Over on the Dry Side Read Online Free PDF

standoffish, wantin’ to stay to themselves and not be bothered. Well, we didn’t aim to bother them none.
    â€œI never give ’em much thought,” Pa said. “No more’n I would a white stranger. They’re folks. They got their ways, we got ours. If we cross, we’ll talk it over or fight, whichever way they want it to be.”
    Chantry agreed. “You can’t talk about all Indians the same way, boy. Any time a man comes along and says ‘Indians’ or ‘Mexicans’ or ‘Englishmen’ he’s bound to be wrong. Each man is a person unto himself, and you’ll find good, bad, and indifferent wherever you go.”
    Didn’t seem to me that Owen Chantry was taking any chances, though. When he put his pants on in the morning he also put on his gun belt and his gun. Most men put their hat on first. He put on that gun belt ’fore he drew on his boots.
    â€œYou figurin’ on trouble?” I asked him once.
    He threw me a hard look. “Boy,” he said, “when a man comes at me shooting I figure he wants a fight. I surely wouldn’t want him to go away disappointed.
    â€œI don’t want trouble or expect trouble, but I don’t want to be found dead because I was optimistic. I’ll wear the gun, use my own good judgment, be careful of what I say, and perhaps there won’t be trouble.”
    He still didn’t tell us why he’d come to start with, and it was a question you didn’t ask. He was more than welcome. In them days you could ride a hundred miles in any direction and not see a soul.
    Once Chantry got started he was a natural-born storyteller. Of a nighttime, when the fire burned down on the hearth and the shadows made witches on the walls. He’d been a sight of places and he’d read the stories of ancient times, the old stories of Ireland, of the sea and some folks called the Trojans who lived somewheres beyond the mountains and did a lot of fighting with the Greeks over a woman. And stories of Richard the Lion-Hearted, who was a great fighter but a poor king.
    An’ stories of Jean Ango, whose ships had been to America before Columbus. And of Ben Jonson, a poet, who could lift a cask of canary wine over his head and drink from the bunghole. He told of Gessar Khan, stories that happened in the black tents of nomads in haunted deserts on the flanks of a land called Tibet.
    An’ so our world became a bigger place. He had him a way with words, did Owen Chantry, but he was a hard man, and dangerous.
    We found that out on the cold, still morning when the strangers come down the hills.
    I’d gone to put hay down the chutes to the mangers for the stock, an’ I was in the loft with a hayfork when they come.
    Pa was in the yard, puttin’ a harness on the mules for the plowing.
    They come ridin’ up the trail, five rough men ridin’ in one tight bunch, astride better horses than we could afford, and carryin’ their guns.
    They drew up at the gate. And one of the men outs with his rope, tosses a noose over the gatepost, and starts to pull it down.
    â€œHey!” Pa yelled. “What d’you think you’re doin’? Leave that be!”
    â€œWe’re tearin’ it down so you’ll have less to leave behind. When you go.” The speaker was a big brawny man with a gray hat.
    â€œWe’re not goin’ nowhere,” Pa said quietly. He dropped the harness where he stood and faced them. “We come to stay.”
    The two men I’d met on the trail were in the bunch, but my rifle was inside the house. Pa’s was too.
    We might just as well have had no weapons for the good they could do us now.
    â€œYou’re goin’,” the brawny man said. “You’re ridin’ out of here before sundown, and we’ll burn this here place so nobody else will come back.”
    â€œBurn it? This fine house, built by a man with skill? You’d burn