West of Tombstone Read Online Free PDF Page A

sentence.’
    â€˜I’d co-operate was I you,’ the man on horseback told Cameron Black. He was narrow, his face deeply tanned and lined. Apparently he was a Wells Fargo detective from what Cam had overheard. ‘I’d hate to let Sheriff Yount loose on you. Save yourself some trouble and a lot of pain.’
    â€˜Others all ride. Fast across river,’ the Indian tracker told them. ‘No tracks in river. Too much sand and rocks for good sign.’
    â€˜It doesn’t matter,’ Sheriff Yount said, with a shrug of his heavy shoulders. ‘We’ve got their leader now. He knows where they’re bound, I guarantee you.’
    â€˜Why don’t we look through the cabin again, Barney?’ the Wells Fargo agent suggested.
    â€˜You do that … there could be a place to cache the money,’ the big sheriff said, breathing roughly as he stood in front of Cameron Black, his eyes feral and cold. ‘Pocomo, whyn’t you see if you can’t cut sign somewhere along the river? That might give us an idea where the gang is headed, though my guess is Mexico.’
    â€˜Long time gone now,’ the Indian said with a small shake of his head. ‘Try.’
    When the other two had moved slowly away on their horses, Pocomo toward the river beyond the live oaks, and the Wells Fargo man to the cabin, the sheriff pulled a twist of tobacco from his pocket, bit off a wad of it and faced Cam deliberately.
    â€˜You got bad trouble, Stony.’
    â€˜I’m not—’
    â€˜No. And I’m a canary bird. Whose hat is that?’ he demanded, moving his boot to nudge Stony Harte’s doeskin hat with its unique silver and turquoise band. The sheriff bent down and picked it up, jamming it on Cameron Black’s head. ‘Fits pretty good, don’t it?’
    â€˜First of all—’ Cameron tried again. The sheriff would not let him speak.
    â€˜What’s that gray horse’s name?’ he asked slyly.
    â€˜Dolly, but … if you’d listen to me for a minute!’
    â€˜Dolly was thirty miles south the day before yesterday, Harte. Pocomo is a tracking fool. He never lost your sign. Not only that, we have an eye-witness who saw you gun down a shotgun rider and a passenger on the Wells Fargo Tucson link. Know what else?’ the large man asked, standing nearer so that his raw road scent of perspiration, stale tobacco and whiskey was rank in Cam’s nostrils. ‘You talk like a Georgia boy, did you know that? I spent six months down there occupying Rebel land for Sherman. I can hear Georgia all over you.’
    His voice lowered. ‘I don’t like you Rebels. I don’t like boys coming out here and raising hell, thieving and murdering. I don’t like Georgia and I don’t like you, Stony Harte. Understand me!’ Then again, as if just for the hell of it, he slammed his fist into Cameron Black’s body. The blow landed against Cam’s liver and he staggered back in enormous pain, falling against Stony Harte’s horse once more. Tiny multicolored sparks lit up behind his eyes and fountained away. Cameron bent double, holding himself. Dolly, tired of being abused by these man-games, tossed her head and walked away a few steps.
    The Wells Fargo man had returned, leading his black horse.
    â€˜Any luck, Morton?’
    â€˜None,’ the thin man answered. He removed his hat to wipe the sweat band and now Cameron saw that he was bald on the crown of his head, a monk’s fringe type of baldness. He replaced the hat. ‘There’s no place to hide much in that shack, Barney. No floorboards, the walls are only pole and mud.’ He shook his head. ‘Either they buried the money nearby,’ he said, scanning the brushy hillsides, ‘or they rode off with it. Maybe they decided to cut Stony out of it; maybe he took that bullet graze down south and he couldn’t ride.’
    â€˜They didn’t bury