Talon & Chantry 07 - North To The Rails (v5.0) Read Online Free PDF Page A

taken and admitted, reluctantly, that he had been foolish. He had been challenged, and like any green kid he had accepted the challenge.
    Now he must plan. He must try to foresee what French would do. The most obvious thing was the old western trick of giving him a bad horse to ride, and this he had every right to expect. It was usual for any tenderfoot on a cow ranch or a cattle drive to be given a bad horse just as a joke.
    Well, let them try. He had been riding horses since he was a child, and even back east he had never quit riding. He had handled some pretty bad ones, but he doubted that he had tangled with anything like what they could give him out here, and he was sure they were even now planning on that.
    He knew it was going to be rough, especially as he had taken water for Dutch Akin. No cowhand would consider that anything but cowardice, and they would have nothing but contempt for him.
    At daybreak he was up, and after a quick breakfast he went to the livery stable and bought two horses. Both were tough and well-seasoned, and he paid premium prices for them. He bargained, but the horse dealer knew he wanted horses and knew what he wanted them for. He got good horses, and the price he finally paid was not as bad as he had expected. One was a line-back dun, the other a blue roan, both bigger than the usual cow horse, but agile enough. The dun was an excellent cutting horse, the blue roan was fair; both had the look of possessing staying quality. “Which I’d better have myself,” he said to himself.
    He bought a used saddle, a blanket, and all the essential gear. At the general store he bought a slicker, a bedroll, and a little other equipment.
    “You better have yourself a gun,” the storekeeper suggested.
    Chantry shook his head, smiling. “I doubt if I’ll need it. I will have a Winchester, though. I’ve never killed a buffalo, and we might need the meat.”
    He bought a Winchester ’73 and four hundred rounds of ammunition. “If I am going to use this,” he commented, “I’d better have some practice.”
    “Better not try it near a cattle herd,” the storekeeper said dryly, “or you’ll have a stampede.”
    They all thought him a tenderfoot, he reflected, and in one sense it was true, but he was western-born and a lot had soaked in that stayed with him. One did not live in the environment during the impressionable years and not retain something from it.
    His father had been a man who talked of his work and his life, and he was a man who had known men and stock, who had pioneered in wild country. Had he been trying, even then, to instruct his son? After all, what did a father have to pass on to his children but his own personal reaction to the world? Of what use was experience if one could not pass on at least a little of what one had learned?
    For the first time Tom Chantry thought of that, and suddenly he was seeing his father in a new light. Like many another son, he had failed to understand the true nature of the man who was his father until he himself began to cope with the problems of which life is made up.

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    T HEY WERE TO make their gather and pool the cattle on the Vermejo River, east and a bit north of Cimarron, and their drive would begin from there.
    He would go there and join them. He would ride his own horses, but if they suggested a bad one, he would try it. He could be thrown, but he could also get back on. Tom Chantry decided he knew what to expect, and he was prepared for it. The trouble was, he did not know French Williams.
    He knew little enough about the Vermejo River. Only that it began somewhere in the Sangre de Cristos and flowed down from the mountains, across the old Santa Fe Trail to lose itself, so far as he knew, somewhere in the open country beyond.
    Riding the blue roan and leading the dun, he started for the camp on the Vermejo. He told himself he was ready for anything, and he was still telling himself that when he spotted the camp under some