Novel 1966 - The Broken Gun (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Read Free Book Online

like me.
    Belle’s horse slowed, and she fell back beside me. The trail was narrow, but there was room for horses to double up. Doris, in fact, had pulled ahead to join Colin.
    “Be careful,” Belle warned softly. “Be very careful.”
    “How about you?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, if something happens to me, you may be a witness. And as you say, you’re not really a member of the family.”
    She was startled, and for a moment she made no response. “I don’t think they would harm me,” she said finally, but without any real assurance.
    “Why do they want your place?” I asked her.
    She shrugged. “I think they would like to own everything in the area. They have tried off and on for several years to buy it. They even tried to buy my sister’s share.”
    “You owned it together?”
    “Yes.”
    “What happened when she was killed? I mean to her share of it?”
    “It reverted to me. That was the way Grandad’s will was written. If she had had children they would have inherited, but she had none.”
    We rode on then in silence. An idea had occurred to me that I hesitated to suggest, but finally I did. At least, I asked a question that was tantamount to a suggestion. “Did they know that? I mean, did the Wells family know about the will?”
    “I didn’t even realize it myself until they were settling her estate. And I am sure she herself didn’t know.”
    Something had been disturbing me as we rode along, as something sometimes will that edges into the outer fringe of one’s consciousness. Suddenly it came clearly to my attention.
    There were horse tracks, fresh ones, that must have been made only a short time before we had come along. Here and there the tracks of the horses ahead of me in our group had wiped them out, but the earlier rider had kept his horse off the trail or on its very edge most of the time. He had ridden carefully, and several times he had stopped to look back. I could see the tracks where the horse had half turned, and there would be several tracks, as of an impatient horse dancing about, eager to be going on.
    “Is this trail used often?” I asked.
    “Almost never, I think. Unless somebody is riding to the Rincon or over into the New Mountains, they take the jeep trail that leads to my place on Cougar.”
    But I was almost sure that rider had ridden along the trail ahead of us earlier that morning. He had ridden that trail since dewfall, that much I knew.
    Jimbo rode up beside us. “You two seem to be hittin’ it off.” He looked at me. “Won’t do you no good,” he said. “She’s a cold babe. Won’t do you no good at all.”
    I ignored the remark. “Are you working cattle up this way?” I asked.
    “Nothin’ but strays over here. We drift our stock over toward Shirt-tail this time of year. Grass is better over there. And up along the Verde bottoms.”
    So it was unlikely anybody from the ranch had come this way, unless it was somebody whose chief concern was to prepare for our arrival. I could not forget that Pio Alvarez was somewhere about, and if there was one thing I was sure about it was the mind of Pio Alvarez.
    At least, I knew it in terms of violence, and I knew he was as cunning as a wild animal, and far more dangerous. Two of his brothers had been killed, at least one of them by a Strawberry rider. Unless I had forgotten all I had learned, Pio would be somewhere on Strawberry at this instant.
    Benton Seward had left early to drive back to his own ranch, the Bar-Bell…or so he had said.
    Where was Mark Wilson?
    Suddenly I broke into a cold sweat. Slowly but surely, fear had been coming upon me. No matter what happened, I could expect no help. I was in this alone.
    This ranch and the land for miles in any direction belonged to Colin and Jimbo Wells. This was their world. The men employed on the ranch were their men. I was an interloper, and would be considered so.
    What they did not realize, I thought, was that my death would stir up more trouble than