The Tenderfoot by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand [Brand, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Western
Publisher: Roy Glashan's Library
Published: 2013-05-16T23:00:00+00:00

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16. CHRISTOPHER HOLDS A GRUDGE

The problem which lay before Harry Christopher and his men, though on the face of it simple, had complications which were most severe. At the town of Gully, Tom Morris was to become one of the guards. Between that point and the town of Cranston, there was a district of low, rolling hills. Beyond Cranston, the train descended into the flat, open country. If the train were not held up before Cranston, the robbery would have to be performed in the midst of a country where towns were comparatively thick and populous and where a complicated network of telephone and telegraph would carry the tidings from one place to another and a hundred bands of pursuers would have an excellent opportunity of cutting off the retreat of the plunderers, supposing that all went well with them in the actual robbery. It was necessary, therefore, that the holdup should take place between Gully and Cranston.

This was in itself a considerable stretch, but even here there were difficulties. It was a farming rather than a herding country. Little villages were numerous. The same difficulties, in short, which threatened the robbers in the flat lands beyond Cranston, were still a danger between Cranston and Gully, though those dangers were to a certain extent lessened because the ground was rougher and because there were, here and there, bits of forest to shroud the pursued and in which they could take at least momentary refuge if they were too closely pursued. Still, if an alarm went forth, from many and many a farm, units would ride forth to swell the posses, which were sure to be both numerous and determined. There were reasons behind this surety. In the first place, half a dozen crimes of some magnitude, including a train robbery of the first importance, had actually occurred in the region within the past two years and the men had been given an opportunity to learn how to work together to cover their district. More than that, they had not only been trained, but the pack had been well blooded. For of the half- dozen crimes, in four cases the pursuers had overtaken the miscreants and run them to the earth. They were naturally proud, therefore, of such a high percentage. They boasted that the crime wave had died out in their vicinity and that criminals sought other and easier hunting grounds.

Besides, the people of Cranston County were capable men of action quite beyond the average of the usual agrarian populations. They lived in a foothill district as has been said, with streaks and stretches of forest hither and yon, and just above them the mountains swelled up to great heights, with the big Cranston River rushing down toward the plains. Over those rough foothills and through the upper mountains, the men of the county hunted in the autumn every year. They were men born with rifles in their hands, so to speak, and their marksmanship was as keen as their hunting trips were frequent.

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