.45-Caliber Firebrand by Peter Brandvold Read Free Book Online Page A

know, neither. You killed Franklin Evans—rancher up around Julesburg.”
    Stonily, Cuno held the man’s gaze. “Trent, you look as happy as a tick on a fat dog.”
    â€œHey!” Kuttner objected. He’d collapsed into a chair by the fire, facing his employer and Cuno.
    Unfazed by the remark, Trent merely shook his head and chuckled. “Bastard ran me off my first homestead up in the Antelope Hills, about twenty miles from Evans’s headquarters. That’s when I headed here, to the backside of the Great Divide. Always meant to go back and beef the bastard myself, but then I started raisin’ herds and kids, and the opportunity exhausted itself. Besides, I figured the old rattlesnake had done bit the wrong dog fox and got his head chewed off.
    â€œYessir, I heard about all that,” the old rancher continued. “And then, after this powder keg with Leaping Wolf’s daughter exploded, and I found myself in dire need of a supply run to get me through the winter, I heard your name mentioned by a few fellas out on the range. Said they’d seen the brawny blond firebrand who killed Franklin Evans haulin’ freight for Fort Dixon.”
    Trent shrugged his bony shoulders. “So I fired off a telegraph to Dwight Doyle at the mercantile in Crow Feather to hire you on. And I gave him my list to fill.”
    â€œBut he left out the part listing the rifles—to me, anyways.”
    â€œAh, we’re back to the rifles.” Suddenly, Trent leaned forward and rammed his fist onto the desktop. His nose swelled with exasperation. “Damnit, with Leaping Wolf runnin’ wild across my graze, I needed a good thirty repeaters to get me through the winter. One for every man I got, with plenty ammo for each gun. And by God, I was gonna get it any way I could.
    â€œI knew you could get your wagons through, so I knew you were the one. No, I didn’t tell you about the rifles—I didn’t tell anyone about the rifles except for Doyle—because I didn’t want it to get around that Leaping Wolf was on the prod. If that happened, I’d never get anyone to run me freight! If I didn’t starve out this winter, I’d be overrun with savages, and old Leaping Wolf’s squaws would be mopping out their lodges with my purty silver hair!”
    Suddenly, Trent winked as he gazed across the desk at Cuno. “Except you. I knew you’d come. I knew you wouldn’t be afraid. Even see it as a challenge. But most of the other freighters I’ve known are far too concerned about their wagons and their mules—”
    â€œAnd their men . . .”
    â€œAnd their men . . . for any derring-do!”
    â€œWell, I’ve got one dead man, a burned wagon, and six dead mules, and if the rest of that ammo had caught fire, I’d be out more wagons and more mules, and I might not be sitting here squawking about it.”
    Trent donned his glasses, picked up a pen from a holder, and flipped the cap off an ink bottle. He looked at Cuno over his smudged spectacles. “Will a bank draft do?”
    â€œAs long as I make it back to Crow Feather to cash it.”
    Trent dipped the pen in the ink bottle and scribbled out the check. He set the pen aside, ripped the check out of the book, and tossed it across the desk to Cuno.
    Cuno picked it up. He’d been prepared to get his tail up all over again, but the amount—two thousand dollars—more than covered the agreed-upon figure as well as an additional amount for the mules and the wagon and for the thirty rifles Cuno had been hauling in ignorance.
    â€œI know there’s no covering the cost of a dead man,” Trent said, “but it’s a tough country. If you look close, you’ll see a grave in every wash.”
    â€œI’ll tell that to Dutch’s woman in Crow Feather,” Cuno said. Rasmussen had lived with an old whore named Glenda when he wasn’t hoorahing mules at the