Renegades Read Free Page A

buckboard was soon pulled upright again. Frank hitched Stormy into the empty spot in the team. The Appaloosa didn’t care much for that, but he was willing to tolerate it if that was what Frank wanted him to do. Stormy turned a baleful eye on his master for a moment, though.
    â€œI’d watch out for that horse if I was you, Mr. Morgan,” Ben said. “He looks like he might sneak up on you some time and take a nip out of your hide.”
    â€œI fully expect that he will,” Frank agreed with a chuckle. He grew more sober as he gestured toward the bodies again. “What about them?”
    â€œI’ll be damned if I’m gonna get their blood all over my buckboard,” Cecil Tolliver said. “When we get to the ranch, I’ll send a rider to San Rosa to notify the law. In the meantime, a couple o’ my hands can come back out with a work wagon to load up the carcasses. The undertaker can come to the ranch to get ’em for plantin’.”
    â€œThere’s law in San Rosa?”
    â€œYeah, a town marshal. And there’s a company of Rangers that’s been usin’ the town as their headquarters for a spell, while they try to track down some bandits who’ve been raisin’ hell around here.”
    Frank’s interest perked up at the mention of Texas Rangers. Over the past year or so he had shared several adventures with a young Ranger named Tyler Beaumont. Beaumont was back home with his wife in Weatherford now, recuperating from injuries he had received in that fence-cutting dustup in Brown County. Frank respected the Rangers a great deal as a force for law and order, even though his reputation as a gunfighter sometimes made the Rangers look on him with suspicion.
    He wasn’t looking for trouble down here along the border, though, so it was unlikely he would clash with the lawmen.
    Tolliver and Ben climbed onto the seat of the buckboard. Frank tied his packhorse on at the back of the vehicle, then sat down with his legs dangling off the rear. When he snapped his fingers, Dog jumped onto the buckboard and settled down beside him. Tolliver got the team moving and drove on toward his ranch, the Rocking T.
    Frank saw cattle in the chaparral as the buckboard rolled along. They were longhorns, the sort of tough, hardy breed that was required in this brushy country. Longhorns seemed to survive, even to thrive, in it where other breeds had fallen by the wayside. The ugly, dangerous brutes had been the beginning of the cattle industry in Texas, back in the days immediately following the Civil War. Animals that had been valuable only for their hide and tallow had suddenly become beef on the hoof, the source of a small fortune for the men daring enough and tough enough to round them up and make the long drive over the trails to the railhead in Kansas.
    As a young cowboy, Frank had ridden along on more than one of those drives, pushing the balky cattle through dust and rain, heat and cold, and danger from Indians and outlaws. Since the railroads had reached Texas, the days of such cattle drives were over. Now a man seldom had to move his herds more than a hundred miles or so before reaching a shipping point. As much as he lamented some things about the settling of the West, Frank didn’t miss those cattle drives. They had been long, arduous, perilous work.
    With an arm looped around Dog’s shaggy neck, he turned his head and asked the Tollivers, “How much stock have you been losing lately?”
    â€œNot that much,” Ben said.
    His father snorted. “Not that much at one time, you mean. Half a dozen here, a dozen there. But it sure as hell adds up.”
    Frank knew what Tolliver meant. Rustlers could make a big raid on a ranch, or they could bleed it dry over time. Either method could prove devastating to a cattleman.
    â€œThe Rangers haven’t been able to get a line on the wide-loopers?”
    â€œThey’re too busy lookin’ for the