The Glorieta Grudge by Robert Peecher

Author:Robert Peecher
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781728747064
Publisher: Independently published
Published: 2018-10-14T05:00:00+00:00

-16-

Francisco Tebone's plan for an ambush at Rab Sinclair's cabin went off about as poorly as it could.

After scouting the place and determining that Rab Sinclair was not in the cabin, he and Pin and Curly found some rocks above the cabin where Francisco planned to shoot Rab with the Sharps rifle.

"I'm going to do it the easy way, like Frank wanted," Francisco said. "Pick him off as he's coming back home."

When at last they saw the rider coming on the blue roan, Francisco raised up the Sharps rifle and waited. Sinclair was too far to make a good shot of it.

But then a bullet scraped across the rock only a couple of feet from where Francisco was perched. The bullet was followed almost immediately by the crack of a rifle from up among the tall pine trees not far from Sinclair.

A few moments later, there was another shot, and Sinclair was shooting, too.

"I don't know how it happened, but they know we're here," Curly said. "This fellow Rab Sinclair is no one to fool around with. We need to high tail it now while we can."

And so they did. Their horses were tied behind the rocks, and the three men scrambled out of their hole in the rocks and then rode off across country to try to escape.

They thought they'd made it away clean until they heard the rifle report and looked back to see that Sinclair had come over a ridge and was firing at them.

They drove their horses hard, now.

When they came to the trail leading into Las Vegas, the men reined in. Pin looked over his shoulder. "I can see him yonder in the distance," Pin said. "He's still coming for us."

"Should we go back to Las Vegas, back to the hotel?" Curly asked.

"Like hell," Pin said. "He'll have us trapped if we go back to town. And who knows how many friends he has there."

So the men rode south, away from town. Their horses, though, were exhausted. These were just farm horses, not conditioned for long rides, and they could not keep the pace the three men wanted from them. Any time they looked back, they saw far in the distance the two riders still behind them.

When they came upon the old man driving the wagon, Francisco rode on ahead and talked to him. The man pointed out how to find a trail that would take them back north and how to find the pass that would lead them directly into Las Vegas. There they could get their fourth horse and the meager supplies they had back at the hotel.

Pin rode down from the ridge along the road.

"Nothing back there," he said. "I can see a long way down through the valley we just come up, and Rab Sinclair ain't back there."

"Then we threw him when we turned back toward town," Curly said.

"Looks that way," Pin answered.

Francisco Tebone sensed the fear from the two older men, and it was infectious. Pin and Curly started this expedition afraid of Rab Sinclair, as if he was some kind of legendary gunfighter.

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