Hang Them Slowly by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2019-04-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Stovepipe and Wilbur looked at each other, then at Vance. A long moment ticked by.

Seeing that the young man was determined to get an answer, Stovepipe said quietly, “Well, to tell you the truth, Wilbur and me ain’t exactly who we been pretendin’ to be, either.”

“Who are you? Lawmen?”

“Of a sort. We work for an outfit called the Cattlemen’s Protective Association. They send us in whenever and wherever there’s bad trouble goin’ on involving spreads that belong to the Association. Happens the Three Rivers is a member in good standing.” Stovepipe shrugged. “For that matter, so’s the Rafter M, but it wasn’t Malone nor Cabot who asked the CPA for help. Those old pelicans ain’t the sort to do that. They’d rather stomp their own snakes, even if it means a likelihood o’ gettin’ bit.”

“Then who did hire you?”

“Your pa. He could tell from the reports Malone sent back to him that bad things were goin’ on, and he asked the Association to send somebody to have a look into it.”

“Then he didn’t send you here to watch over me?” Vance sounded upset if that were the case.

Wilbur said, “Nope. We’d never even heard of you when we rode into Wagontongue and got riding jobs at the Three Rivers.” He chuckled. “Once you showed up, though, it didn’t take Stovepipe long to catch on that you weren’t who you were pretending to be.”

“You done a good job of actin’ like a cowboy most of the time,” Stovepipe said, “but there were little things that made it seem like you were more of a greenhorn than somebody who’d been ridin’ the chuck line for years. Your accent was off a mite, too. I’ve knowed fellas who came from back east, and you reminded me of them now and then.”

“But you didn’t know I was Alfred Armbrister’s son.”

Stovepipe shook his head. “Not at first. Didn’t know Armbrister even had a son. But when you slipped up and promised Miss Rosaleen you’d do somethin’ about the railroad and then went right off to send a telegram, I knew you had to be connected to somebody mighty important, somebody who’d have a lot of influence with the line. I knew Alfred Armbrister owned a steel mill and had his fingers in plenty of other pies, too, so I sent him a wire myself and asked him flat-out if you were related to him.”

“Blast it,” Vance said. “I fooled everybody else—”

“Don’t feel bad,” Wilbur said. “Nobody can fool Stovepipe for very long. He can see through a phony story and figure out what’s really going on faster than anybody I’ve ever run into. Reckon that’s why we’re in the line of work we’re in.”

“What do you even call the job you do?”

Stovepipe said, “I reckon you can call us range detectives. We started out as genuine cowboys but kept gettin’ mixed up in one conundrum after another, so we finally decided to make a career out of it.”

“Conundrums with gunplay,” Wilbur added. “They seem to follow us around like clockwork.

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