Novel 1966 - The Broken Gun (v5.0) Read Free

sort of men to be overlooked, wherever they might be, and they were sure to leave their mark upon the land.
    Yet they had vanished. There were no records of them that I could find in Arizona.
    “How much farther?” I asked the driver.
    “Five, six miles. You a friend of Colin’s?”
    “I’m a writer. Colin Wells heard I was in town and invited me out. It gives me a chance to get the feel of the country.”
    “Likes folks around, Colin does.…What sort of writin’ you do?”
    “Frontier background, mostly. Some western history.”
    “This here was Indian country. Apaches, mostly.”
    “I didn’t get your name.”
    “Name’s Reese…Floyd Reese.”
    It gave me an odd turn. In that cattle drive ninety years ago there had been a man named Reese. Not one of the originals, but a man picked up on the way. Until they reached the Pecos Valley there had been forty men with the herd; actually it was two herds, about equal in size. A dozen of the riders had come along only for the drive to New Mexico, and they had turned off toward Santa Fe. By that time the herd was trail broken and easier to handle, but an extra hand was always convenient.
    John Toomey had hired Reese, but with misgivings. The man was surely running from something, and he proved a troublemaker. This Reese might be a relative.
    “Is this your home country?”
    “My old man worked for Strawb’ry. I was born on the place.”
    Obviously the world began and ended on Strawberry range, as far as Floyd Reese was concerned. I had met several such men, had grown up with them, in fact.
    It always irritated me that people would take it for granted, as they often did, that a man would write about something of which he knew nothing. Colin Wells had assumed that, being a writer, I knew nothing of ranch life.
    I had grown up on a ranch in Wyoming. From the time I was old enough to sit a saddle I had punched cows, and in my teens I had drifted south during vacations to ride for an outfit in Colorado, and later had ridden for another in Montana. I’d put in a year working the mines and lumber camps before I enlisted to fight in Korea. Korea had lasted two years.
    The landing at Inchon, the march north to the Yalu, when we had been assured we would be home in time for Christmas, and then the bitter retreat back down the peninsula when the Chinese, who we had been assured would not fight, decided to fight. Wounded, I’d struggled three days through the snow before the Chinese caught me. Believing I was in such bad shape that I was a safe prisoner, they guarded me poorly, and I was able to slip away. Recaptured by another outfit, I met Pio Alvarez and we escaped together, fighting and running and hiding all the way back to the American lines.
    After a battlefield commission I’d returned to the States, went to a school for guerilla fighters, did a year of Stateside duty, followed by a school for Military Intelligence.
    That was followed by a year in Berlin and West Germany, and then I was shipped out to Saigon and guerilla warfare in the jungles of Vietnam. Wounded again, captured again, I escaped again. And that convinced me I’d stretched my luck too far, so I returned to civilian life and to writing.
    The station wagon slowed and I saw two riders coming down from the slope of a hill, a dried-up old man with a wide but not pleasant grin, and a tough-looking rider of thirty-five or so. Both were armed.
    As they rode up alongside, Reese stopped. “This here’s the writer,” he said. “Name’s Sheridan.”
    He indicated the two men. “Dad Styles and Rip Parker. Been ridin’ for Strawb’ry for years.”
    As the wagon rolled on I commented, “They were armed.”
    “Sure. We run into rustlers sometimes, and it makes a long trip for the sheriff. He doesn’t much like to be bothered, so I hold a dep’ty’s badge.”
    “Is rustling a problem?”
    “You bet. They come out in trucks and hoss-trailers. They unload their horses, tear down a piece of fence and round