The High Graders by Louis L'Amour

Author:Louis L'Amour [L'Amour, Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Usenet, C429, Kat, Exratorrents
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1965-09-07T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

DELIBERATELY, MIKE SHEVLIN offered no comment on the happenings in Rafter, and Burt Parry asked no questions. But Mike knew that the town and all the country around must be talking with excitement about the killing of Eve Bancroft.

The killing of a girl in a western town was itself enough to start such talk, but Eve Bancroft was owner of the Three Sevens. It was not the largest ranch in that region, but it was one of the big ones.

As he worked, Mike Shevlin tried to find a way through this situation, but there seemed to be none. He had attempted to stir up the hornet’s nest, but the cattlemen and Ray Hollister had done more than he ever could have. Yet nothing in the situation had changed.

A girl was dead. Ray Hollister was disgraced. Eve Bancroft had called upon him to back his words with action and he had welshed. He had hung back, and Eve had ridden to her death.

What they might have done had Hoyt not been there, Shevlin could not guess. Hoyt could stop them, as he never could have stopped Eve, for to lift his hand against a girl, a decent girl, was unthinkable to a man of Hoyt’s stripe. And Ben Stowe, solid, unshaken, still sat his throne in the center of the community.

Shevlin’s thoughts returned to Gib Gentry. Without a doubt, Gib had been riding to warn him when he was killed, and without a doubt he had been killed by mistake for Shevlin. Somebody had been lying in wait, and by now that somebody knew he had killed the wrong man.

Each time Shevlin wheeled a load to the end of the dump, he took his time to breathe in plenty of the fresh air, and to look around. It was very quiet. Parry had gone off again, and Mike was alone at the claim, but there was work enough to keep him busy until mid-afternoon, barring the unexpected.

He wondered what effect Eve’s death would have on the people of Rafter. They were not all bad—in fact, they were no worse than most people in most towns. Perhaps a few more had been willing to go along than would usually be found, but there must have been some dissenting opinions, even though the people who held those opinions had kept still.

Such fear as he had seen in Rafter could not continue very long. The people were wary, they doubted every stranger; they lived with the worry that at any moment the house they had built would come tumbling about their ears.

He was working close against the face of the drift, scraping up the last of the rock, when it came to him.

Lon Court . . .

Of course. He had heard the name. Gentry had scratched Lon C into the sand before he died, and Shevlin remembered that he had once heard talk of Lon Court, a killer, a man who worked for big cattle outfits, or anyone else who had need of his services.

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