Borden Chantry by Louis L’Amour Read Free Book Online Page B

him in time. “Frank!”
    Grudgingly, the man stopped. He was a lean, hard-visaged man who now carried a badly swollen eye, a split lip, and a swollen ear.
    â€œYou look like you tangled with a buzz saw,” Chantry said, “or somebody with a bunch of knuckles.”
    â€œYou want to see me about somethin’? If you do, say so, or I’m goin’ down the street.”
    Chantry smiled. “Frank, if you take a step before I tell you to, I’ll throw you in jail for loitering. Now you tell me. Who gave you the eye?”
    â€œNone of your damn business!”
    â€œWhere’s Puggsey?”
    â€œUp at the shack, I reckon. He minds his affairs, I mind mine.”
    â€œTell me about it, Frank. If the story sounds good I may not arrest you for murder.”
    Frank Hurley’s skin tightened. He glanced quickly, right and left. “Now see here, Marshal, that kind of talk can get a man hung. I never murdered nobody. Nobody, d’ you hear?”
    â€œThe dead man had skinned knuckles. You have been hit, obviously. I could build a case out of that, Frank.”
    â€œI never done nothing. You lay off…lay off, d’ you hear? Time Reardon says—”
    â€œYou can tell Time for me that unless you boys tell me what you know I may throw all three of you in jail. You’ve all had it coming for a long time. The murdered man was in Time’s place, there’s evidence you were in a brawl and so was he…and I haven’t heard of a fight all week. You think about it, Frank. Then if you’re in a mind to talk, come around.”
    He went home for dinner.
    At the table he told his wife about the case, reviewing it as much for himself as for her. “I got to talk to Mary Ann,” he said, at last.
    Bess stiffened. “Is that necessary, Borden? Is it really? What could that woman know? Of course, the man went there, but isn’t it rather obvious?”
    â€œNot at that hour.”
    He sat long over dinner, staring out at the sunlit street. It was a whole lot simpler out there on the range herding cows, branding stock, or doping the stock for screwworms. He could chase down a horse thief or throw a drunk in jail or take a gun off somebody, but figuring out a murder? He shook his head.
    The one thing he had not mentioned to Bess was the shot taken at him. No use to worry her. She disliked the job in its every aspect, but what would they do otherwise? Money was scarce…What had become of the stranger’s money?
    Talking to Frank Hurley had been just a straw thrown into the wind. He knew pretty much what had happened that night, and although he could prove none of it, he could have written a report on it with what he knew was true.
    â€œI’d lay a bet,” he told Bess, “that Frank an’ Puggsey followed that stranger into a dark street somewhere, an’ jumped him. Only that stranger knew how to take care of himself and whipped ’em both, whipped ’em good.
    â€œOnly I’d like to know where the stranger was going and where he was coming from. I think Time will have them tell me. He’s no fool.”
    Any man who would kill a horse like that wasn’t worth shooting. So why had he killed it? Why not just take it out and turn it loose to go home?
    To go home and perhaps start somebody back-trailing to see what happened to the rider…That had to be the reason. The killer did not want that tough outfit Reardon had referred to riding into town. So he had killed the horse, cut away the brand so it and its owner could not be identified, then caved dirt over it in hopes it might never be found.
    If the dead man had been treated like others who had fallen in drunken fights, as the killer planned, no clue would have been left.
    Picking up his hat, he went to the door. “I’ll be back for supper, Bess. If you need me I’ll be up on the street.”
    â€œOr at that Haley woman’s place.”
    â€œPart