Journey into Violence by William W. Johnstone Read Free Book Online

roughshod over lesser men, it sounded like weakness.
    â€œYes I am, Mr. Raven,” Kate said. “And I’ll let Frank Cobb hang you with my blessing. You have a choice to make. For your sake, I hope it’s the right and honorable one.”
    â€œDamn it, lady. Do you have balls under that skirt?” Raven said.
    Kate’s beautiful face hardened. “Mr. Raven, push me hard enough and you’ll sure find out.”
    Raven had lost Poke Hylle, his ace in the hole. When he looked into Frank Cobb’s eyes, he saw resolve and a readiness to kill. He saw the way of his own death and made up his mind. His hands were no match for Frank Cobb. It went against the grain, but he had to eat crow. “All right, Mrs. Kerrigan, I’ll round up your herd . . . but when the work is done, I expect your hands to help gather mine.”
    â€œApologize to Mrs. Kerrigan for the remark you just made,” Frank said, his eyes hard. “A gentlemen doesn’t speak that way to a lady. Not in my presence he doesn’t.”
    â€œI apologize,” Raven said. “I’m a rough-mannered man and not often in the company of ladies.”
    Kate let the man save face. “Your apology is accepted, Mr. Raven. I have already forgotten the matter. As to helping you with your cattle, that sounds perfectly agreeable to me. I’m sure working together in perfect harmony we can get the job done.”
    Frank Cobb took his foot out of the stirrup and used it to shove Standish off the mustang. He fell so hard the loud thump made Kate’s horse start. “Raven, I guess you’ll need this one for the roundup.”
    The rancher turned to his riders. “Help Lou to his feet. Untie his hands and get the damn noose off him.” He looked at Kate. “Would you really have hanged me, Mrs. Kerrigan?”
    â€œOh yes, most assuredly.” Kate smiled. “Here’s an invitation, Mr. Raven. After the gather is finished and before we take to the trail, you must come to my place for afternoon tea and we’ll have sponge cake. Have you ever eaten sponge cake before?”
    The big rancher seemed at a loss for words, but finally he managed, “No. I guess not.”
    â€œYou will like it very much,” Kate said. “It’s Queen Victoria’s favorite, you know.”
    * * *
    Ezra Raven was as good as his word, and the Kerrigan hands rode with his own to complete the gather and get the yearlings branded. A month later, he and Kate were ready to take to the Chisholm, but he never did show up for afternoon tea.

C HAPTER N INE
    A cattle drive could run into a lot of problems before the cows got to where they were supposed to be. Stampedes, drought, floods, and sickness were common. As Kate Kerrigan drove her three thousand head north, the prairie grass was fresh and the Canadian and Cimarron rivers were wet and so were their streams.
    After two months on the trail and only a couple days before they reached the cattle pens at the railhead one of Kate’s drovers was thrown by a mustang and busted up his leg. He rode into Dodge City in some style in the back of the chuck wagon.
    Kate took one look at the bustling, roaring cow town and decided she had never seen the like. Even the wild Five Points district of New York couldn’t compare to the dusty, smelly, fly-ridden Gomorrah of the Plains. Everything and everybody in Dodge was “full up and raring to go” as the eastern newspapers said. Everybody lived for the day and to hell with tomorrow.
    Most frontiersmen considered Dodge the finest city in the West, a seductive, beckoning utopia where a man could get anything he wanted—for a price. But some citizens of the more respectable sort believed the devil had carelessly allowed a chunk of hell to slip though his scaly hands and it had landed smack dab in the middle of the Kansas prairie.
    Kate rode past dozens of saloons, brothels, and dance halls. Among the finest were