Over on the Dry Side by Louis L’Amour Read Free Book Online Page B

doorway.
    The girl was facing him, wide-eyed. For a moment they stared at each other.
    â€œYou’re more beautiful than I expected,” he said.
    â€œWho are you?”
    â€œYou cannot guess? You knew my brother, I think, and he was not unlike me.”
    â€œYou are Owen Chantry, then? Yes, I see his face in yours. I knew Clive. He was a good man. A silent, mysterious man, but good. Too good a man for what happened to him.”
    â€œThat needs to be talked about,” Chantry said quietly. “I noticed a coffeepot inside, but no coffee. Did you bring some? I notice you have a lunch.”
    Her eyes searched his face. He was tall, leaner than she had seen at first, but wide-shouldered. There was a deceptive stillness in his face, deceptive because she already knew much of this man.
    A strange, morose man, Clive had said. Too good with a gun at too early an age. In the War Between the States, Owen had at first been a wild and reckless leader in the cavalry, a man whom the war had changed. The war, and other things.
    She took the pack from the horse and walked past him into the cabin. She turned. “Will you build a fire? I think there’s enough here for two, if we eat lightly.”
    â€œEating lightly has become a way of life for me,” he said wryly. “Yet there have been good times.”
    He went out to the edge of the woods and broke the small dry twigs off the lower trunks of several trees, the little branches that start to grow, then die. From a fallen tree he peeled bark, and then he walked back into the house.
    There he knelt, crushing the dry bark in his hand, placing it on the old ashes, and then the twigs. When he had the fire going, he added the larger branches. There was a good stock of dry wood in the house, and more alongside, most of it old now, and rotting.
    â€œYou know they intend to kill you?” she asked.
    â€œI have that impression,” he said. “I met some of them but they didn’t seem disposed to attempt a killing then.”
    â€œStrawn wasn’t with them…nor Freka.”
    He looked around at her. “Tom Freka? And Jake Strawn?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWell, well. That, of course, changes the situation somewhat.”
    â€œYou know them then?”
    â€œWe’ve never met, if that’s what you mean. But I know them by reputation. Yes, I know them. I’d say the company you choose is not always the best.”
    â€œNo? Perhaps I didn’t choose them. Perhaps I was put into a situation I never wanted.”
    Chantry chuckled softly. “That happens to many of us. I guess the true worth of a man or woman is just how far they can rise above it.” And then he added, the smile disappearing, “And I haven’t risen far.”
    She turned and stared at him. “Do you know the whole story?”
    He shrugged. “Who does? I think I know most of it. I never believed it all.” He smiled wryly. “One hears so many stories.…Lost mines, treasures buried by outlaws.…The country is full of such stories, most of them pure nonsense. Most people who have gold do not bury it. Clive had no interest in gold, I think. But he had a scholar’s ways, which took him to Mexico to start with. Were you close to him?”
    â€œNo, not close. He didn’t confide in me.” The smell of coffee reached them.
    Chantry leaned back and looked out through the open door at the way the sunlight fell through the aspen leaves. “Nor me either,” he said. “After he got back from Mexico, he was a silent man.”
    She turned around to him. “Yes, he was,” she said. “And also a gentle man.”
    â€œMac Mowatt has surmised…as others must have…that a treasure of gold was buried here, or somewhere about it.…But that is purely their speculation. Nothing of the kind is certain.”
    He smiled again, and the girl was amazed at the way his face became warm and bright.