Outlaw Canyon by Jack Sheriff

Author:Jack Sheriff [Sheriff, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Robert Hale
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Part Two

The Outlaws

Chapter Nine

For Rafe and Seth Laramie, breakfast the next morning was fried beef, eggs and coffee partaken well before sunrise in Greybull’s clean little café. The café was run by George Adams’s daughter. George didn’t bother rousing her or her husband, but instead donned an apron and took over the job of cook and waiter.

‘Easier this way,’ he explained, as he leaned back against a table – his weight causing it to creak – and watched the brothers clean their plates and sit back with satisfied sighs. ‘Gets cooked and served the way I like it – which is a change from what my wife dishes up – and gives me time to get to know you boys.’

‘Nothing to know beyond what’s already been said,’ Rafe said. ‘Four years at war, another two drifting.’ He grimaced. ‘If I hadn’t crossed a river by mistake, that posse would have gone after the real bank robbers and we’d be another fifty miles closer to home.’

‘Home being?’

‘Montana. A homestead in the shadow of Big Baldy. Where our pa was born, and died, and where Ma has been waiting . . . well . . . for too damned long.’

Adams looked up as the street door clattered open and John Senior walked in. The Alamo marshal was freshly shaved, but the clothes he had worn through the previous day’s storm had dried stiff and wrinkled. He nodded to the three men.

‘I’ve eaten,’ he said, taking in the empty plates. ‘The pretty woman who runs the rooming-house dished up a hot breakfast without being asked.’

‘That sounds like Abby,’ Adams commented fondly.

‘Which means,’ Senior went on, ‘we should be ready to ride.’

‘Or perhaps not,’ George Adams said, and suddenly all eyes were on the big Greybull marshal.

‘It might look as if I run this town, and in many ways I do, but other men have influence, and I’m forced to listen to them. In Wyoming cattle country, one of those men is Kieran Stark. He rode in this morning before you boys had crawled out of bed, wants to know what’s going on.’

Rafe frowned. ‘Rode in from where?’

‘He has a small place a mile or so out of town.’

‘What can he hope to get from us?’

‘Not a lot,’ Adams said. ‘We know it, and deep down he does too. But Stark heads the Wyoming Cattlemen’s Association.’ He shook his head. ‘His position is questionable, balanced on a knife edge. Word is he secured the appointment by lying through his teeth. Gave himself an impressive record in the cattle business that doesn’t hold water.’

‘Frustrating for you.’

‘Yeah, well. That money going missing from the Alamo bank directly affects several big ranchers.’ He shrugged. ‘I guess Stark wants to show he’s doing his job, keeping up to date.’

‘Finger on the pulse,’ John Senior said, and grimaced.

‘More like two hands holding the shreds of his reputation together.’ Adams said that with a faint smile, then quickly became serious. ‘I’ve mentioned nothing to Stark of what we discussed yesterday. And it seems to me that we were wrong in a couple of respects.

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