Riders From Long Pines Read Online Free PDF

open its brass lock. Seeing nothing, he scratched his head and started to sit down in the dirt and consider his next move. But before he could get seated, he heard the thunder of hooves coming fast from around the curve.
    â€œDamn it!” He scanned the site once more for any usable guns. But seeing none, and knowing the horses were approaching fast, he cursed again and ran into the cover of brush off the edge of the trail. He flattened himself just in time to catch first sight of four cowhands swinging into sight around the long curve.
    They reined their horses down hard in a cloud of trail dust and stared all around at the dead, at the leaning stagecoach and at the strongbox lying in the dirt.
    â€œDang!” said one of the cowhands. “It’s the Cottonwood Flagstaff coach! Somebody has robbed the hell out of it!”
    â€œInjuns!” another rider shouted, grabbing his battered range Colt from its holster and spinning his horse in a circle as if not to be caught off-guard.
    â€œTake it easy, Holly,” said Jet Mackenzie, the oldest of the four and their former trail boss. “This doesn’t look like the work of Indians.” He eyed the strongbox lying in the dirt a few feet away. “It doesn’t even look like robbery, far as that goes.”
    â€œYeah?” said another cowhand, Jock Brewer. “Then what do you suppose put holes in these ole boys, woodpeckers, thinking they’s trees?”
    Mackenzie realized his mistake. He stared at Brewer, noting that the coolheaded young Texan appeared to be the only one besides himself who was unshaken by the sight of dead men lying amid the debris from a wrecked stagecoach. “I’m just saying something ain’t right, is all, Jock,” he said firmly. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
    Brewer spit and grinned and ticked his head. “Oh, I’d say ‘something ain’t right’ is a fair enough assessment.” He tapped his horse forward, stopped close to the leaning stage and looked down at the dog lying in the dirt beneath the open door. Blood lay in a puddle surrounding the animal’s big spotted head.
    â€œCareful, Jock,” Mackenzie cautioned him.
    â€œRight, boss ,” Brewer said with a touch of sarcasm. “You want to come hold my hand?”
    Mackenzie said straight-faced to Tad Harper, the youngest of the four, “Tadpole, go over and hold Jock’s hand.”
    â€œI’m there,” Harper said in earnest, all set to give his horse a boot forward.
    But Mackenzie stopped him with a raised hand. “Hold up, Tadpole, that was a joke.”
    Mackenzie and Brewer had a short laugh. But Holly Thorpe only looked around suspiciously through his wire rims, his Colt still in hand. “Real funny,” he said in a stiff, solemn tone. “Let’s tomfool around and get ourselves killed.”
    â€œI said, ‘take it easy, Holly,’ ” Mackenzie repeated to the wary cowhand, this time in a firmer tone. But he turned more serious as he swung down from his saddle and led his horse over to where Jock Brewer sat staring all around the leaning stagecoach.
    â€œWhat do you make of it?” Brewer asked.
    â€œOh, it was a robbery all right,” Mackenzie deduced, looking at the bodies, one of the dead wearing a black boot, a broken brown one lying discarded in the dirt beside him. He stooped and stepped in between the open door and the rock wall, and looked inside. He grimaced at the sight of the two dead men in business suits.
    â€œAnybody alive in there?” Brewer asked from atop his horse.
    â€œNo,” said Mackenzie. He backed away from the open door and looked at the dead colonel lying in the ditch alongside the trail. He again noted the strongbox lying unopened in the dirt. “I’d say all these stagecoach folks decided to shoot it out with the robbers and this is the outcome. Everybody ended up dead.” He shrugged, still a bit