Sudden--Troubleshooter (A Sudden Western) #5 Read Online Free PDF Page A

just enough to make me wish Lafe Gunnison would fall down a
hole an’ break his stubborn ol’ neck.’
    ‘ Yu ever see anyone
actually liftin’ yore stock?’ was Green’s question.
    ‘ No,’ interposed Harris,
‘they’re too clever for that. We never do more than find the odd
track here an’ there. We’ve tried trailin’ them, an’ allus lose ’em
up in the Mesquites. The pine needles are so thick up there a
‘Pache couldn’t trail an elephant.’
    ‘ Yu run this place alone,
Mr. Kitson?’ asked Philadelphia.
    ‘ Not exactly, son,’ was the
reply. ‘I got a hired hand, a big dumb Swede who don’t understand a
word I say. We share the work. He leaves it an’ I do
it.’
    They rode off, after inviting Kitson over to
the Harris house for supper that evening. They had already told Reb
Johnstone to bring Stan Newley over. These two, who ran the
smallest spreads and were, in fact, more like farmers than
ranchers, concentrating upon wheat and barley crops rather than
livestock, shared the work on their two places and had no hired
hands.
    They reached Taylor’s
spread at noon, and shared the rough lunch that Taylor and his two
men were preparing when they arrived. Taylor was a short, compactly
built man with a noticeable Scots burr in his voice. His riders
were Jack Scott and Fred Peters; both men were tall, burned to the
color of leather on their hands and faces by years in the
saddle.
    ‘ Jack used to be on the
Saber, years ago,’ Taylor told his visitors. ‘He quit when Randy
Gunnison came back from Santa Fe.’
    ‘ Yu bet,’
said the slow-talking Scott. ‘That hombre’d make a saint
cuss.’
    ‘ An’ yu ain’t no saint,’
grinned Peters. ‘Yo’re right, though. Randy Gunnison gets my prize
for the least-necessary man I ever met.’
    ‘ He sure
ain’t got many friends,’ observed Green. ‘I ain’t heard a good word
said about him since I come
to this neck o’ the woods.’
    ‘ Unlikely
ye will, either, laddie,’ Taylor told him. ‘The boy is a complete
wastrel, an’ the despair o’ his fayther’s life. Old Lafe Gunnison has washed his hands o’
the boy.’
    ‘ He seems to spend most of
his time gallivantin’ off to Phoenix or Tucson,’ Jake Harris added.
‘Or swillin’ rotgut with some floozy in town.’
    ‘ Strange, that,’ murmured
Green. ‘From what I’ve heard about old man Gunnison, he don’t sound
like a man who’d put up with that sort of shenanigans.’
    ‘ I reckon he’s just given
up on Randy, like everyone else in Yavapai,’ Scott put in. ‘His paw
gives him no money, so he’s allus in debt. What money he wins
gamblin’ he blows on women or booze.’
    ‘ Well, yu gentlemen o’
leisure mayn’t have much to do but I have,’ Alexander Taylor told
them, ‘so oblige me by washin’ yore crocks an’ dryin’ ’em afore ye
leave.’ He stamped out of the house, and in a few moments they
heard the steady chock-chock of his axe biting into the tree he was
felling. Scott and Peters winked at their guests, and followed the
old man out after washing their plates and cups.
    ‘ He don’t stand much on
ceremony, does he?’ gasped Philadelphia.
    ‘ Ah, take no notice, lad,’
Harris laughed. ‘That’s Alex’s way of avoiding hearin’ yu thank
him. He can’t stand anyone thankin’ him: just a quirk, I
guess.’
    They washed their dishes
and trooped out of the house, mounting and riding across the yard
towards where the three men were working. ‘Watch this,’ chuckled
Jake Harris, and rode over to Taylor’s side. ‘We’ll look for yu
about eight, Alex,’ he said. The Scot nodded, without looking up
from his work. ‘And Alex’ Taylor looked up enquiringly. ‘Thanks
very, very much indeed for the lovely meal … hey!’
    The last expletive was
occasioned when the Scot, with a broad grin, suddenly threw his
hands up under Harris’s horse’s nose. The animal, startled, tried
to rear and turn in the same moment, and Jake had his work cut out
to