Novel 1954 - Utah Blaine (As Jim Mayo) (v5.0) Read Online Free PDF Page B

break up and scatter. Her father had gone through without trouble, although at first he was sure he was going to lose cattle. Somehow she had expected Utah Blaine to be an older man. It was strangely exciting to realize that her girlhood hero was here, taking over the 46 Connected.
    Clell Miller was excited and for the moment he had forgotten his troubles. Miller had never faced a gunfighter of top skill, but he knew that many rated him right along with them. There were those who said he was faster than Hardin. But he knew nobody was faster than Hardin, not anybody at all. Nevertheless, it would be something to kill Blaine! Something inside him leaped at the thought. To be the man who killed Utah Blaine! He walked off without a further word, bursting with excitement and the desire to talk.
    Mary went on up the steps and closed the door carefully behind her before crossing the porch. When she entered the large room decorated with Navajo blankets the first person she saw was Tom Kelsey. He got up quickly and stepped toward her. He was a solid, square-built man, a top hand in any crowd, and he was, she knew, in love with her—not that he expected anything to come from it.
    “Ma’am,” he said quickly, “I think Miller’s fixin’ to drive off some cows. He’s got maybe a hundred head bunched in Canyon Creek.”
    “Where’s Dan Timm?”
    “He’s watchin’ ’em, Ma’am. We figured I’d best come back an’ tell you.”
    “Thanks, Tom, but there’s nothing we can do. Not right now, anyway. We’ll have to let it ride. We can’t risk a showdown.”
    Tom Kelsey twisted his hat in his fingers. This he knew perfectly well, but it griped him. He wanted to do something. But while a fair hand with a gun, he was not in Clell Miller’s class and knew it. Nevertheless, to let him get away without a fight went against the grain.
    “We may have a chance now, Tom. I want you to do something for me. Ride back and get Timm. Send him to me. I want one of you to stay in this house from now on. I don’t trust Clell or any of that crowd. But after you have started Timm back, I want you to ride on over to the 46. Utah Blaine is there.”
    “Are you sure? What’s he want there?”
    She explained, her eyes watching the bunkhouse through the window. “I want you to tell him I want to see him. And talk to him alone.”
    When he had gone she walked into her own room and began to comb her hair. She was a slim, boyish girl with beautiful eyes and lips. Her figure, while only beginning to take on the shape another year or two would give her, was still very good. She looked at herself in the mirror, her not too thin lips, good shoulders and nice throat and chin.
    For the first time since her father’s murder she thought she saw a way out. She had Timm and Kelsey. If they could get together with Blaine, they would have the beginning of a fighting outfit. Not enough, but such a man as Blaine was a man to build around.
    As Mary Blake pondered the problem of concerted action against those who would split up the range of the two large outfits, Lud Fuller was whipping a foam-flecked horse down the trail to the Big N outfit of Russ Nevers.
    Within him burned a dull rage that defied all reason. Joe Neal, whom he had hated during all the time he worked for him, was alive! He did not stop to think how he was alive, or what had happened—all he could think of was that fact. Not even the appearance of Blaine had hit him as hard.
    His hatred for Neal was not born of any wrong Neal had done him, for Neal had always been strictly fair with his men, his foreman included. That hatred was something that had grown from deep within the fiber of the man himself, some deeply hidden store of bile born of envy, jealousy, and a hatred for all that seemed above him.
    To any other man but Lud the grievances would have been trivial things but during long hours in the saddle or lying on his bunk, Lud’s slow mind mulled over them and they grew into festering