Slaughter's way by John Thomas Edson Read Free Book Online Page B

lucky and found an ideal place just begging for them to snap it up and put it to use. The spread's previous owner had been a footloose drifter who preferred listening to hound dogs making trail music to working cattle. In the end, after a few years of mismanagement, the man took his pack of redbone and blue-tick hounds and pulled up stakes, heading somewhere, anywhere, that his talents for hunting down stock-killing bears or cougars would be appreciated. He

    left behind him a rickety log cabin, a sun-warped, dilapidated bam, a couple of partially standing corrals, a scattering of branded scrub beef and a mortgage with the local banker.
    When Scar Taggert made an offer for the property, the banker jumped at the chance. The way he saw it, the hound-dog man would not be back and he hoped to retrieve some of his bank's money out of the business. It said much for Scar Taggert*s powers of persuasion that he managed to obtain the place by putting down only a small deposit. Of course, the banker had not seen the Scar s brothers. Bill and Zeke, when he had made the agreement.
    That had been six months back and already the Taggerts agreed that for once they had made a mistake in selecting a center of operations. Sure, they found an outlet for selling either cattle or butchered beef without too many embarrassing questions being asked about ownership. The ranges around had plenty of cattle on them, aldiough little of the stock carried the Taggerts* brand. Not Qiat a minor detail such as brands ever bothered the Taggerts—or had not ujitil they settled the Blantyre County range. Mostly they took what they wanted, made their sales and pulled out before pubhc opinion reached the point where it started to think of ropes and cottonwood hoedown v^th the brothers as guests of honor.
    In Blantyre County the Taggerts found men who would not willingly sit back even for small losses. While the brothers had never figured in the Texas Rangers' "Bible Two"—^that yearly Hst of fugitives from justice which the wearers of the star in the circle read more than the original book of the same name—they were not without fame. Less than a month after the Taggerts settled in Blantyre County, John Slaughter received word from a ranger friend, warning him of how the brothers were suspected of making theix living. Armed with the knowledge, Slaughter visited the Taggert place and warned the brothers of the fate awaiting anybody foolish enough to steal cattle or make big antelopes on his range.

    While not being unduly worried by threats, it was a significant fact that the Taggerts stayed clear of Slaughter s land until ready to make their jump out of Blantyre C!ounty.
    On making up their minds to leave the barren ground, the brothers decided they needed traveling money. Scar had taken a scout on Slaughter's range, knowing the ranch crew to be busy with their roundup, and found the hundred head. Even at stolen-cattle rates, a hundred head would give them suflBcient money to put miles between them and Slaughters wrath; and leave enough to set them up in anotier small spread in some more hospitable, or less suspicious area.
    So the brothers gathered up the hundred head, using their considerable skill in such matters to drive the cattle out of the valley and across the range to the south line. However, at that point Scar Taggert started to make mistakes. Give him his due, they were honest mistakes such as any man might make.
    Firstly, instead of delivering the cattle on the hoof to a man who had taken their loot before—for the brothers had raided on a small scale—Scar came up with a brilliant idea. Why take ten bucks a head, whidb was the best rate their dealer ever oflEered, when there was a trail herd in the area. A herd conmianded by a man not noted for honesty and fair dealing. Such a man would certainly pay fifteen dollars a head and might be persuaded to go as high as twenty.
    Which only went to prove one thing. Scar Taggert had made a mighty poor guess