The Loner 3 by Sheldon B. Cole

Author:Sheldon B. Cole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: lynching, colt revolver, piccadilly publishing, pulp westerns, westerns ebook, gunfighters and outlaws, westerns 1880s, boothill, shedlon b cole westerns
Publisher: Piccadilly

Six – Some Town, Moon

Sundown covered five miles before Blake drew rein and gave him a breather. They were in sight of the dim lights of Moon prison. Remembering that Corey Starr had started all this trouble for him, Blake was tempted to pay the warden a visit and hammer some of the acid out of him. But there were too many men in the stone fortress. So he let Sundown pick his way through the sparsely timbered slopes and then up to the high ground where he had killed Larry Parrant. The bodies of the four dead had been taken away but Parrant’s brother’s blood showed black on one of the two boulders. Blake thought of Rance Parrant. The outlaw was somewhere in this country, on the run. But he knew enough of Parrant to be certain that he wouldn’t run for long. Nor would he leave the area where his brother’s killer was alive and on the drift.

Blake pulled his denim jacket closer. The evening wind was cool and there was a hint of further rain in the air. The moon was out, but clouds continually cut across it, blotting out its light. This suited Blake and he kept as much as he could to cover and cantered Sundown along the high country until he came to the clearing he’d reached after angling away from the river.

Tracks on the soft ground showed that he was not the first rider to come this way. A careful examination of the tracks told him that two sets of riders had passed through today with only hours between them. Rance Parrant and his two companions probably explained one set of tracks. He figured they’d come through here after the Moon bank robbery. He decided that the second outfit could only be Corey Starr and some of his guards, after Parrant’s hide.

Blake put Sundown into the river. The current was still strong enough to take the horse downstream a few hundred yards. On the other side, he soon picked up the tracks of both sets of horses. Riding easily he went into the high country and at sunup came to a ridge-line and drew rein. He was checking his forearm wound when he heard a noise in the brush behind him. He came about in the saddle, calling himself ten kinds of a fool for being careless.

Then the brush parted and old Josh McHarg came through astride his mule. He smiled a greeting at Blake but his wrinkled old face showed plainly that he was deeply worried about something.

Blake snapped, “Damn you, McHarg, you could get yourself shot down creeping up like that.”

“Figured it was you in danger of gettin’ your head blowed off, Durant. I had a bead on you for the last five minutes.”

Blake scrubbed his hands down his face, drawing the tiredness out of his features. McHarg swung off the mule. But then, glancing nervously around, he pushed the mule back into a hole in the heavier brush and pulled his rifle from the pack.

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