The Devil's Legion by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone [Johnstone, William W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-10-26T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Chilled, wet, and miserable, Frank huddled in a tiny cave in the hills as night fell. He had found the place around mid-afternoon. More of a niche in the side of a hill, tucked away underneath a cliff that bulged out above it, the cave was barely big enough for both Frank and Stormy. But they were out of the rain here, and more importantly, out of sight of anybody who came looking for them.

He knew he had given Buckston and the other Lazy F hands the slip earlier in the day. He had gotten up high enough to watch his back trail, and although he had spotted the riders twice, he could tell from the way they were wandering around that they didn’t have any real idea where he was. He had waited until they were gone, then resumed his climb toward the Mogollon Rim.

Just because Buckston and the other men finally had turned back didn’t mean that Frank was in the clear, and he knew it. Buckston would have wanted to get Howard Flynn’s body back to the ranch house and tell the cattleman’s niece what had happened. But Frank had a feeling that once Buckston had attended to that grim chore, the ranch foreman would be back out on the range again, searching for the man he believed to be Flynn’s murderer.

After finding the cave, Frank had brought in a small pile of broken branches and moss from the trees that covered the hillside. At first the branches were too wet to burn, but he had been letting them dry all afternoon and now, as the light of day faded, he hoped they were dry enough to catch fire. He took a waterproof tin container that held matches from his saddlebags and knelt beside the branches. He made a small mound with some of the moss, which definitely had dried and would serve as tinder, and arranged some of the branches around it, leaning them against each other to form a tepeelike structure. Then he snapped one of the matches to life with his thumbnail and held the flame to the moss.

It caught right away, blackening and curling as a tendril of smoke rose from it. A few tiny flames leaped up and caressed the pine branches. Frank leaned over and blew gently on the fire, causing it to flare up a little more. Even the faint light that it gave off seemed bright in the gloom of the cave. More smoke twisted into the air. Flames danced around the branches....

And went out.

Frank bit back a curse. Railing against the bad luck that had followed him ever since he rode into these parts wouldn’t do any good. If a man didn’t like how things were going, he took action and changed the course of events, even if it was something as simple as starting a fire. He poked more moss between the branches and struck another match. Again he lit the tinder and leaned over to blow on it.

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