Snake Eyes (9781101552469) Read Online Free Page A

snake eyes.”
    â€œSnake eyes means you lose,” Garaboxosa said, with obvious glee.
    â€œSnake eyes,” Brad said as he picked up the dice, shook them, and rolled them on the floor.
    â€œThat’s right,” Harry said. “Snake eyes means you lose. Every time.”
    Brad picked up the shotgun and whispered its name again.
    The other men in the room smiled in approval.
    â€œThank you, Harry,” Brad said. “It’s a fine weapon.”
    Then Brad slipped Snake Eyes back in its scabbard. He rubbed his fingerprints off the sheath.
    â€œI won’t use it for bird hunting,” he said. “That’s for sure. Not with that double-ought buck.”
    None of the men said anything as the silence in the room deepened. It was as if a well had been opened in the middle of the office and they were all staring into its dark depths.

FOUR

    They rode through a pale dawn, north to LaPorte, where they would cross the South Platte and follow the Cache la Poudre into the formidable mountains. Brad and Mike shivered in their sheep-lined jackets as they left Denver behind, a gray mass of buildings still asleep under a slate sky and a dim sun far to the east, like a lighthouse lamp in fog.
    Brad’s belly was full after a predawn breakfast at the hotel. Garaboxosa’s appetite was astonishing. He had bolted down ham and eggs, biscuits and lumpy mashed potatoes like a condemned man devouring his last meal. Four cups of strong coffee, laced with dissolved sugar, took some of the tiredness out of Brad, but his eyes still ached from the long trek to Denver.
    Garaboxosa rode a small horse with small feet, a dun-colored cow pony that he must have bought from the Cheyenne up in Wyoming. The horse couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen hands high, and Garaboxosa was a lump of a man in the saddle, a worn cradle of tired and wan leather that seemed more fit for a child than a grown man. His shotgun hung from a D-ring and was strapped to one of the cinches so that it didn’t bounce off the horse’s hide. On the other side, he carried a battered Henry in an equally worn scabbard that was as thin as rice paper from wear.
    â€œWhat do you call that little gelding?” Brad asked when Denver was no more than a memory behind them.
    â€œI call him Sparrow,” Mike said.
    â€œSparrow?”
    â€œBecause he is small but can fly like a bird. We do not have sparrows in the Pyrenees, so there is no word for that bird in the Basque language.”
    â€œGood name,” Brad said, and they rode on in silence as the mountains emerged from the darkness of night and the faded blush of dawn. A fresh breeze plied the topknots of the two horses with playful fingers and splashed against their faces like cool, dry water.
    â€œThere is a friend waiting for us in LaPorte,” Mike said as they passed small ranches and farms, their fields still fallow on the rim of spring, seemingly deserted at that hour of the morning.
    â€œYou seem sure of that, Mike,” Brad said.
    â€œHe will have word of the other herders who are driving their sheep down from Cheyenne.”
    â€œDo you expect any trouble on the drive?” Brad asked. “I mean from cattlemen?”
    â€œNo. As long as the herders keep the sheep moving, there will be no trouble. The cattlemen are wrong about sheep.”
    â€œHow are they wrong, Mike?”
    â€œThe cattlemen say the sheep ruin the grass. They say that they chew the grass down to the roots and then eat the roots. This is not true. This is why we herd our sheep. We keep them moving so that they do not eat all the grass. We do not just let our sheep graze in one place.”
    â€œThat’s the story, though,” Brad said.
    â€œI know. And it is not true. We come to the same places to graze our sheep year after year and the grass still grows and our sheep grow fat. We have even grazed our sheep where cattle feed and there is no