, he will often turn to a customer at his bar and explain:
    “If Mavis had been born two centuries earlier, which I’m not entirely convinced she wasn’t, mind you, she would have been
     either Queen of bloody England or burned at the stake. One or the other. You see no middle ground with the lady.”
    At which time Mavis, called “Queen of Ynyscynon Road” behind her back, will box his ears and encourage their dog Scamp, a
     canine who resembles one of the gray sheep roaming the grassy hillsides rising up from Ynyscynon Road and the village on both
     sides, to bite two of the four hands that feed him.
    Years ago, when the coal mines of the Rhondda Valley were at full blast, the Colliers Arms did a brisk business, serving up
     pint after pint of Whit-bread lager, gallons of Dewars Scotch, and a host of cocktails named after flowers for the wives of
     the colliery workers, who believed that drinks of the lower order were strictly the provenance of the menfolk. Today, however,
     with all of Britain ready to take its place in the Third World—or so quipped Charles, the Prince of Wales, not so long ago—the
     Colliers Arms .is economically depressed.
    The man who used to drop by three nights a week now comes two nights, sometimes only one. The man who used to drop three quid
     a visit now sips more slowly, hoping to keep it under two. And at seventy pence the packet, more and more patrons are foregoing
     the cigarette machines of the Colliers and rolling their own “fags.”
    Nonetheless, Mavis Warry nightly makes her entrance from her quarters above the bar, flowing down the stairs in something
     colorful, something that flies in the face of British decline and torpor. Her country may be on the skids, but Mavis Warry
     behaves as if the old Empire was at its most robust, as if she and Britain had perfect justification to throw their respective
     charms and weights around wherever they jolly well pleased.
    Without her, Jack Warry would suffer a life of drawing up Whitbreads by the pint and hearing the same old weary tale of Tory
     or Labor perfidy, depending on who was buying the Whitbread at any given moment. With her, Jack lived the merry life of foil
     for most of his waking moments, and comedian when he chose to counter Mavis.
    The Warrys were fortunate to be publicans. They were the best show in town and, consequently, theirs was the pub that