Talon & Chantry 07 - North To The Rails (v5.0) Read Free Page A

come upon him was among scattered trees, but before him the country opened wide. It was high, lonely country, and ice still lay in the lake beside the trail. As far as he could see there was nothing—no house, no animal, no man. But he was alive. Had he been wearing a gun they might have killed him…or he might have killed one of them.
    An hour later he was still alone, still in wide, open country, but he seemed to be a little nearer the mountains that rimmed the high basin.
    That man had not missed by intention. He had wanted to kill. He had meant to kill. It was a shocking thing, an unreal thing. Chantry had held no weapon, had made no threatening gesture, and yet the men who had stolen his horse and his outfit would have killed him…and could have.
    Would they have robbed him had he been armed? His mind refused to acknowledge the thought, but there was that doubt, that uncertainty. Had he been armed they might have tried to get the drop on him, to take his gun, and then rob him.
    Suddenly he saw a thin, distant spiral of dust. It drew nearer and nearer, dissolved into a dozen hard-riding men. They drew up, the dust swirling around them.
    “Did you see two men?” one of them asked. “Two men on one horse?”
    “They are on two horses now. They stole mine at gun point.”
    “You mean you let ’em have it? Those were the Talrim boys…they murdered a man back yonder, and it ain’t the first.”
    “I had no choice. I wasn’t armed.”
    They stared at him. The bearded man shrugged. “This here’s no country to travel without a weapon.” He turned in his saddle. “Tell you what you do.” He pointed. “Over the hill yonder—maybe three miles—there’s a shack and a corral. You’ll find a couple of horses there.
    “You take one of them and ride on to Cimarron. Leave a note on the table in there…that’s the Andress cabin and the old man will understand. You can leave the horse for him in Cimarron, or just turn him loose. He’ll go home.”
    And then they were gone, and he was alone on the road, with the dust of the posse drifting around him.
    It was coming on to sundown when he reached the Andress cabin and caught up one of the horses he found there. There was no saddle, but he had ridden bareback before this. He twisted a hackamore from some rope and mounted up.
    Then, remembering the note, he swung down, tied the horse, and went inside the cabin. It was still and bare—a table, two chairs, a bunk in a corner, a few dog-eared magazines, and some old books. It was neat, everything was in its place.
    He sat down and, searching in vain for paper, finally took an envelope from his pocket and scratched a brief note on the back with a pencil he carried. He weighted the note down with a silver dollar to pay for the use of the horse, pulled the door shut after him, mounted again, and rode out on the trail to Cimarron.
    His face itched and, putting up a hand, he found there was dried blood from the nicked ear. He rubbed it away, then felt gingerly of the ear. The bleeding had stopped, but the ear was very tender. Moistening his handkerchief at his lips, he carefully wiped the dried blood away from the ear.
    That had been a narrow escape. It was pure luck that the shot had not killed him, and pure whim on the part of Bud Talrim that he had not fired a second shot to better effect.
    Tom Chantry shuddered…it was the same sudden reaction one has that usually draws the remark, “Somebody just stepped on your grave.”
    He might have been dead, and he might have been robbed, leaving no identification, with nothing to tell who he was or why he was here. It was appalling to consider how close he had come to an utterly useless death and a nameless grave. Back home nobody would ever have known what happened to him.
    He made his decision then. He was going to get out of this country, and he was going to get out by the first stage, the very first train. He was going back east and he was going to stay there and live in a