Borden Chantry Read Free Page A

an old discussion, and he merely shrugged. “You married a rancher, Bess, and when I can get on my feet, I’ll go back to ranching. This is my country and I belong here. As for being marshal…somebody has to do it.”
    â€œBut why does it have to be you?” she protested.
    â€œI am good with a gun, and they know it. More than that, I know when not to use a gun, and they know that, too.”
    The coffee tasted good, and it was pleasant here in the kitchen. Bess moved about, doing the usual things for breakfast, and he leaned back in his chair, still a little tired from the long, hard ride.
    The man had taken two horses and had swapped saddles, that was what had fooled Kim Baca. He had good horses and he stopped only long enough to switch rigging, and so he had overtaken the horse thief before he could get far. Baca had expected no pursuit to catch him. That was half of it, of course, getting there fast and unexpected.
    â€œThis is no ordinary killin’, Bess. Leastwise it doesn’t look it. Nice lookin’ young man, maybe about my age or a mite older. Somebody shot him when he wasn’t expecting it. Laid for him, likely.”
    â€œWill you be gone all day?”
    â€œMost of it.” He finished his coffee and went into the bedroom to change his shirt. His mind kept returning to the dead man. Of course, he could simply bury him and that would be an end to it, but it wouldn’t be doing his job. Not doing it right. He’d been hired by the city fathers and it was his job to keep the peace and punish the evildoer…or hold them for judgment.
    He frowned. The dead man had eaten at the Bon-Ton, had paid for his meal and left. He should have asked whether it was breakfast or dinner…or even supper. Anyway, it would seem, the man had been around town a few hours.
    Well, what did he have? The victim had left the Bon-Ton. The next morning he had been found dead…So where had he been? Not that there were so many places to go.
    Chantry came out of the bedroom, stuffing his shirt into his pants. Bess turned on him. “Borden? Where did the man come from?”
    â€œWe don’t know,” he said. “That’s something to find out.”
    â€œAnd how did he get here?”
    He glanced at her, grinning. “Now why didn’t I think of that? How
did
he get here? Pays to have a smart wife.”
    â€œIt’s just common sense, that’s all. If he did not come by stage, he had to ride horseback.”
    He picked up his hat. “So where’s his horse? I’d pin my badge on you if I could find a place to pin it.”
    She pushed him away. “You go find out how he got here. That will keep you out of mischief.”
    He closed the gate behind him thoughtfully. There was one stage in and one stage out each day. If the stranger had come by stage he had arrived sometime around midday, which meant he had been around town…a town with less than six hundred people…for several hours. Somebody had to have seen him.
    Strolling along the dusty street Chantry reached the boardwalk, paused and stamped dust from his boots. A girl was walking toward him, a pretty girl with a lively face, big blue eyes, and just a little overdressed and over-bangled.
    â€œLucy Marie?”
    She paused, apprehensively. It was partly the badge, he suspected, and partly that he was known to be happily married.
    â€œHow’s Mary Ann?”
    â€œAiling. She don’t seem to get much better. I…I wish she could get away from here. She needs a rest.”
    â€œTell her I asked about her.”
    Mary Ann Haley had lived in town for two years, occupying a house on a back street with Lucy Marie and a couple of others. Now she was ill…consumption, probably. A lot of the girls on the line seemed to pick it up.
    Chantry returned to the barn and looked at the dead man on the table. He would have to be buried soon, yet the weather was cool to cold and they could