Sunset Trail Read Online Free PDF

pressed. “That’s the reason for me being sent here. If it had been
     a traitor or a Mexican, we would have known what to do, but it didn’t make sense for your father to be in it. Now he’s dead,
     and I didn’t get a chance to talk to him about it. That puts it up to you.”
    For a time she held her silence, staring westward at the rolling country over which they would soon be traveling. Then she
     brought her gaze to him, and he sensed the enormous struggle that was going on within her.
    “What do you want me to do?” she asked.
    “Don’t tell anybody what I’ve told you. Give me your cooperation when I need it. I hope you’ll take my word that I had nothing
     to do with your father’s death, and that before we get to Santa Fé I’ll have the killer.”
    “I won’t tell anybody.” She picked her cap up from the muddy trail and, putting it on, worked her hair under it. “I’ll take
     your word about Dad when you get the killer.”
    “This will be the toughest trip a Catherwood caravan ever made. If war breaks out before we get there, it’s hard to guess
     what will happen. It would be better if you stayed in Independence where things are a little quieter.”
    “I’m going to Santa Fé,” she said flatly.
    “If Glover murdered your father, he’d murder again for the other half of the business.”
    She stepped into the saddle. “I can take care of myself, Shane. By all the laws of justice I should have been a man. I am
     a man by instinct. I’ve lifted hair and I’ll put my shooting up against yours. If Curt Glover tries to rub me out, he’ll find
     six inches of steel in his belly.”
    She turned her horse, and he watched her go, knowing he could do or say nothing more. She reined up when she was a dozen paces
     from him, and flung back: “If you tell anybody I’m a woman, you’ll taste that six inches of steel yourself.”
    “I’ll hold my tongue if you hold yours,” he said angrily, “which is something most women can’t do.”
    “Don’t call me a woman!” she cried, and rode on.
    Bruce kept his eyes on her until she disappeared along the trail. She rode as if she were part of the horse, as if she belonged
     there as she belonged in the sunlight with the untamed wind upon her face.
    He smiled as he turned to Blue Thunder and swung into the saddle. There would come a day when Mick Catherwood would find she
     had other instincts than those of a man.

V
    It was late afternoon when Bruce Shane reached Fort Leavenworth. Taking from his hat the letter that Secretary of War Marcy
     had given him in Washington, he handed it to Colonel Stephen Kearny.
    Kearny slit the envelope open, scanned the note, and held out his hand. “I’ve heard of you, Shane.
    You’re the man who was raised with brass buttons on his jacket and who could be running a bank in Richmond, but you’d rather
     feel the prairie wind on your face.”
    “Some call me crazy for it,” Bruce said soberly.
    “It’s the way a man looks at it.” Kearny smiled.
    “Now about these guns.”
    Bruce told him what had happened since his return to Independence, and what he suspected about Curt Glover and Wade Flint.
     “I have no way of being sure those guns are in Glover’s train,” he added, “but I don’t see how it could be any other way.
     Once we roll out, it will be impossible to get word back to you. My notion was for you to stop the train on the trail and
     make a search.”
    “I’ll send Lieutenant Barstow in the morning. It’s my opinion we won’t find the guns in Glover’s train. I know something about
     Flint. I doubt if we’ve had a smarter filibuster since the days of Aaron Burr.”
    “It’s possible the guns are cached along the trail somewhere,” Bruce said thoughtfully.
    “In which case I’ll give Glover a start and send Barstow down the trail after he leaves Council Grove. I advise you not to
     rejoin the train, Shane. Flint won’t miss the next time he tries for your life.”
    “It’s a