The Last Hard Men by Garfield Brian

Author:Garfield, Brian [Garfield, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2011-12-27T06:00:00+00:00

Seven

“Slow and easy, now,” Provo’s voice said in the darkness. “We won’t get another change of horses—these are going to have to do us.” The heavy, raspy voice reached Mike Shelby’s ears dimly, as if through a strong crosswind. Everything was a little hazy in Shelby’s consciousness; all he wanted in the world was sleep. The horse moved like a rocking chair under him and he had to fight to stay upright on the saddle; several times he almost fell off. At times he thought he’d have preferred to stay in the penitentiary and serve out his time. But he’d only served six months and had another nine and a half years to go. He guessed it would all depend on whether Provo was telling the truth about splitting up his buried cache of railroad gold. In the first place Shelby didn’t trust anybody much, and in the second place nobody was a hundred percent sure Provo even had the gold, let alone was willing to part with it. But one thing was certain: Provo was twice as trail-wise as any of the rest of them. Provo wasn’t just bragging when he kept reminding them that without him they’d have been captured a long time ago and sent back to the hole with years added on to their sentences: Provo knew every trick in the book and some that weren’t in any book. But Shelby didn’t like him much and didn’t trust him anymore than he trusted anybody else. Shelby hadn’t trusted anybody since his mother had run off with a drummer in Nineteen-ought-Five. He’d never known who his father was. His mother had kept company with a lot of men but at least she’d looked after her kid, until the drummer came along. Then she left him behind without even saying good-bye, as if he was an old towel she didn’t want to bother to pack.

He was nineteen years old—twenty next month—but he’d covered a lot of ground in his time. He’d been eleven when his mother had left Lordsburg. The fat old Mexican woman who ran the Occidental Café had taken him in, given him bed and board in exchange for the chores Shelby did around the place. About all he could remember about her was standing in the kitchen watching her slap big old corn tortillas from one fat arm to the other. He hadn’t stayed long; after his mother pulled out he didn’t like Lordsburg much at all. One night he’d stolen a horse and saddle and headed for Silver City. The truant officer picked him up less than five miles out of Lordsburg. They sent him to the county work farm for a year and he met some older and tougher kids there. Shelby was a quick learner. He had a talent for picking the toughest and brightest people around and studying how they did things. He’d hooked up with a fifteen-year-old named Dick Larson and they’d become good friends. When they got out of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.