The Rustler Read Online Free PDF

he didn’t protest the washing-up.
    â€œIt might be better if I just moved on,” Wyatt said. “I’m not cut out to uphold the law. Hell, it’s all I can do to stay on the right side of it. You know that.”
    â€œStone Creek is a quiet town,” Rowdy answered easily. “Most you’d run up against would be drunken cowboys, or railroad workers whooping it up on a Saturday night.”
    Gideon grumbled something about getting shot at a dance, and did Rowdy call that quiet? But Wyatt was too focused on staring down the marshal of Stone Creek to pursue the matter right then.
    â€œGideon Yarbro,” Lark called from the bedroom, where she could be heard opening and shutting bureau drawers, “if you break one of my good dishes slamming them around like that, I’ll horsewhip you from one end of Main Street to the other!”
    Exasperated, Wyatt shoved his hands into the hip pockets of his borrowed denim pants. Everything he was wearing, save his boots, pistol and gun belt—he’d left that outside out of deference to Lark—belonged to Rowdy. He sure hadn’t counted on adding a badge to the getup. “Why is a lynching in some other town any of your concern, anyhow?” he asked.
    â€œI wrote you about it,” Rowdy said, still watching Wyatt a little too closely for his liking. “Told you what happened there.”
    Wyatt’s mouth went dry. “I guess that particular letter didn’t catch up with me,” he said. He and Rowdy had written each other on and off for years, but it was a scattershot sort of thing. He’d ride into a town, stop in at the post office if there happened to be one, and inquire if there was mail for him, sent care of general delivery. Sometimes, there was. More often, there wasn’t.
    A month ago, he’d wound up in Tucson, and there was a letter waiting from Rowdy, full of news about Lark and the baby and his job in Stone Creek. He’d related the story of Pappy’s death, and said if Wyatt wanted honest work, a friend of his named Sam O’Ballivan was always looking for cowpokes.
    At the time, Wyatt had regarded that letter as a fluke of the postal system.
    Now, he figured Rowdy must have figured he’d wind up in the Arizona Territory eventually, maybe looking for Pappy, and wished he’d never set foot in the post office in Tucson. Or, better yet, thrown in with the likes of Billy Justice before Rowdy offered him a fresh start.
    â€œI can’t stay, Rowdy,” he said.
    â€œYou’ll stay,” Rowdy said.
    â€œWhat makes you so damn sure?”
    â€œThat old nag of yours is practically dead on his feet. He doesn’t have another long ride in him.”
    â€œHe made it here, didn’t he?”
    Rowdy didn’t seem to be listening. “I’ve got a spare gelding out there in the barn. You can ride him if you see the need. Name’s Sugarfoot, and he’ll throw you if you try to mount up on the right side.”
    â€œWhen it comes to riding out, one horse is as good as another,” Wyatt said, but he was thinking of old Reb, the paint gelding, and how sorry he’d be to leave him behind. They’d been partners since that turn of the cards in Abilene, after all, and Wyatt would have been in a fine fix without him.
    â€œYou’re a lot of things, Wyatt,” Rowdy reasoned, “but a horse thief isn’t among them. Especially when the horse in question belongs to me.”
    Wyatt scowled, said nothing. He was fresh out of arguments, at the moment. Hadn’t kept up on his arguing skills, the way Rowdy had.
    Rowdy saw his advantage and pressed it. “And then there’s Sarah Tamlin,” he said.
    â€œWhat about Sarah Tamlin?” Lark asked, appearing in the bedroom doorway with a fat satchel in one hand.
    Wyatt glared at Rowdy.
    Rowdy merely grinned.
    â€œShe smokes cigars,” Wyatt said lamely. “You told me that yourself,