Novel 1956 - Silver Canyon (v5.0) Read Free

talking like a fool, yet the feeling was still with me—and why, after all, must it be foolishness?
    Through the thin panels I heard Mother O’Hara telling her, “You’d better be buying that trousseau, Moira Maclaren! There’s a lad knows his mind!”
    â€œIt’s all talk,” she said, “just loose talk.”
    She did not sound convinced, however, and that was the way we left it, for I knew there were things to be done.
    Behind me were a lot of trails and a lot of rough times. Young as I was, I’d been a man before my time, riding with trail herds, fighting Comanches and rustlers, and packing a fast gun before I’d put a man’s depth in my chest.
    It was easy to talk, easy to make a boast to a pretty girl’s ears, but I’d no threshold to carry her over, nor any land anywhere. It was a thought that had never bothered me before this, but when a man starts to think of a woman of his own, and of a home, he begins to know what it means to be a man.
    Yet standing there in the street with the night air coming down from the hills, and darkness gathering itself under the barn eaves and along the streets, I found an answer.
    It came to me suddenly, but the challenge of it set my blood to leaping and brought laughter to my lips. For now I could see my way clear, my way to money, to a home, and to all I’d need to marry Moira Maclaren…The way would be rough and bloody, but only the daring of it gripped my mind.
    Turning, I started toward the stable, and then I stopped, for there was a man standing there.
    He was a huge man, towering over my six feet two inches, broader and heavier by far than my two hundred pounds. He was big-boned and full of raw power, unbroken and brutal. He stood wide-legged before me, his face as wide as my two hands, his big head topped by a mass of tight curls.
    â€œYou’re Brennan?”
    â€œWhy, yes,” I said, and he hit me.
    There was no start to the blow. His big balled fist hit my jaw like an axe butt and something seemed to slam me behind the knees and I felt myself falling. He hit me again as I fell into his fist, a wicked blow that turned me half around.
    He dropped astride of me, all two hundred and sixty pounds of him, and with his knees pinning my arms, he aimed smashing, brutal blows at my head and face. Finally he got up, stepped back, and kicked me in the ribs.
    â€œIf you’re conscious, hear me. I’m Morgan Park, and I’m the man who’s going to marry Moira Maclaren.”
    My lips were swollen and bloody and my brain foggy. “You lie!” I said, and he kicked me again and then walked away, whistling.
    Somehow I rolled over and got my hands under me and pushed up to my knees. I crawled out of the street and against the stage station wall, where I lay with my head throbbing like a great drum, the blood welling from my split lips and broken face.
    It had been a brutal beating he’d given me. I’d not been whipped since I was a boy, and never had I felt such blows as those. His fists had been like knots of oak and his arms like the limbs of trees.
    Every breath I took brought a gasp, and I was sure he’d broken a rib for me. Yet it was time for me to travel. I’d made big talk in Hattan’s Point and I’d not want Moira Maclaren to see me lying in the street like a whipped hound.
    My hands found the corner of the building and I pulled myself up. Staggering along the building, using the wall for support, I made my way to the livery stable.
    When I got my horse saddled, I pulled myself into the saddle and rode to the door.
    The street was empty…no one had seen the beating I’d taken, and wherever Morgan Park had come from, now he was nowhere to be seen. For an instant I sat my horse in the light of the lantern above the stable floor.
    A door opened and a shaft of light fell across me. In the open door of Mother O’Hara’s stood Moira Maclaren.
    She stepped down