Forty Guns West Read Online Free PDF

it last year. I think I left it with Hammer.”
    â€œHammer?”
    â€œMy old horse. Some scum kilt him. I tracked them and kilt them. Hammer was a good horse. I miss him. We rode a lot of trails together.”
    Jonas looked at his companion, both of them sitting in the creek, letting the water momentarily ease the itching and burning. He whispered, “That mountain man tracked down a bunch of men who kilt his horse and kilt them.”
    â€œI heard. I knowed we was makin’ a mistake when we let that Charlie Barnes talk us into this. Jonas, you ain’t never gonna say nothin’ about this, is you?”
    â€œNo, not a word.”
    â€œYou promise?”
    â€œCross my heart and hope to die.”
    â€œLet’s spit on it.”
    The men spat and their secret was sealed.
    Both Eddie and Preacher noticed the men were a mighty sorry lookin’ pair as they climbed up the creek bank and joined them around the fire. They walked funny, too.
    Preacher had cooked bacon and pan bread and he told the pair to sit and eat.
    â€œWe’ll eat and be proud to do it,” Jonas said. “But if you don’t mind, we’ll stand.”
    â€œI understand. You boys stop ever’ now and then on your way back home and bathe the infected areas with mud if you can’t find no goldenseal root to powder up and put on it. Apple cider vinegar is real good too.”
    â€œMuch obliged, Mister Preacher.”
    â€œThink nothin’ of it. But in the future, you boys best choose your company with a tad more care.”
    â€œYou can bet on that,” the younger of the two said. “Our days of man-huntin’ just begun and ended with this trip.”
    â€œWise decision, son,” Preacher said drily.

4
    Preacher and the kid were gone within the hour. As they rode, Preacher pondered what Jonas had told him just before the two would-be man-hunters—now officially retired—rode out for home, both of them sitting in their saddles very carefully.
    â€œThe way I heard it, Mister Preacher, they’s forty or fifty men huntin’ you. Maybe more than that. Prob’ly more than that. For they’s big money on your head. Several thousand dollars as of a couple of weeks ago. That must have been a real important man you kilt back east.”
    â€œThem men behind us know I’ll be headin’ to the mountains, Eddie,” Preacher told the boy after only a few minutes on the trail. “If any of ’em has any smarts, and I ’spect some of them do, they’ve headed straight west and will be tryin’ to get ahead of us, for an ambush.”
    The boy looked at Preacher. “So if they think we’re going straight to the mountains, we don’t go.”
    Preacher smiled. “You catch on real quick, lad. That’s right. We don’t go ... leastways not right off.”
    â€œWhere are we going, then?”
    â€œNorth. Straight north. We got staple supplies to last us a long time. I’ll kill us a deer or two and show you how to make jerky. We’ll keep the skins and make you some proper clothing, or I’ll have some fitted buckskins tossed in when I trade that spare horse. We’re gonna be skirtin’ the edge of Pawnee country, and me and them damn Pawnees never has got on worth a damn. Once they know I’m in their territory, and they’ll know, bet on that, we’ll have us a fight on our hands. But I get along with the Sioux and the Crow and most others.”
    The mountain man and the boy turned their horses and rode toward the plains. When Eddie caught his first glimpse of the plains he was speechless. It seemed to stretch forever. Mile after mile of waving grass and an endless horizon that seemed impossible to ever reach.
    Preacher smiled at the boy’s expression. “Takes your breath away, don’t it, lad?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œI’ve knowed people to go mad out here. Wind blows all the