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

remain in the saddle. Taylor grinned at the watching
visitors.
    ‘ I’ll bet he told ye I
didn’t like bein’ thanked,’ he grinned. ‘Now ye know he was right.
Goodbye.’
    And without a word he
returned to his ax-work, while Peters and Scott pounded each other
on the back at the sight of Jake Harris
struggling to get his mount under control.
    ‘ Hey, Jake!’ called Fred
Peters. ‘Don’t mention it!’
    ‘ Bah!’ snapped Harris, and
wheeled his horse out of the yard and across country towards home,
followed by his two new employees, broad smiles creasing their
faces.
    Later that evening all of
the men that the newcomers had met that day were enjoying coffee in
Harris’s sprawling living room. A big hanging lamp cast a warm
light, and a fire crackled in the stone hearth, for the nights were
cooler up in these hills. The room was a pleasant one; on the
scrubbed floor several catamount pelts were scattered, and Susan
Harris’s touch was evident in the neat fringed cushions and the
frilled curtains and the shining brass vases full of mountain
flowers on the mantel above the fireplace.
    ‘ Boy, this is the life,’
enthused Fred Peters. ‘Any time yu want to come over to the Lazy T
an’ clean ’er up some, yu say the word, Miss Sue.’
    ‘ If yu wasn’t so dadblasted
lazy yu wouldn’t need to ask,’ put in his taciturn fellow
rider.
    ‘ If I worked any harder
they’d be nothin’ for yu to do,’ retorted Peters. ‘I never did
figger what yu do all day.’
    ‘ Mostly what yu oughta be
doin’ stead o’ jawin’,’ Jack Scott told him.
    ‘ Listen to him,’ grinned
Peters. ‘That’s why Gunnison tossed him off the Saber – couldn’t
get him to work any way at all.’
    ‘ This
Gunnison hombre ,’ Green ruminated. ‘I can’t figger why he’s so set on havin’
yore land. After all, he don’t need it. Jake was tellin’ me
Gunnison owns all the land west o’ the river.’
    ‘ Just greedy, mebbe,’
offered Kitson. ‘Some men ain’t happy if they don’t own ever’thing
in sight.’
    ‘ Plain stubborn, more
likely,’ Newley said hesitantly. ‘He’s allus been …’ His voice
tailed off.
    ‘ Dang me,
Stan, if I ever hear yu finish a sentence I’m likely to pass out,’
laughed Harris. ‘Still, yo’re probably more’n half right.
Gunnison’s been in this country so long he thinks he’s some kind o’
tin Gawd.’
    ‘ I see Jim’s point,
though,’ Taylor said. ‘When ye think about it, there has to be some
reason for Gunnison wanting our land. I can’t just put my finger on
it, but it has to be something. He surely don’t need the
grass.’
    ‘ Tell me when all this
trouble started,’ Green suggested.
    ‘ About a
year, eighteen months ago, more or less ,’ Harris
told him. ‘Gunnison roared an’ made a lot o’ noise when we first
filed on this land, but we had no trouble.’
    ‘ Then these nuisance raids
started?’ prompted Green.
    ‘ That’s right,’ Kitson told
him. ‘Jake had a couple of men working here, but they soon quit.
Couple of Saber riders roughed them up about a mile from the house.
They never would tell us who, but it had to be Saber.’
    ‘ We figgered it was
probably Dancy, but couldn’t prove anything,’ added
Harris.
    ‘ They rode all over my
wheat field one night,’ added Newley.
    ‘ Flattened a whole year’s
crop an’ I couldn’t—’
    ‘ Do a thang to stop them,’
finished Reb Johnstone. ‘Stan here, got a shot th’owed at him ev’ah
time he poked his haid outa the do’r.’
    ‘ Tom Appleby, he’d ride up
here, shake his head. Couldn’t find no trace o’ who done it,’
Kitson said. ‘I lost some horses. We trailed ’em to the edge o’ the
desert, but it was like tryin’ to trail flyin’ fish in the
water.’
    ‘ Any gold or silver in
these parts?’ was Green’s next query.
    ‘ Nary a trace, laddie,’
Taylor told him. ‘We get the odd desert rat pokin’ around in the
Yavapais, but nobody’s ever found enough to