Bullets Don't Die Read Online Free PDF

him soon enough when we get there.”
    “Hope you’ll stay around town for a while and take advantage of our hospitality. Copperhead Springs is one of the friendliest towns you’ll ever find.”
    “I’m sure I’ll be around if you can help me get a job on one of the ranches in the area,” The Kid pointed out.
    “You’re looking for a riding job?”
    “Yeah. I told you yesterday.”
    “Oh.” Tate laughed again. “Well, I’ve slept since then, haven’t I?”
    “I guess we both have.” The Kid broke out the skillet and the coffeepot and started preparing supper.
    They slept well that night and were on the trail again early the next morning. Tate brought up the cowboying job The Kid hoped to get. “Since you mentioned it last night, I’ve been doing some thinking about it, and I think the place to start would be Cy Levesy’s Broken Spoke Ranch. It’s the biggest spread in the area, and Cy’s a good friend of mine.”
    “I appreciate that,” The Kid said.
    “Of course, if Cy really doesn’t need any hands right now, I’m sure he’d take you on anyway, as a favor to me, but I wouldn’t ask him to do that.”
    The Kid shook his head. “I wouldn’t want you to.”
    “There are plenty of other outfits around that might take you on. You won’t be without work long, I guarantee that.” Tate chuckled. “After seeing the way you can shoot, maybe I ought to hire you as my deputy. I could use a good man to take over when I’m gone.”
    “I thought you already had a deputy,” The Kid said with a frown.
    “What? Me? No, I’ve been keeping the peace alone in Cottonwood Springs for years now.”
    “Copperhead Springs.”
    “What about it?”
    “You said Cottonwood Springs instead of Copperhead Springs.”
    Tate frowned and shook his head. “No, I don’t think I did.”
    “I’m pretty sure—”
    “Maybe you just heard me wrong. Copperhead, cottonwood, they’re sort of similar sounding. That’s all it was.” Tate looked relieved and went on. “I should know what the town’s called, since we were talking about Cy Levesy a few minutes ago and Cy’s one of the old-timers in those parts. He told me the story about how a wagon train full of immigrants on their way west came to the springs and decided to stop there. A town needs a good supply of water, you see, and those springs were good and strong and looked like they’d been there a long time. They weren’t likely to dry up any time soon. But it wasn’t long after those folks decided to settle there that they discovered the place was crawling, and I mean crawling , with copperheads. Mean, nasty snakes those are, let me tell you. They bit some of the settlers, and a few of those poor people died. So they were faced with the choice of moving on and leaving those springs behind, or staying and trying to get rid of the snakes, because other than that, the place was perfect for a town. What do you think they did?”
    Slowly, trying not to frown, The Kid said, “They decided to stay and wipe out the snakes?”
    Tate grinned and slapped his thigh as he rode along easy in the saddle. “That’s exactly what they did! It took a while, mind you, years, in fact, before they got rid of all those scaly little devils, but folks who have been around there for a long time, like Cy Levesy, tell me it’s been twenty years or more since anybody saw a copperhead around.”
    “Maybe they should change the name of the town to No Copperhead Springs,” The Kid said.
    That brought a pleased laugh from Tate. “That’s a good one. It surely is. I’ll have to tell Cy what you said, Mister . . . uh . . .”
    “Just call me Kid.”
    “Sure, Kid. Anyway, I’ll tell Cy. That’s a good one.”
    The Kid turned his head and stared off into the distance. He didn’t want Tate to see the bleak look he knew was in his eyes.
    In the roughly day and a half he had known the marshal he had noticed several times that Tate seemed to be a mite absentminded. At first The Kid