Raw Land Read Online Free Page A

Becky, and then Will looked around. One wing of the house was the mess shack and cookshack. The other wing was the bunkhouse. Will looked through the dark and ugly rooms, remembering it all from ten years back. Only then it had been new and exciting—his first job. He’d been fifteen then, and old man Harkins had been a good boss. Now—well, it was different.
    He turned back down the passage between the big room and bunkhouse wing, and paused in the doorway, looking at Milt and Becky. They were laughing over something, and Will frowned a little. Milt’s dark hair was too neat, his smile too quick, and his speech too facile. Will knew a little fear then, but quickly dismissed it as he tramped into the room.
    At that moment Pablo appeared in the doorway.
    â€œSomebody, she’s come, Will.”
    Will looked out the door. There, cutting across the wash were four riders. Milt rose and came over beside him, his dark inquiring eyes on Will.
    â€œGo see, Milt,” Will said quietly.
    He had already recognized the man in the lead as Pres Milo. His squat and burly body, erect in the saddle, looked as if it were carved out of stone.
    Becky, from beside him, suddenly whispered, “That’s Pres, Will.”
    Will put out his hand. “Stay here, Becky. I want to see what he does.”
    Two riders dropped off by the barn, on the sunny side of it, so the buckboard and team were hidden from them. Pres and the other rider came toward the porch.
    Milt paused just beyond the porch and said civilly, “Howdy.”
    Pres reined up and looked around him, his hard blue eyes calculating and cold. Then his gaze rested on Milt, and he folded his thick arms and leaned on the saddle horn. Cuffing his Stetson back off his forehead, he said, “Got anything in that house you want?”
    Milt regarded him carefully. The two riders he had dropped at the barn were talking with Pinky and Ollie Gargan.
    Milt said cautiously, “A lot of things. Why?”
    Pres turned his beet-red face aside and spat, then turned clear around and called, “All right, boys.”
    Milt saw the two men by the barn whip up six-guns and cover Ollie and Pinky. At the same time he heard footsteps behind him and looked. Around the side of the house two more riders, guns in hand, appeared. Pablo came to the cookshack door then. One of the riders hauled Pablo out into the open and rammed a gun in his back.
    â€œBecause,” Pres Milo said curtly, “I’m goin’ to fire the place. Make a nice present for your boss when he comes.”
    Milt had no gun. He looked quietly at Pres, and then said, “There’s nothin’ much I can do, is there? I’d like a saddle out of that big room.”
    â€œI’ll watch you get it,” Pres said. He swung down from his horse.
    Will drew Becky into the corridor then, picked up a rifle that leaned against the table, and faded against the front wall of the room. He looked at Becky and raised a finger to his lips. She nodded and disappeared.
    Milt walked in the door and, without looking around him, tramped toward the far corner where the saddles were stacked. Pres Milo followed him in, six-gun hanging at his side.
    Inside the room, Pres looked around him. His eyes traveled the side wall, and then something attracted his attention to the front wall.
    Will stood there, his rifle pointing at Pres’s belly.
    For three long seconds, nobody spoke. Pres, swollen lips parted a little in surprise, stared. There was a welt on his right cheek that remained from last night, and it gave his face a lopsided look.
    Will said quietly, “Drop that iron, and drop it now!”
    The gun clattered to the floor. Pres licked his lips, and a kind of cold fear crept into his pale eyes. Milt was grinning behind him.
    Will said, “Step up to the door and call your crew of gunnies to the porch.”
    Pres, eyeing Will’s rifle, moved toward the door. Will stayed away from it. Pres