Kill McAllister Read Online Free PDF

the spurs. He went around the pens as if all the devils in hell were after him and covered the mile to the holding ground in record time. He heaved his panting and foam-flecked horse up at the cow-camp and leapt from the saddle. Several men, rising from their blankets, eyed him sleepily.
    â€œSaddle up, boys,” he shouted. “We’re loading these cows now.”
    A big Kansas man came forward, buckling on a gun.
    â€œWhat’s the hurry, Link?” he demanded surlily.
    â€œI’ll tell you what the hurry is,” Forster snapped back at him, “—Charlie and Sol got shot up. The Struthers outfit’s on our trail. If those cows aren’t out of here in an hour we’ll all end up in jail.”
    They moved.
    Under Forster’s orders, they cut the cattle out in fifties and started them down toward the loading pens. Some of his urgency entered the hands and they worked with a will. They didn’t know what was wrong, but they had never seen their leader so taken with the urgency of the situation and some of his anxiety rubbed off on them. Within the hour they were crowding the cattle into the wagons.

Chapter 5
    So this is Combville, Kansas
, McAllister thought as he topped the last rise and viewed the vista spread out before him. As far as he could see, or so it seemed, there were the dark herds of cattle, the animals small in the distance like crawling insects. This must be a bumper year for the Texas cattle trade. The Struthers herd must be one of the last up the trail. It didn’t seem that there were enough cows in the whole of Texas to people this great plain this way.
    Right in the center of the endless herds was the town of Combville. Beg it’s pardon, the city of Combville. This was where the Texas farmboys-turned-cowboys came to see the elephant, to drink away their hard-won wages, to have their first woman maybe, to land in jail for a night, to run head on into northern law that did not like them. This was where the wild and the woolly came to sow its wild oats and ran into what passed for civilisation. The last time McAllister had passed this way the last of the buffalo had been here, no town existed. There had been two or three farmsteads on the flat to break the monotony of the endless grass.
    Slowly, he rode his tired horse down from the rise and headed for the town. Soon he was riding past the noisome loading pens, seeing the cattle being thrust forceably into the cramped quarters of their transportation. The sight quietly disgusted him. This was not a side of the cattle trade that he liked. As he went his eyes took in the many brands on the hides of the cows he passed. He did not see the Struthers Circle S. A locomotive snorted and frightened the canelo which had never seen one before. It skittered a little.
    They came to a creek and forded it. The canelo stopped to slake its thirst. McAllister sat the horse in the middle of the stream and was overcome by a feeling of foreboding. It was his old instinct playing him tricks, maybe, but he had learned to take notice of it. Before the horse had overfilled with water, he urged it from the water and climbed the bank to the town.
    He entered a dusted rutted street that could have been the Main Street of any cowtown with a railroad depot. It was wide andflanked on either hand by timber buildings, some houses, some stores and some saloons, but most of it constructed of green lumber already warping in the sun and wind. On the left was a stark brick building that he noted was the bank. There were a good many people about, a buggy or two, a heavy wagon lumbered by him drawn by six horses. The saloons were doing good business. He noted The Longhorns and the Golden Fleece. To his right was the marshal’s office, a clapboard construction with the barred windows of a jail showing at its side. Further on down the block he came to a livery stable and corral. He turned in at the open gate and found an old man sitting on an