The Cherokee Trail by Louis L'Amour

Author:Louis L'Amour
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780553899016
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2004-12-27T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

IN THE BACK room on Larimer Street in Denver, Jason Flandrau sat tipped back in a chair, his boots on the table.

“She’s there,” he said. “You boys saw the wrong woman.”

“She was Irish as Paddy’s Pig, the one we saw,” Turkey Joe Longman said.

“She doesn’t count. It’s the other one we want. If she’s still around when I run for office, she will talk even if she doesn’t say something before that.”

“Does she know your name?”

“I’ve no idea, but she’s seen me; she saw me right out in the open. I tried to get her then, but she slipped away, God knows how.” He swore softly. “Who would ever think she’d show up out here? Of all places?”

“It ain’t like back East,” Longman said. “You can shoot a man, and nobody blinks. But you even bump into a woman on the street, and you might get hung. I don’t like it, Colonel. I don’t like it at all.”

“Neither do I. Nor do I want to see you hang, which will surely happen if they find out who you are. Or who I am.” He took his boots from the table and turned in his chair. “Indians, that’s the answer. Run off the horses and kill her while it’s being done. Round up a few bad Indians and let them have the horses. In the process, she gets killed, and they are blamed.”

“I still don’t like it.”

Irritated, Flandrau turned on him. “Have you got a better plan? You said yourself you’re not getting much of a chance at a shot out there.”

“Let me try it a few more days.”

“All right. You’ve always done what you set out to do. But be careful. Be very, very careful. And tell nobody, even our own boys, what you’re doing.”

When Longman was gone, he ordered a glass of wine and remained at the table. Returning to Laporte was out of the question when there was a possibility she might see him. Did she realize it was he who killed her husband?

The trouble lay with Preston Collier. He needed Collier’s support if he planned on running for office, and to reach Collier’s place he almost had to go through Laporte and then past Cherokee to Collier’s ranch. He could circle around, of course.

If Longman could get rid of Mrs. Breydon, then he would get rid of Longman. He wanted nobody alive who could point a finger at him.

He got to his feet and flicked some dust from his boots with the end of his handkerchief. Carefully, he straightened his cravat. Anyway, it was time he cut himself free from all of the old crowd. His future was assured, and he was moving in a different direction now and needed them no longer. He went out the back door, closing it carefully behind him.

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