Adam Steele 36 by George G. Gilman

Author:George G. Gilman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: elmore leonard, westerns, louis lamour, spaghetti westerns, pulp westerns, ebook westerns, piccadilly publishing westerns, ralph compton, edge the longer
Publisher: Piccadilly

Chapter Eight

THE FRESH SIGN on the intersection where the side track spurred off the main trail to follow the shore of the lake showed that the group of riders with a dead man among them had divided here. About half to head south toward town while the others rode around the western curve of the trail that led to the Rexall quarries and beyond this to the family home.

Steele had expected this would be the case after Duke Rexall made his grandstand play at the Slattery shack and he wasted no time in close examination of the hoofprints. And paid far more attention to the flanking country than to the heavily marked ground passing under his horse as he rode at an easy walk in the wake of the westward bound riders: the Virginian seeking an early warning of a second attempt to bushwhack him. But if the man who planned the abortive attack of this morning had it in mind to try to make good the mistake, he was biding his time. For as this Sunday afternoon inched toward evening the peace of his surroundings was disturbed only by the unobtrusive sounds of his own unhurried progress.

Until he rode close enough to the gated entrance of the Rexall Quarry Company property to hear the mournful music that was being played on a harmonica inside the small stone-built shack to the side of the gate. He was still a considerable distance off when he heard the funereal music and saw the place from which it was coming; as he crested a low rise at the end of a northward swinging curve of the trail that completed an S-bend of something more than two miles in length from the lake. From where he had started in the tracks of the Rexall contingent to where he reined the stallion to a halt on the ridge the country was as good and varied as the terrain between Barclay and the lake—meadowed hills to the left of the looping trail and timber to the right.

From where he sat his saddle atop the high ground with the melancholy music drifting about a half mile through the twilight to reach him, he could see that the mixed timber forest continued to spread richly at nature’s plan to the east and the north. With just a single visible intrusion by the hand of man—among the evergreen tops of a pinewood glade some two miles north and a half mile east of the trail could be glimpsed the slated roof of what was obviously an extensive building, with three chimneys giving off gray smoke into the evening air. Steele guessed this was the Rexall house.

Nobody passing along the trail was left in any doubt that the scarred piece of country to the west was the property of the Rexall Quarry Company. For along the top of the square stone arch that framed the double wrought iron gates that provided an attractive entrance to the ugliness beyond the name was spelled out, also in wrought iron.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.