The Tall Men Read Online Free PDF Page A

Gulch. The man who not only knew the way and knew cattle— but knew men.
    The Texas cowboys could handle the herd.
    But who would handle the Texas cowboys?
    Clearly, there was one man alone who could do that and live to laugh about it.
    Another Texan.
    Then, quietly, Nathan Stark played his buried ace.
    For this last man, this hoped for, all important trailboss, he, Stark, had planned an equal partnership in the Gallatin Valley ranch. Fifty-fifty on every head that came through to Montana alive, and on every calf that was dropped in the Gallatin from then on until the tally book was closed!
    When he had finished, he sat his horse in silence, staring at Ben ahead of the final pause and nod.
    “That man, my friend,” he said slowly, “was going to be you.”
    Ben did not answer. His thoughts, tunneled up into the whirlwind maw of Nathan Stark’s imagination, were far from Montana. His eyes looked down upon the distant, twinkling lights of Virginia City and saw them not. His face burned to the keening bite of the high country’s winter nightwind and failed to feel its sting. His ear listened to its lonely, freezing cry and heard instead the bawl of the lead steer smelling water from afar. His nostrils tightenedto the shrink of the frost in its bitter breath and smelled in its place only the sweet dust and pungent manure of the southern bedding grounds in spring.
    Ben Allison was already in Fort Worth, gathering his men and grading his cattle.
    Not so the towering Clint.
    The younger brother shouldered his sorrel into Ben’s black.
    “I know what you’re thinkin’, bud,” he said evenly. “Count me out. It’s plumb crazy. First off, it cain’t be did. Next off, we’ve nothin’ but this bastard’s word that he won’t turn us in the minute he gits the chance. Last off, the money’s ourn, he ain’t offerin’ us nothin’. Not a damn solitary thing,” he let the words drop like cold water on a flat rock, “savin’ a certain dose of hemp fever served up atop a kicked-out whiskey barrel.”
    “That, for sure,” nodded Ben. “Against the long odds of bein’ suthin’ we ain’t had no other chance to be—nor ain’t likely to git no other chance to be.”
    “Sech as honest men, I suppose!” rasped Clint sarcastically.
    “Sech as honest men,” said Ben simply.
    Clint’s snort of angry derision got stuck halfway out. And stayed there as Nathan Stark calmly spread his full hand.
    “I am offering you, each of you,” he stressed softly, “one third of the chips in a game that could make the biggest raise any man ever played a royal flush to. More money, and honest money, than you could whore-up in six lifetimes. Against that,” he concluded deliberately, “you are gambling a few thousand dollars in your pocket, the spending of which, ten-to-one,will wind you up in some state’s prison for the rest of your useless life.”
    The prospect had been purposely put in terms Clint understood. And so well put as to slow even his wild mind. But that mind, once slowed, was still as devious and quick as Ben’s was straight forward and slow. It slashed now, like a wolf, at what appeared the vulnerable hock tendon of Stark’s offer.
    “And what’s to keep us,” he sneered, “that is, providin’ we would admire to be honest men like my weakminded partner, here, suggests, from simply usin’ yer money to run our own herd up from Texas?”
    “Two things,” said Stark quietly. “Me and the Sioux Nation.”
    “Well, now,” drawled Clint, beginning in his perverse way to enjoy the debate, “you don’t bother me none whatsoever. But what’s this here about the Sioux Nation?”
    “You’ve got to cross it to get to the Gallatin.”
    “So, we cross it.”
    “Not quite. The Army’s got it closed to through civilian travel. There’s one trail across it and that’s the Bozeman Road. Nobody gets up the Bozeman without a military permit and troop escort.”
    “Fair enough,” shrugged Clint. “We git a