Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles (Cash Laramie & Gideon Miles Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

low, and as Kid Eddie's lone bullet whistled past Cash's head, careening away into the distance, Cash tripped the hammer of his Colt onto a cartridge. Eddie's face grimaced in pain, his left hand plunging to cover the hole in his stomach. He took a halting step forward, raised his pistol again, but Cash's second round tunneled into the outlaw's chest knocking him back and down.
    Cash rushed over, surprised to see the boy had life left in him, though it was draining quick, a red ocean making an island of his body in the dirt.
    "Marshal?"
    "I'm here, Eddie."
    "I can't see."
    Cash placed his hand under the Kid's head, lifting it from the rocky ground.
    "Mar-shal."
    "Yeah, Eddie."
    "Tell—tell the story good. That I was fast. That I died—strong." Some blood slipped from his mouth as his lips quivered with words.
    "Sure, Eddie." Cash watched the eyes sparkle and then fade, the facial muscles relaxed. Cash closed Eddie's eyes with his hand.
    The first faint sprinkle touched his forearm, and by the time he had the Kid underground and was fixing a cross in place, a warm steady rain watered the landscape. Cash had never been much of a religious man but on bent knee and one hand wrapped around the tip of the cross, he mumbled, "Lord, he started out as somebody's boy."
    The word "boy" stuck in his trembling voice as the rain bounced off the makeshift headstone.
    Not knowing what more to say, he walked to the hilltop where the ambush had begun and collected the belongings of the departed cowboys. The crows would feast on their worthless pieces of skin. They didn't deserve a burial to his way of thinking.
    He led the cowboys' horses down the hill and hoisted his own saddle on the back of the strongest stud and headed across the water drenched prairie toward Cheyenne.
    * * *
    "So, that's it?" Devon Penn queried.
    Cash nodded. He pushed the tip of his cheroot into the flame of the lucifer and drew. He watched the end of his cigar burn an even red and dropped the match into the ornamental bronze spittoon beside the desk.
    "Good. Kid Eddie won't be doing any more harm."
    Cash sat across from Penn in the chief's office, the door ajar to combat the oppressive heat that hung in the air.
    "What's the matter, Cash?"
    He rolled the cigar between his fingers. "I wanted to believe him."
    "What changed your mind."
    "Well, Eddie coming straight at me with a revolver, of course, but before that, those wanted posters you gave me, stuck in the back of my head. I considered letting him go after the ambush and then tracking him to the next town, somewhere else, where I could waylay him without a fight. But the way he ground those men down—" Cash's voice trailed off.
    "You would have had to face him down one way or another and you may have saved lives by finishing it when you did."
    Cash stood, taking his black Stetson from the corner of Penn's desk and adjusting it low to his brow. He moved the cigar to the corner of his mouth.
    "What kind of marker did you leave?"
    "Half the truth.
Here lies Eddie Morash. Fast gun and beloved son
," Cash said heading for the door.
    "Cash."
    The broad shoulders stopped in the frame of the door, tilting his head to the side.
    "Yeah?"
    "You were just doing your job."
    Cash rubbed his chin and slowly nodded.
    "Yeah—that's the hell of it."

MILES TO GO
     
     
    "Penn can go to hell," Cash Laramie growled.
    Gideon Miles shot his partner a knowing grin as he tightened the cinch around his pinto. "You heard the chief. You have to testify in court the day after tomorrow and I need to track Van Jones before the trail grows cold."
    "Two days won't make a difference."
    The marshals stood outside the livery. The stable boy, Keith, held the reins while Miles buckled on his saddlebags. Crowds bustled by on the rutted streets of Cheyenne as a young lad hawked the
Wyoming Gazette
.
    "Van Jones is headed for his hideout near Owl Creek Mountains," continued Cash. "By the time you catch up with him, he'll have his gang backing him for