Borden Chantry Read Online Free

Borden Chantry
Book: Borden Chantry Read Online Free
Author: Louis L’Amour
Tags: Fiction, Historical, Action & Adventure, Westerns
Pages:
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When the murderer realizes you suspect somebody local, your number’s up. He’ll be running scared, Bord, and his only way out will be to kill you!”

Chapter 2
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    B ORDEN CHANTRY, AT twenty-four, had been doing a man’s work since he was eleven. To shirk a job or sidestep a responsibility had never occurred to him, for in the life around there was no place for such things. A man was judged on how he did his work, not on what he had or where he came from. At eleven he had been riding herd on a bunch of cattle owned by a neighbor who had gone to Texas, and he took his payment in calves.
    By the time he was sixteen he had thirty-two head wearing his own brand, and had sold about the same number. That was the year he rode to Texas to help bring a herd back to Colorado.
    He had survived a brush with Comanches near Horse Head Crossing on the Pecos. At seventeen he had followed some horses stolen by the Kiowa and stole them back, along with all the mounts the Kiowas themselves had, setting them afoot.
    Most of the time it was hard, brutal work, which he never considered either hard or brutal. It was simply his job, and he did it. From the time he was eleven until he was twenty-three, he could not recall a sunrise that did not find him in the saddle—nor a sunset, for that matter.
    He grew tall and lean. He learned to read sign like an Apache and to use a gun. He was considered a top hand, not the best puncher around, but certainly up there among them.
    When the town council made him marshal he was broke, still owning a wide spread of land, but nearly all his cattle were gone, and some of his horses. To keep his family alive meant moving to town and finding work.
    As marshal his job was to enforce the law, and to him the laws were the rules that made civilization work. Without them there was chaos. They were not a restriction upon his freedom, but the doorway to greater freedom, for they established certain rules that men were not to transgress. In the land in which he had grown up it was customary to settle disputes with a gun. Consequently men, unless drunk, were cautious with their language and respectful of one another.
    Murder was rare, although it did happen, and now he had a murder on his hands. Worst of all, he had no skills that would make easy the solving of such a crime. He was simply a common-sense sort of man who knew only one way, and he started coping with murder as he started anything else…one point at a time.
    Who was the dead man? Identification was important, for then one might learn who might want him eliminated. Also, what was he doing in town? Where had he come from?
    Bess had put her finger on his starting point: How did the man get here?
    The stage office was open when Chantry arrived there, and he pushed the door open. The office was simply a counter across the room that cut off one third of it. Behind that was a desk, a swivel chair, and some filing cabinets, all much battered, all but the chair stacked with papers.
    George Blazer, with a green eyeshade and sleeve garters, was at the desk.
    â€œHowdy, Bord? Hear you got you a dead one!”
    â€œHe’s dead all right…Murdered.”
    â€œMurdered?” George was startled. “Are you sure?”
    â€œYou recall a man coming in on the stage the last coupla days? Tall man, black hair. Nice lookin’ feller, wore a fringed buckskin coat with some Indian beadwork. Black broadcloth pants?”
    â€œNo. nobody like that, Bord. Travel’s been light the last few days. Hyatt was over to Denver, but he got in three, four days ago. No, I can surely say, no such man come in by stage.”
    â€œDid you see him around?”
    â€œOh, sure! Three or four times. He was havin’ a drink down to the Corral when I first saw him. He was alone then, I did notice he seemed interested in folks along the street. I mean he was watching them…Women, mostly.”
    â€œWell, that’s normal. Did he talk to
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