the Rider Of Lost Creek (1976) Read Free Page A

to the end of the bar, away from the others.
    "I'll have a whiskey ... He said.
    Several men lounged against the bar, the nearest a young man who had moved into the place left by Webb Steele, a slim, why man better dressed than most cowhands, with black polished boots and large-roweled Mexican spurs.
    The young man's cool gray eyes swept the stranger with a sharp glance. "Don't I know you"..."... He demanded.
    The green eyes were expressionless. The stranger shrugged. "You might"
    "Ridin' through?"
    "Maybe."
    "Want a job?"
    "Maybe."
    "Aren't you a cowhand?"
    "Sometimes."
    "We'll pay well... very well!"
    "What outfit are you with?"
    "I am not with any outfit ... The young man's tone was sharp. "I am the Tumbling R."
    "Bully for you."
    The young man's mouth tightened, and a queer kind of excitement came into his eyes.
    "I don't like the way you said that ... His tone was aggressive, eager.
    The man with green eyes looked at him, then looked away. He offered no comment, but the look was enough.
    "In fact, I don't hire you ... The young man insisted.
    "Does it matter?"' drawled the stranger.
    There was an instant when the young rancher stared as if he could not quite believe what he had heard. Then he felt rather than saw the men hurriedly backing away from him, getting out of the line of any gunfire.
    Something turned over inside the young man, and he realized with a sudden, sickening awareness that he was facing trouble, possibly a gun battle, out in the open and all alone.
    With a shock he realized that he was frightened, that he had pushed himself into this situation of his own will. He felt an icy chill go down his spine. Always before, when he had talked loud and free or swaggered a bit too much, men had backed off because they knew he was Chet Lord's son. Men knew his hardbitten old father all too well The case of Bonnet and Swindell had helped, too. They had affronted young Lord and both had been found dead on the trail, their guns in their hands.
    Yet nothing his father might do later could help him now. He must fight He stiffened, trying to seem unafraid, his mind scrambling like a frightened rat seeking a hole. Somebody would stop it, surely.
    Somebody must.
    "Yeah, it matters, and I'll make it matter ... His voice shrilled a little, but his hand hovered over his gun.
    The onlookers stared, tense, holding their breaths as one man. The tall stranger looked easily into Steve Lord's eyes, and then suddenly he smiled. There was humor in his eyes, not taunting or something worse, just plain good humor.
    "Well."... He spoke slowly, gently, "Don't kill me now. I'd hate to get shot on an empty stomach."
    Deliberately, he turned his back and spoke to the bartender. "One more, and then I'm getting something to eat. Seems to me I ate half the dust in Texas for breakfast."
    Everyone began talking suddenly, and Steve Lord, astonished at his good luck, turned to the bar himself.
    Something had happened, and he was not altogether sure what it was, but he suddenly knew he had narrowly escaped a shoot-out and with a man to whom such things were not new.
    He faced the bar, thankful that the men on either side were strangers. He was trembling, if not outwardly.
    He was definitely trembling inside and could not trust his voice. He was going to have to watch himself.
    Since he was a child he had tried to adopt his father's hard, thrusting ways but without what it took to back them up. He had always believed himself to be a tough, dangerous man and then, suddenly, in the first real showdown he had ever had with a stranger, all the sand had gone out of him.
    Yet. . . why had the stranger turned away? He had heard his father speak of such men-men so sure of themselves that they could step casually aside.
    Yet a moment before, there had been death in the man's eyes, cold, ugly death.
    Preoccupied with his own feelings and the shock that remained with him, he did not see what was happening.
    Only the stranger saw it, lifting his eyes from the