Winchester 1887 Read Online Free PDF

from the springs into hollow logs, dump the water into giant brass kettles, boil the water until there wasn’t anything left but salt, pack up the salt, and sell it. ’Course, with the Katy railroad coming through the Nations for the past twenty or so years, a body could buy his salt elsewhere. Link wasn’t sure how much longer old Mackey could stay in business. Nobody went there anymore for salt, and Mackey had only a handful of hired men to mine the works.
    That was why Link McCoy, Zane Maxwell, and the boys met there.
    â€œNot much of a take, was it, Zane?” Jeff White said.
    Maxwell shrugged. “Would’ve been better, but some sodbuster killed Clete McBee on the way out of town and I couldn’t catch his horse.” He spit into the fire, frowning at the bad memory. Clete had wrapped his war bag heavy with gold coins around the saddle horn.
    Maxwell’s dark hair had lightened over the years and was streaked with gray. His girth had widened, too, and no longer could he mount a horse as quick as his slim, balding partner, Link McCoy. Yes, age had begun to show on both men. Outlawing wasn’t getting any easier.
    â€œClete McBee,” Jeff White muttered. “Stoney Post. Pottawatomie Jake. Three good men. Dead.”
    â€œMore money for you, Jeff,” McCoy pointed out.
    White let out a mirthless chuckle and brought a bottle of rye to his lips.
    Tulip Bells came out of the tent and took the bottle from White. “Vann’s done fer.”
    White let out a curse. “Four men dead. Killed in some hayseed town by a bunch of square heads. Give me that bottle, Tulip. I need to get good and drunk.”
    â€œAin’t that redundant?” Tulip Bells asked.
    â€œHuh?”
    Tulip pushed back his bell crown hat and sniggered. “I’s too intellectual fer yer way tiny brain, White.”
    â€œShut up.”
    Tulip Bells laughed again and sat beside McCoy. “He’s right, though, Link.”
    Bells was a lithe man with a crooked nose, pockmarked face, and graying droopy mustache and underlip beard. Two fingers on his left hand had been shot off during a robbery in Kansas back in ’89, and he had been walking with a limp since taking a slug in the hip in Creek Country two years back. Tulip had been riding with Link and Zane as long as either could remember. He carried an Arkansas toothpick sheathed on his left hip, a double-action Starr Army revolver in .44 caliber on his right hip, a pearl-handled, nickel-plated Smith & Wesson No. 3 stuck in his waistband to the left of the buckle on his gun belt, and a Remington over-and-under. 41-caliber rimfire derringer in the pocket of his linen duster. He was a man that took few chances.
    â€œRode in to Greenville with ten men.” Tulip drank, and then tossed the bottle to Link. “I count four left. You, me, Zane, and Mr. White.”
    McCoy did not drink. He cleaned the cut-down Winchester shotgun. “Smith and Greene got out of town, too.”
    â€œYeah.” Tulip’s lean head bobbed. “But they’ve seen the light. Won’t be seein’ ’em weasels no more.”
    â€œGood riddance to them,” Maxwell said from across the fire.
    â€œFour men ain’t much of a gang,” Tulip Bells said. “Law ’ll be ridin’ after us pretty soon.”
    â€œImagine so.” McCoy worked the action of the empty shotgun then wiped the case-hardened steel with an oily cloth.
    â€œWe can pick up some new boys,” Maxwell said. “Territory’s full of eager beavers.”
    â€œLike Smith and Greene,” Tulip said, shaking his head.
    â€œThey left their cut for us,” Maxwell said.
    â€œYeah.” White kicked at the saddlebags McCoy had escaped with. “Instead of six ways, four ways. To split four hundred dollars.”
    â€œMakes the cipherin’ easier,” Tulip Bells said.
    â€œShut up,” White snapped.
    A minute passed then he