Borden Chantry by Louis L’Amour Read Free Book Online

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    He turned his horse toward home, stripped the gear and turned it into the corral.
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    K IM BACA WAS a slender, wiry young man, half-Irish, the other half Spanish and Apache. No more than twenty-two, he was already a known man in four states, two territories and Mexico. He had a lean, saturnine face, a quizzical sense of humor, and was known to be a dead shot, yet he had never been involved in any shooting scrapes.
    Borden Chantry picked up his keys and walked back to the cell. Over his shoulder he called, “Big Injun? Bring us a pot of coffee and a couple of cups.”
    He opened the cell and stepped in, leaving the door ajar for Big Injun.
    Kim Baca looked up at him, smiling faintly. “Aren’t you scared I’ll get away?”
    Chantry grinned and shrugged. “Go ahead…if you feel lucky.”
    Baca laughed. “Not me. The odds are all wrong. Besides, I saw you in a couple of fights. You’re no bargain.”
    â€œThanks.” Chantry tilted his chair back against the wall. “Kim, what in God’s name made you pull a fool thing like lifting Johnson’s horses? Everybody in the country knows that team.”
    â€œHow was I to know that? Anyway, I was mad. Somebody beat me to the horse I was after.”
    Was it a hunch? Or had he guessed it before this? Chantry looked up at him. “Big sorrel? Three white stockings?”
    Baca stared at him, then took the toothpick on which he was chewing and threw it to the floor. “You mean you had me pegged? You even knew what horse I was after?”
    â€œMighty fine horse,” Chantry replied, admitting nothing. “I wouldn’t blame you.”
    Baca got up. “Marshal, you just don’t know! That was one of the fastest-stepping horses I ever saw! Gentle as a baby, yet it could go all day an’ all night! I tell you, I could have loved that horse! I mean it! I never wanted anything so bad in my life!”
    â€œKnow who owned it?”
    â€œHell, no! I picked him up in Raton Pass. I saw that horse coming and figured it might be the law on my tail, so I put my glass on him. You never saw a horse move like that one! I just told myself, ‘Kim, this is it. That’s your horse.’ So I fell in behind him.
    â€œI had to watch my step, too, because that rider, whoever he was, was canny. I hadn’t been followin’ him more’n a few miles before he knew it. Somehow or other he gave me the slip and I lost him until I rode into Trinidad and saw the horse tied to a hitching rail there.”
    â€œRemember the brand?” Chantry spoke casually, yet he was mentally holding his breath.
    Did Baca hesitate? “No,” he said, “I can’t say that I do.”
    â€œYou see any more of him?”
    â€œNo.” Was there another instant of hesitation? “I heard him ask after this town, so I came on ahead. Rode in here an’ waited for him to make it…Then he never showed.”
    â€œYou never saw him again?”
    â€œMarshal,” Kim Baca spoke slowly, “I got a thing about horses. I wouldn’t admit to a thing in court an’ if you say I said this, I’ll say I never…But I never stole a horse to sell. I stole ’em because I wanted ’em. I wanted ’em my own self. Except that team of Johnson’s. I never figured to steal them horses, just got mad an’ stole ’em out of spite when I didn’t get the sorrel.”
    Borden Chantry filled Kim’s cup and his own. He had an idea what was in Kim’s mind. He was a known horse thief, caught with the goods. In many places that would have meant an immediate hanging, yet Chantry had arrested him, brought him back and was holding him in jail.
    A man had been murdered. That man’s horse had disappeared. What more likely suspect than Kim Baca? What easier way to close the books on a crime?
    â€œBaca,” he said slowly, “you punched a lot of cows in your time.