The Overlanders Read Online Free

churlishness as soon as he’d got the words out; but the girl, chin high, said, “I’m sorry — Ben Hollis,” almost as if it choked her. The name caught at Grete’s notice and he stared, glance narrowing, from one to the other. “Your brother?”
    “Brother-in-law.” The chunky man’s toothy grin was smugly compounded of mockery and triumph. “Her husband’s brother,” he proclaimed pontifically, “and as such…”
    But Farraday swept the man out of his mind. He was glaring at the girl, feeling cheated and put upon. By withholding the fact of her marriage… He said, grinding down on his anger, “And where would your husband be now, ma’am? If he’s out with those horses —”
    “Tate’s dead,” the man’s brother said, leering maliciously. “And so, as head of the family —”
    “You own these horses?”
    “Not exactly,” the man bridled, “but —”
    “You paying this crew?”
    Hollis said irritably, “I’ve got —”
    “Mister,” Grete said, “you haven’t got nothing but an oversized mouth.”
    Hollis’ face blanched. “You can’t —”
    “I’ve heard enough out of you,” Farraday growled, and put his look roughly across the rest of them, darkening the cheeks of the chin-strapped Frijoles, forcing the cook’s single eye to swerve aside. Gaunt Idaho got up holding his raw look expressionless and Farraday said, throwing his words at the girl, “It’s about time we got some things out in the open. You better tell them about that proposition you made me.”
    “Yes!” Sary said too quickly, almost frantic. “Mr. Farraday knows Arizona. He understands conditions, the people… He’s got a ranch in that country — half of it will be mine and I’m giving him half the horses… the mares, that is, and half their increase.” She met the hard looks defiantly. “That’s the deal. He’s boss of this now. You’ll take your orders from him.”
    Silence shut down, a stillness turned ugly with unspoken resentments. Farraday, turning over what the years had taught him, felt the quiet become brittle, stretched insufferably thin. Only his eyes, hard as gun muzzles, held them; and then Idaho, shoving Frijoles out of his path, came in front of him, glowering, with a rattle of rowels. “You got that in writin’?” he said over his shoulder.
    Sary sighed. “His word is good.”
    “Sure of that, are you?” A sneer curled Idaho’s lips. “It looks like to me you don’t know who your friends are.” With his breath reaching deeper he settled forward a little, the bright burn of his stare grinding into Grete’s temper like the clamp of a wheel-lock. “If this jasper’s Farraday, he’s been trailin’ with the biggest pack of thieves in Arizony!”
    Swallowfork he meant, Grete guessed, and saw a great leap of joy drive through the chunky Ben; but Sary took the play away. “Then,” she said coolly, “he won’t mind rubbing elbows with our Texas breed of coyotes. Dish up, Patch, we’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
    “That’s right,” Grete nodded. “We’ll be pushing on soon as you fellows get out of the nose bags.”
    He turned away from the man, suspecting even as he did so that courage and quick-thinking weren’t going to be enough. And he was right. Ben’s gaunt gunfighter had got the stage set and wasn’t minded, with Frijoles and the cook looking on, to be left like a snot-nosed kid with his pants down.
    As Farraday wheeled to step over to the fire, Idaho’s right hand slammed for his hip while his left, snaking out, latched onto Grete’s shoulder, spinning him around. In Idaho’s plan this was intended to set Grete up to where, startled and off-balance, he’d make a pass for his gun and catch a slug for his trouble. Grete was way ahead of him.
    What actually happened was too fast for eyes to follow. When the gunfighter’s grip seized hold of his shoulder, Grete, shifting balance for the yank he knew would come, anchored the entire hundred and eighty