Seven Brave Men (A Brian Garfield Western) by Brian Garfield

Author:Brian Garfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cochise, action heroes, apache indians, piccadilly publishing, american frontier history, the wild west, best western ebook, brian garfield western, mangus colorado
Publisher: Piccadilly

He trotted past the backs of buildings, down the length of the square and beyond, and threaded the scattered ’dobes of Mesilla, running in a woven pattern, banking toward the river flats. While he ran, his eyes and ears searched the surrounding darkness. Voices rose in a confusion of shouts behind him; there was a lot of calling back and forth and once or twice he heard his name. He turned his head to one side, looking back up the hill toward Maria’s, and it was then he saw a saddled horse tethered to a sapling on the fringe of town. That would be Joel Cardeen’s horse.

Cardeen would have no more need of it. Aveline walked up to the horse, gathered the reins, and stood a moment listening. The shouting had ceased. Now only one voice hollered out staccato commands. Boots crunched in the dirt, coming toward him. He settled his guns, swung into the saddle and aimed the pony’s head for the river; he sank his boot heels into the animal’s flanks and took off at a gallop.

Loud shouting arose once more; they had him spotted. But no gunshots followed him, and by that sign he knew that Johnny Wilson must have been given time to tell his story, and that he must have told it straight. Aveline’s lips set themselves into a thin line and he leaned low over the horse’s withers, entering the riverbank cottonwoods at full gallop and wheeling through the trees at a dead run. He passed the ruins of Pascualo’s cabin, turned the horse and put it into the Rio Grande.

The horse plunged, dipped under, and came up swimming strongly. This was a powerful animal; Cardeen had been a good judge, in need of a good horse. Aveline let the current carry him a mile downstream, around loops and bends of the river. When he came out of the water it was on the same side of the Rio that he had entered—the town side.

He dismounted quickly, knelt beside the horse and held the reins in his teeth, while he used a pin, produced from his vest, to poke into the chambers of his revolvers and loosen the slugs. He emptied both guns and reloaded them with dry powder and shot from his oilskin-covered belt pouch; then he stood up, loosened the cinch and unsaddled the horse. Afterward he removed the bridle, cached these articles in the brush, and started walking straight east, away from the river, on a line parallel with the southern edge of Mesilla.

They might comb the country all night before they found that horse and decided to connect it with him. Meanwhile the searchers, if there were any, would expect him to have set out across country, out of fear of pursuit. He walked across the cool, rolling hills, catching his breath. He was soaked from the waist down, and spray from the river had wet him thoroughly above that line. His feet squished every time he took a step; he stopped to sit down and pull off his boots, and empty the water out of them.

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