Milo Talon Read Online Free PDF

circumstances are better. I am working and Stacy is contented. Nancy is growing and when she is old enough to travel without her mother you will see me. Sending a picture. Keep it safe
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    A puzzling letter, to say the least. “You will be taken care of” sounded like a bribe to counteract another offer, but why was Newton Henry so anxious not to be found?
    Nancy would be “old enough to travel without her mother.” But why should she? Where would her mother be? And why was it important to keep the picture safe? Undoubtedly, it could be a keepsake, but the words sounded as if it were something more.
    Taking up the picture, I examined it more closely. Behind them was a steep hill and the corner of a building, a few trees and some brush on a hillside.
    The trees had long needles, frail and wispy. A large object with a rounded end lay on the ground at the back corner of the building. The pictures might or might not have been of any help to the Pinkertons butthey would be to me. Sometimes being a drifter can help and in this case it did.
    Those long wispy needles could only be a Digger pine, and unless I was mistaken the rounded object was one of their pine cones which were often of pineapple size. The Indians ate the seeds.
    Digger pines grew in a hot, dry climate but not right down in the desert. From the rocky outcropping on the hill behind the building I had an idea where it might be. Behind the building there was a tree that looked like a cottonwood, which meant there was water near, maybe a stream or spring.
    Yet why would Newton go to such extremes not to be found? To follow a trail the hunter must have some idea of what is in the mind of the hunted. An animal is usually going to or from water and if frightened will often circle around, trying to stay in familiar territory.
    Digger pines were found in some of the mining areas of California, and Newton Henry had said he had found a job in a remote area. All of a sudden I was wishing I knew more about Newton’s educational and employment background.
    Putting the pictures away, I sat back and stared out of the window. Sunlight lay upon the street and there was movement now where none had been before. People were walking along the street or sweeping the boardwalk.
    The door opened and Molly Fletcher came in. She was wearing a gray traveling outfit, somewhat worn, but suiting her style more than the clothes she had worn the previous day.
    “Join me?” I suggested. “I’ll buy breakfast?”
    She pouted. “You woke me up. After that I decided it was no use trying to go back to sleep.”
    “You wake up mighty easy. You waste no time getting to the door.”
    “I slept very little,” she confessed.
    “Worried? You needn’t be. If you want a job, you have one. German Schafer said he could use you and he’s a good man.”
    Schafer had come in. “Ma’am? I’ll do better than just give you a job. If you’ve got seventy-five dollars I’ll sell you a working third of the restaurant. It will be hard work, but you’ll be in business for yourself and that gives you a kind of position in the community.”
    “Take it,” I advised. “This isn’t much of a place, but there’ll be cattle shipped from here and while it lasts you can make a little money.”
    The door opened and the rancher and his wife came in. Evidently they had spent the night in town. There was no sign of the drummer.
    When Schafer returned to the kitchen I told her about him. “If you are here nobody will bother you. The old camp cooks like German are a tough lot of men. They had to be, to keep a bunch of wild cowhands in line. He’ll be like a father to you.”
    “I—I don’t know. I—I might have to go away. I mean I might not be able to stay.”
    Was she running from something, as German suggested?
    “You’d have nothing to fear with German around.”
    “You don’t know! You just don’t know!”
    “You can tell me,” I suggested, but she shook her head, obviously wanting to tell me