Collection 1989 - Long Ride Home (v5.0) by Louis L'Amour

Author:Louis L'Amour [L'Amour, Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Usenet
ISBN: 9780553281811
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1989-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

* * *

THE SPRING GRASS faded from green to brown and dust gathered in the trails. Water holes shrank and the dried earth cracked around them and the cattle grew gaunt. It was a hard year on the caprock, and that meant work for the hands.

Shandy Gamble was in the saddle eighteen to twenty hours most days, rounding up strays and pushing them south to the gullies and remaining water holes. When he had returned without his saddle there was a lot of jawing about it, and the boys all poked fun at Shandy, but he grinned widely and took it, letting them believe he had drunk it up or spent it on women.

Jim Finnegan rode out one day on a gray horse. He was looking the situation over and making estimates on the beef to be had after the fall roundup. Shandy was drifting south with three head of gaunted stock when they met. Gamble drew up and Finnegan joined him. “Howdy, son! Stock looks poor.”

“Yeah,” Shandy dug for the makings, “we need rain plumb bad.” He rolled his smoke, then asked quietly, “You ever hear of a buyer name of Nichols? Big, black-eyed man?”

Shandy’s description was accurate and painstaking, the sort of description a man might give who was used to reading sign and who thirty seconds after a glimpse of a horse or cow could describe its every hair and ailment.

“Nichols? You’ve forgotten the name, son. No, the hombre you describe is Abel Kotch. He’s a card slick an’ confidence man. Brute of a fighter, too. Brags he never saw the man could stand up to him in a fist fight.”

“Seen him around?”

“Yeah, he was around Fort Worth earlier this year. He rousts around with the June boys.”

The June boys. There were five of the Junes—the old man, Pete June, and the four outlaw sons: Alec, Tom, Buck, and Windy. All were gun slicks, bad men, dirty, unkempt drifters, known to be killers, believed to be horse and cow thieves, and suspected of some out and out murders.

Two nights later, back at the bunkhouse, Johnny Smith rode in with the mail, riding down from Tuckup way where he had stopped to ask after some iron work being done for the ranch by the Tuckup blacksmith. Tuckup was mostly an outlaw town, but the blacksmith there was the best around. Cowhands do most of their own work, but the man at Tuckup could make anything with iron, and the KT boss had been getting some fancy andirons for his fireplace.

“Killin’ over to Tuckup,” Johnny said, as he swung down. “That Sullivan from Brady Canyon tangled with Windy June. Windy bored him plenty.”

Shandy Gamble’s head came up. “June? The rest of that outfit there?”

“Sure, the whole shootin’ match o’ Junes!”

“Big, black-eyed fellow with ’em? Black mustache?”

“Kotch? Sure as you know he is. He whupped the blacksmith. Beat him so bad he couldn’t finish the old man’s andirons. That’s a rough outfit.”

The boss of the KT was talking to Jim Finnegan when Shandy strolled up.

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