Destined to Die by George G. Gilman Read Free Book Online

a broad valley that had opened out from the end of the riverside bluff that crowded the homestead back down the trail.
    Deep in the timber, the foliage of which offered pleasant shade from the blazing sun that was nearing its midday peak, he reached a clearing and reined in the gelding. The cleared area, some two acres, was man-made by the felling of trees over a number of years. The oldest stumps, many of them rotted, were closest to the river bank. And some of these first-to-be-felled trees had been used to construct a northern-style log cabin far enough back from the water’s edge to escape flooding when the river was swollen by rain.
    Two shade oaks had been left growing at the front corners of the cabin. Out back of it there was a high pile of cordwood cut to even lengths and parked beside this a two-wheeled pushcart. On the eastern side of the clearing a half dozen recently-felled trees lay sprawled out from their yellow-topped stumps. Two had already been cleaned of branches, which were smouldering with a great deal of smoke on a tidily-built bonfire. While a man was working with a bucking saw and a small broad axe to strip another, tossing the severed trimmings on to the fire.
    A tall, broadly-built, muscular man wearing only a pair of denim pants and calked boots, was hatless despite the strong sunlight that poured down, unobstructed, into the clearing.
    The logger had his back to Barnaby Gold and was a rather indistinct form through the lazily drifting smoke of the fire. The thud of the axe, the rasp of the saw and the crackling of the sap-moist timber on the fire acted to mask the thud of hooves on the sun-browned grass of the clearing until the mounted man had ridden through the smoke and was within twenty feet of the naked-to-the-waist man. Who whistled tunelessly while he worked.
    ‘Good morning to you, sir.’
    Gold spoke as he reined in the gelding during a pause when the logger dropped the saw to pick up the axe.
    The whistling was abruptly curtailed and for a full second the man remained in a frozen stoop. Gold delved a hand into the holed pocket on the left side of his coat and gripped the mother-of-pearl butt of the studded .45. But his green eyes were lit with a personable smile when the man whirled toward him, axe held in an aggressive, cross-body position.
    ‘Shit, kid, what’s the big idea?’
    He was in his fifties - maybe even early sixties. He had long, greasy black hair like an Indian, framing a face stained to a darker shade of brown than his heavily haired torso, the flesh inscribed with countless deep lines where it was exposed above his thickly growing grey and black beard. There was resentful anger in his light blue eyes and the way his discoloured teeth showed between lips all but concealed by the beard and its accompanying moustache.
    ‘Uh?’
    The logger lowered the axe and half-sat on the tree he was trimming: ran a hirsute forearm over his face to clean off most of the sweat beads hanging in the cracks of his skin.
    ‘One thing I can’t abide is bein’ crept up on.’
    Gold maintained his grip on the gun but did not thumb back the hammer. With a jerk of his right thumb over his shoulder he indicated the half-width of the clearing behind him.
    ‘Rode my horse from there to here, sir. Can’t see that as creeping.’
    ‘And I’ve spent best part of sixty-one years listenin’ to bigger brutes than these saplings crashin’ down, kid, Which ain’t done my hearin’ any good at all.’
    ‘I beg your pardon, sir.’
    ‘And don’t call me, sir. I ain’t been bull of the woods for a long time. Name’s John Lloyd Larkin. The hillbillies around here call me just JL. What can I do for you, kid?’
    The alarm at being startled had gone and now he was peering with curiosity at his visitor, and it was obvious that his sight as well as his hearing was impaired.
    ‘Not a thing. I’m just passing through. Needed to be sure you wouldn’t try to stop me.’
    Larkin had examined him from