This Violent Land by William W. Johnstone Read Free Book Online

nothin’.”
    â€œYou want to take that up with him?” Pete asked.
    â€œNo,” Merlin admitted.
    â€œI didn’t think so. There’ll be other jobs. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
    Leaving the dead bodies and the nervously whinnying horses behind them, the three men took their paltry proceeds from the brutal robbery and rode off.
    * * *
    Two hours after the three men rode away, Dooley Cooper, owner of the Summit County Stage Line, was one of five men walking around the wreckage. The five bodies had already been loaded onto a wagon, ready to be taken on in to Eureka.
    â€œBoss, them two hurt horses is goin’ to have to be put down,” said one of Cooper’s men. “I don’t know how they lived this long, hurt as bad as they are.”
    â€œYes, Carl, by all means, put them down,” Cooper said. “We’re going to have to dig a big hole to bury them. We can’t leave them here.”
    â€œI’ve got Dewey and Perkins diggin’ now,” Carl said. “We can use the horses that weren’t hurt to pull the others out of the road.”
    â€œTake care of those poor beasts.”
    As Carl walked back over to the bleeding and suffering horses, from which the two lead animals had already been disconnected, Cooper continued to look around what was left of his stagecoach. He saw a wooden pistol lying in the road and bent down to pick it up. A name was carved in the handle.
    Billy.
    â€œI don’t recall taking on a large money shipment.” Fitzsimmons was the clerk of the Summit County Stage Line. Normally he wouldn’t have been out in the field, but when the report came in that the coach hadn’t just been robbed, but had been completely demolished, Cooper had figured he would need every man in his employ to get the mess cleaned up.
    Cooper agreed. “We didn’t have a large shipment. Whatever money the coach was carrying had to be less than one hundred dollars, or the bank would have notified us.”
    â€œWho would do something like this for less than one hundred dollars?” Fitzsimmons asked.
    Cooper showed Fitzsimmons the carved wooden pistol. “This must have belonged to the kid.” He shook his head. “What sort of lowlife would blow up a stagecoach and kill everyone in it, for any amount of money?”
    â€œHere comes the sheriff.” Fitzsimmons pointed to an approaching rider.
    â€œ Now he gets here,” Cooper said in disgust.
    Sheriff Jesse Hector was a tall, very thin man with dark hair, a pencil-thin mustache, and a prominent Adam’s apple. Dismounting, he tied his horse to the wagon containing the bodies of the five people killed in the stagecoach blast.
    â€œDamn, they did a job on it, didn’t they?” Hector said as he approached what was left of the wreckage. Almost half of it had already been cleared away.
    â€œSheriff, you say that almost in admiration,” Cooper said. “There’s absolutely nothing about those criminals to admire. They’re animals. They killed five human beings, four horses, and destroyed one of my coaches.”
    â€œHow much money did they get for all this?” Hector asked as he looked over the wreckage.
    â€œI’m not sure. We’ll have to wait and see what the bank says. All I know is, they got less than one hundred dollars.”
    The sheriff jerked around with a surprised look on his face. “Did you say they got less than one hundred dollars?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œBut how can that be? It was my understanding that the bank was going to be transferring ten thousand dollars today.”
    â€œWhere did you hear that?”
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe Scott told me.”
    Matthew Scott was the president of the bank.
    Cooper shook his head. “Well if he was plannin’ on shippin’ that much money, he must have decided to put it off until later. We have a contract. By contract,