Bloody Sunday Read Online Free Page A

well.”
    â€œThat’s kind of you,” Luke said with a nod. “I accept.”
    â€œNot at all. Like I said, you did us a favor . . . and I like to repay any favors that I owe.”
    She was a plainspoken, straightforward woman, Luke thought as they mounted up. He liked that about her, over and above her good looks.
    It was a shame he was going to have to take her in and turn her over to the law. It would be even more of a shame when they put a hang rope around that pretty neck of hers and stretched it for murdering her husband.
    Her other husband, Luke corrected himself as he moved the dun alongside her horse and they began to ride along the base of the bluff. Behind them, a couple of the hands rounded up the dead man’s horse so they could throw the corpse over the saddle.
    â€œAre you from somewhere around these parts, Mr. Jensen?” Glory MacCrae asked. “I don’t think I’ve heard your name before.”
    â€œNo, ma’am. Originally I’m from Missouri, but I’ve moved around a lot in recent years. I consider myself a citizen of the world.”
    â€œI like that,” she said with a smile.
    â€œWhere are you from?” he asked. “You don’t really sound like a Texan.”
    She laughed and said, “Those can be fighting words around here. Although a lot of people in Texas these days weren’t born here.”
    Luke knew that was true. After the end of the war, there had been nothing left in the conquered Southern states for many of the returning Confederate soldiers. The brutal, vindictive Yankee reconstructionists and carpetbaggers had seen to that.
    So most of those men had headed west, looking for new lives on the frontier. Luke’s experience had been different in some details, although there were certain similarities. He didn’t consider himself an unreconstructed rebel, though. The war was too far in the past for that.
    He noticed that Glory had dodged his question about where she was from, but he didn’t press her on the issue. Anyway, he already knew the answer. Her voice had a slight trace of a Southern accent, another indication that she was from Baltimore, which straddled the cultural line dividing north from south.
    To pass the time, Luke said, “Tell me about this hombre Elston. Why would he want his men to rustle some of your stock?”
    â€œWhy will a rattlesnake sink its fangs in anything that moves?” Glory asked in return. “It’s filled with venom, and that venom has to come out somewhere.” As they passed the embers of a fire that had burned down to almost nothing, she pointed at them and went on: “They were using that as a branding fire, venting the MC brand into a Lazy EO with a running iron. We’ve caught them doing it before.”
    Luke frowned and said, “I don’t see how they thought they could get away with that. It would be easy enough to spot an altered brand if you killed the cow and peeled the hide off. Don’t you have a cattleman’s association to send in some brand inspectors and put a stop to it?”
    â€œThe brand inspectors have been in, and they’ve warned Elston,” Glory said. “He claimed his men were doing it without his knowledge. He fired some of them, ran them off.” She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “Paid them off, is more like it. He put on a show of being angry about it, but he really gave the men money to go somewhere else and find another job. I’m convinced of that.”
    They left the branding fire behind. Luke said, “It doesn’t seem like you could steal enough cattle that way to make it worthwhile unless you had a little outfit and were just barely hanging on.”
    â€œWell, it’s not like Harry Elston is trying to stock his ranch. He has his own herds. What he really wants is my range and my water. Sabado Creek runs through the valley and is the best source of water around