Journey into Violence Read Online Free

shot dry, but he drew a .32 hideout, shoved the muzzle into the back of Levi Fry’s head, and pulled the trigger.”
    Kate drew her nightdress closer around her shoulders. “Frank, why should the Longdale Massacre trouble you? You weren’t involved.”
    â€œBut I was, indirectly anyway. I’d worked a roundup for old man Fry and he’d paid twice what he owed me. I liked that old man and he didn’t deserve to die the way he did.”
    â€œHank Lowery says he didn’t shoot Mr. Fry while he was on the floor,” Kate said.
    â€œAnd you believe him?”
    â€œWell, no. But I don’t disbelieve him, either.”
    â€œKate, Lowery is a cold-blooded killer. He proved it in Longdale.”
    â€œHas he killed anyone since?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œWell, he may have. He says he has angry men on his back trail.”
    â€œWho are they?”
    â€œHe wouldn’t say.” Kate was silent for a while. The moonlight tangled in her hair and turned the fair Celtic skin of her beautiful face to porcelain. Finally she said, “Hank Lowery wants to join our drive. He says he’s worked cattle before, and we could use another hand.”
    It took Frank a few moments to recover before he said, “What did you tell him?”
    â€œI said I’d speak to you. And I told him something else, Frank. I said if he killed a man while he was under my employ, I’d hang him.”
    â€œKate, Lowery is a professional gambler. When was the last time you saw a gambler eating dust? Riding drag? And he’s a shootist. I bet you never saw one of them punching cows, either.”
    â€œAnd that’s the whole point. Lowery wants to make a fresh start and put his violent past behind him. He thinks he might prosper in Dodge as a merchant, perhaps in the lumber business.”
    â€œHe wants to be a storekeeper? And pigs will fly.” Frank flicked away his cigarette butt. It glowed like a firefly before hitting the ground. “I’ll tell you something about the Colt’s revolver, Kate. It casts a mighty long shadow. A man who’s lived by the gun and made a reputation can run, but he can’t hide. Sooner or later the past catches up to him and he’s forced to draw the Colt again. John Wesley tried to go straight and so did Dallas Stoudenmire, two men I knew and liked. Now Wes is rotting in Huntsville and five months ago Dallas was shot down in El Paso. Lowery will end up the same way.”
    â€œI aim to take a chance on him, Frank,” Kate said.
    â€œThen you’re making a big mistake.”
    â€œI took a chance on you, remember? You turned out all right.”
    â€œHave it your own way, Kate. You’re the boss. But if Lowery harms or even threatens harm to me or anyone I know, I’ll kill him. Is that understood?”
    â€œPerfectly,” Kate said. “But it will not come to that. I will not let it happen.” She rose and walked into the moonlight, her back stiff.

C HAPTER F IVE
    By cowboy standards, at forty years old Les Bowes was an old man, but there was not a man in Texas who knew as much as he did about cattle and their ways. He’d gone up the trail for the first time in 1866 with Charlie Goodnight and Oliver Loving and ten years later was a top hand on Goodnight’s JA Ranch in the panhandle. In 1880, he became a member of the Panhandle Stockman’s Association and had a hand in killing several nesters and rustlers.
    Stove-up and hurting, he’d nonetheless let Kate talk him into one more drive before he moved to Philadelphia to live with his widowed sister.
    As he spoke to Frank, Bowes’s face bore a worried expression. “The cattle are strung out all over the range. Even the yearlings are no longer close to their mamas.”
    Frank immediately saw the implications for a delay of the roundup. “How scattered, Les?” he asked as the other hands gathered around, their