Arkansas Assault Read Online Free PDF

and he wasn’t mean. He used any excuse to come in here and see Liz. Lord, he had this terrible crush on her. She knew that she was still attractive at age thirty-two. She had that pretty face and a shape that had held its shapeliness and she laughed in such a soft, gentle way that she could charm a drunken grizzly bear.
    She just wished Mike was about fifteen years older. For her sake and his.
    “Hi,” he said, immediately blushing.
    He almost never had a good excuse to visit the newspaper office. In fact, most of his excuses were embarrassingly bad, usually revolving around how we wanted to learn the newspaper business and be a journalist someday. Right. His father would send him east to school—his father had graduated from Dartmouth and never let you forget it—and then, like his old man, Mike would go into banking. The family owned fourteen banks in the state. By the time Mike took the reins, that number would probably be in the vicinity of twenty. Nobody sane would turn down a job like that to work and starve at a newspaper.
    “I might have a story for you.”
    She had to admit, this surprised her. This was the first time he’d ever offered her a story lead. But before she got too excited, she had to remember that this was a kid who practically swooned every time he saw her on the street. And who would say anything to justify stopping by the newspaper office.
    “A story?”
    He leaned forward to stage whisper his response. “Fella named Fargo over at the Royalton Hotel told me that two gunnys broke into his room and kidnapped a girl he was with.”
    She looked at him skeptically. “Now, did this really happen, Red?”
    “It sure did. And not very long ago, either.”
    “And his name is Fargo.”
    “That’s right. Big fella. Tough looking.”
    “I’ve heard of him,” she said. “He’s tough all right.” Liz smiled. Couldn’t help it. By anybody’s standard, Mike here had brought her one hell of a good newspaper story. She reached over and patted his hand, knowing that he was probably going to faint if she held it there very long. “You may just become a reporter yet, Red.”

6
     
     
    On a sunny day like this, it was hard to imagine a more beautiful land than the Ozark Plateau. Ragged mountain tops gleaming in the light, deep forests filled with game, and streams that gleamed clean and pure, perfect for the fishing the Trailsman wanted to do.
    The tracks remained clear, the impression of the wheel with the nail in it clear as a beacon, no matter how many other tracks tried to obscure it.
    He’d gone maybe a mile down the red clay road, the land falling away here and there on the plateau to reveal deep gorges, when his hat went sailing off thanks to a bullet.
    Fargo acted instinctively, and just in time to avoid the second bullet that immediately followed the first. He dropped down on the side of his horse so the shooter couldn’t see his head or torso, reining the horse over to a copse of pine trees several yards off of the trail.
    There he yanked his Sharps from its scabbard, rolled away from the horse to a point behind the pines, and jerked up to his feet so that he could return fire.
    The shooter was good but not that good. He pumped several more shots at Fargo, each one nicking at the pine behind which the Trailsman hid. But none scored a bulls-eye.
    The shooter was hiding behind his own copse of pines on the other side of the road. Fargo did a little shooting of his own. He wanted to force some return fire so he knew exactly where the shooter was. They could sit here all day firing at each other and not accomplish a damned thing. Fargo wanted to know who the shooter was and what he wanted. Did he have anything to do with the kidnapping? If he didn’t, what could he have against Fargo? The Trailsman hadn’t really met anybody else except the livery man. Since the shooter didn’t seemed inclined to decisive action, Fargo took it upon himself to bring this little adventure to a close.
    He