Stamping Ground Read Online Free PDF Page A

assignment?”
    â€œI didn’t realize I had a choice.”
    â€œOf course you do. I can’t order a man to go on a mission from which the odds are he won’t return. Hudspeth has volunteered. If you wish, you can be on the next boat back to Helena and no one will think less of you because of it.”
    â€œWhat makes you think I can do the job at all?”
    He smiled, I think. At least, something stirred his mammoth jowls. “I’ve done my homework. Anyone who takes on the entire Flathead nation as you did last year and lives to tell about it is capable.”
    â€œYou’re doing your damnedest to make it impossible for me to refuse.”
    He shrugged.
    â€œWhat the hell?” I said. “I couldn’t face another boat ride so soon anyway.” That kind of breezy nonchalance fit me like a tent, but something was going on here that he wasn’t telling, and since I had gone to all the trouble ofcoming to my least favorite spot on earth I decided I might as well find out the reason. I figured he’d buy my vanity act, that being the West’s most available commodity. “When do we leave?”
    â€œTomorrow morning, on the six-fifteen to Fargo. As I said, time is of the essence.”
    I put on my hat. “In that case I’ll be seeing you. I’ve got just enough time to grab a meal and a bath and get some sleep.”
    â€œI thought you had a bath.” This from the marshal, in a suspicious tone. He was still holding my receipts.
    â€œDon’t worry. I won’t charge this one to the taxpayers.”
    Hudspeth leered. “Amity Morgan,” he said knowingly. “Just be sure and keep an eye on your poke. Her girls would steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes.”
    â€œI’m not dead yet.”
    I looked to the judge to see if that was worth another belly laugh, but he didn’t appear to be paying attention, frowning as he was at his enormous paunch and pushing his lips in and out. He was preoccupied with something, and I had a pretty good idea what it was. I’d been overconfident in assuming he hadn’t seen through my act. I should have known better. A liar is quick to recognize a peer.

Chapter Three
    Hudspeth didn’t like trains. That much was obvious once we had taken seats in the coach and, precisely on the stroke of six-fifteen, jolted into motion. He gripped the arms of his seat as if clutching the brasswork of a storm-tossed clipper and held on, eyes staring straight ahead and the veins in his nose standing out, until we had left the station and topped off at a steady twenty-five miles per hour. Then he relaxed by degrees until his teeth stopped grinding and the color returned to his knuckles.
    The seat opposite us, like most of the others in the car, was empty. But the crowded runs west more than made up for the deadheads away from the land of opportunity. I settled back into the plush upholstery and stretched out my legs in the half acre that separated the seats. Space was George Pullman’s long suit.
    â€œYou don’t look like the kind that volunteers,” I ventured after five or six miles. I watched the telegraph poles flitting past the window. They were more interesting than the flat scenery beyond, scrawny and misshapen as theywere. Trees were scarce in northern Dakota, and the linemen made use of what they could get.
    â€œNeither do you.” His voice sounded almost normal. “So how come we’re here?”
    â€œI asked you first.”
    He grumbled some and shifted around on the cushions. But he could see that didn’t satisfy me, so he sighed and stared at the floor. That bought him some more time. “I won’t lie,” he said at length. “I’ve petered down to considerable less of a lawman than I was when I started out. My eyes ain’t half what they was, and you can cook and eat a fair-size meal in the time it takes me to get a gun out of a holster.