Borden Chantry Read Online Free Page B

style. I tell you something else. He was a man who was good with a gun. They got a way about them, Marshal. You got it yourself. You can tell it in a man…No swagger, no show-off, just a sort of assurance, confidence…I don’t know. But he had it.”
    â€œYou think he was gunnin’ for somebody?”
    â€œNo. He was looking for somebody, but not that way. I could tell the way he turned when somebody came in, and the way he looked when somebody went down the street. But he had that rawhide thong over his gun hammer and he never taken it off. Minute he walked in I spotted him, and I looked at that thong. You reckon he was a marshal hisself?”
    â€œI don’t know, Elsie, I surely don’t.”
    Borden walked out on the street. “Hell of a marshal you make!” he said, half-aloud, and with disgust. “A man rides into a town and you can’t even find his horse!”
    Think back. If a man rode into town, what would he be coming for? To buy land? To buy cattle? Land wasn’t moving much these days and it was the wrong time for cattle-buying.
    Irritably, Chantry stared down the street. He should have taken the advice he got and just buried the man like any victim of a shooting, but he had to open it up, make a big thing of it. It was nigh on to noontime already, and all his questions had led to nothing he hadn’t known or guessed. He still did not know who the man was, where he came from or why he came to town.
    He started down the street and suddenly a boy darted from an alleyway. “Hi, Marshal!” It was Billy McCoy. That kid was everywhere, into everything.
    â€œHey, Billy!”
    The boy came back with a retort. “Yeah, Marshal? You want I should ketch a rustler for you?”
    â€œYou leave that to me for a coupla years, Billy. What I want to know is did you see the dead man around town? You know, that—”
    â€œAw, sure! I seen him. I snuck into the barn over there and looked at him…First dead man I ever seen up close.”
    â€œYou stay out of there, Billy. That man’s not on display. What I mean is, did you see him before? When he was alive?”
    â€œSure, I saw him. I saw him when he first came into town…It wasn’t quite daybreak yet. Pa, he woke me up when he came in and I got up to get a drink from the well.
    â€œI seen that man come ridin’ in. Ridin’ a mighty fine sorrel horse with three white stockings. Prettiest horse I seen this year, and a good walker, too. Why, that horse could walk as fast as most horses trot.”
    â€œWhere did he go? Where did he leave his horse?”
    â€œHow should I know? I went back an’ tried to get to sleep. He was ridin’ right up Main Street when I seen him. But I never seen the horse again. I saw the man two, three times. I saw him around town durin’ the day, an’ I saw him that night when he was drunk.”
    â€œDrunk, did you say?”
    â€œWell, he looked it. He come up the street and kind of fell against the building. He shaken his head a couple of times and started on up the street. He was weavin’ around some…kind of like he was drunk, but…he might have been sick, Marshal. He just might have been sick.”
    â€œThanks, Billy,” Chantry said, and continued on down the street.
    Big Injun was waiting at the barn. “You give me dollar. I dig grave.”
    â€œAll right, Big Injun. You do that. Dig it deep, now.” He turned away when a thought came to him. “Big Injun, this man came into town riding a tall sorrel, three white stockings. Did you see it?”
    Big Injun got a shovel from a corner of the barn and walked back to the door. “Tall horse? Seventeen hands?”
    â€œCould be.”
    â€œMe see ’um. Go north.”
    North…? Borden Chantry paused there and considered. The man had come into town riding a mighty fine horse…yet where was the horse? The man was dead. His horse