Westward the Tide (1950) Read Online Free Page A

on, unless he is a fool.
    "And I'm not passing on!" he said aloud.
    Murphy turned his head and looked at him, then grinned understandingly. "Talkin' to yourself, huh? I do it, myself. It means you've been alone too long!"
    Matt nodded thoughtfully. "Maybe you've hit it," he said, "and I think you have."
    He remembered suddenly and turned to look at the burly mountain man. "Buff, didn't you have a squaw back in the Big Horns?"
    "Sure did!" Murphy beamed at the memory. "Arapaho, she was an' a durned good un, too! Most ways, that is. Bought her off ol' Bear Paw Henderson! Give a dozen prime beaver for her, an' a spotted pony I took off a Crow whose aim was bad.
    "Nearly killed me, he did. Shot at me an' missed. I shot at him an' didn't!"
    Murphy nodded musingly. "Yessir! Quite a squaw, she was! Bear Paw, he had her from her Pa, ol' Broken Hand, the Arapaho chief?"
    "What became of her?"
    "Her?" Buffalo furrowed his brow. "Let's see, now. She was the one just afore the big snow ... nigh as I can recall I sent her back to her Pa.
    "Uh huh, that was it! I give her three buffalo hides an' a couple of ponies ... that steeldust was limpin' in the off hind leg, anyway. Gettin' crabby, that squaw was. Wanted to settle down with the Injuns!"
    "Only one way to handle a woman, my old man used to say," Ban suggested, "an' that was to whup 'em good with a trace chain the fust time you took 'em home. Then whup 'em good once a week for the fust three weeks, an' after that all you have to do is just rattle the chain!"
    Ban Hardy drained his coffee cup and got to his feet. "Got you an outfit yet, Matt? If you ain't, I got me a German spotted who brought five wagons down from St. Cloud, up in Minnesota. He's got good teams, too."
    "Let's go then," Matt said, "I'll need a wagon."
    "You buyin' oxen or mules?" Ban wanted to know.
    "Better git oxen," Murphy suggested. "If'n you have to, you can always eat them. I never did cultivate no taste for mule meat, though I've set up an' et it a few times, an' mighty durned glad to have it, too! Oxen are much better, an' there's more meat on 'em, an' anyway, they pull better on ground where there's no trail."
    Brian Coyle was obviously a leader, and an able man. Yet when Matt considered it he was afraid that Coyle's leadership might extend only as far as the boundary of a reasonably civilized town or locality. He was a politician, an organizer, and a planner. He knew how to talk to men, but how good he would be out on the trail when the going got rough was yet to be determined. When faced with violence he might not have what was needed. And he might.
    Clive Massey was a dangerous man. There was a reckless fury in him that was easily aroused, and that coupled with his driving strength and natural cunning would make him a man to be reckoned with.
    Massey had seemed to sit too close to Logan Deane and Batsell Hammer to be completely honest, and while it was early to form any judgments, his actions and his tempers were unfavourable. The two men had been in Deadwood and this part of the west longer than Massey, and they might have been posted near him to render judgment on men whom Massey did not know.
    Thus far there was no reason for suspicion. Nor so far had any visible opportunity for dishonesty shown itself. Nothing had been sold, nothing promised. It was all on a strictly voluntary basis. Yet his instincts and his knowledge of men warned him that something was amiss.
    Of course, had he not made his own demand it was probable none of the men would have had a receipt for their money, but such things were of little importance as men seldom resorted to legal practices to make recovery of either money or property. Judge Colt usually presided at such disagreements and his decisions left no ground for appeal.
    That a few of the men with the wagon train might be outlaws or the next thing to it was no cause for alarm. The west was not made up of noble, God-fearing heroes. Many of the men and women on the westward