Calder Pride Read Online Free Page B

warrior. But today, he was a hunter, and his quarry was a man. Turning, Logan walked into the one-story building that housed the local sheriff’s office.
    Twenty minutes later, a deputy escorted Rollie Anderson into the interview room where Logan waited with Sheriff Blackmore, a barrel-chested man in his fifties with a belly that hung over his belt. Even in orange jail garb, Anderson looked like what he was—a big, strapping farm boy with wheat-blond hair, blue eyes, and a sun-browned face that showed a telltale band of white near the hairline where his cap always sat. A wide bandage partially covered one pale eyebrow, and the effects of a bad hangover were evident inthe pasty gray undertone to his skin and the dullness of his blue eyes.
    His head came up when he saw Logan, his puzzled glance running to the sheriff. Blackmore waved him toward a chair at the scarred metal table.
    “Sit down, Anderson,” he said. “This is Agent Logan Echohawk from the Treasury Department. He wants to ask you some questions.”
    “Questions?” Rollie lowered himself into the chair and stared at the identification Logan pushed across the table to him. He wiped a hand across dry lips. “My God, how much more trouble can I get into?”
    “Do you have any coffee, Sheriff?” Logan paused, glancing at Rollie. “Would you like a cup?”
    “Yeah.” He rubbed his forehead above the bandage as a nod from Blackmore sent the deputy out to fetch the coffee. “You wouldn’t have any aspirin, would ya?”
    “Sorry.” Logan took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shook one out, offering it to him.
    “Thanks.” His hand trembled visibly when he carried it to his mouth. Logan lit it for him, then returned the lighter to his pocket along with the cigarettes. “I swear I don’t remember anything about the accident. Hell, I don’t even remember climbing into the truck to go home. All I did was go to Sally’s for a couple beers. I’d been working in the fields all damned week.” He puffed on the cigarette and nervously tapped the end of it in the charred ashtray, his eyes sliding to Logan. “They’re gonna throw the book at me, aren’t they?”
    “It doesn’t look good.”
    He stared at the ashtray, shoulders slumping. “Maybe I deserve it. I don’t know. But my ma, what’s gonna happen to her? My old man’s too crippled up to work the farm anymore. Without me, how’s she gonna live?”
    “Maybe your brother can help?” Logan suggested.
    “Lath?” Rollie scoffed at the idea. “He hates that place.”
    “Maybe there’s some other way he can help out. Have you talked to him?”
    “No. He called Ma from Texas a few weeks ago, but…” He shrugged off the rest.
    “Does he know about the accident and you being in jail?”
    “Ma might have called him, I don’t know.” He shrugged again, then tensed. “Wait a minute. You’re here about Lath, aren’t you?” he said accusingly.
    “That’s right.”
    “I should have known.” He crumpled the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. “You just don’t leave a guy alone, do you? How many times does Lath have to tell you that he didn’t know those guns were stolen when he bought them?”
    “We just want to talk to him. We need a little more information about the man he bought them from.”
    “Yeah, right. Too bad for you that Lath moves around a lot, isn’t it? Sure, he was in Texas a few weeks ago, but he could be in Timbuktu now.”
    The deputy returned with two Styrofoam cups of acid black coffee. Aware that he had obtained about as much information as he was going to get from Rollie Anderson, Logan talked to him a few minutes longer, then rode with Blackmore out to the Anderson farm to talk to the parents.
     
    A newly leafed cottonwood tree formed a canopy over the mourners gathered at the grave site. For generations, the small cemetery near the river hadserved as a final resting place for the ranch’s dead. Today the remains of Repp Taylor would join them, and