“Baldridge used to run his stock from one end of the valley to the other?”
“Yep. But he never filed claim on any of it except the land his headquarters sits on, at the far end of the valley. Miss Faye is the one who figured that out.”
“Who’s that?”
“The boss’s daughter. Smart as a whip, she is. I probably shouldn’t be sayin’ this, but she got the head for business that Hal didn’t. He’s a top hand and as good a ramrod as you’d ever want to work for, but ...”
“I understand,” Frank said. Hal Embry could handle the day-to-day details of running a ranch but didn’t know how to go about doing so profitably.
Like most cowboys, Gage Carlin was talkative once he got going. He continued, “Yeah, Miss Faye found out her daddy could file on the range and wouldn’t have to share it with Baldridge’s B Star spread anymore. We’ve always had trouble with Baldridge tryin’ to hog the grass and water. Once it was done, we pushed all the B Star stock east of Loco Creek. Baldridge pitched a fit, but there was nothin’ he could do about it. Not legally, anyway. So he filed on his half of the valley and started tryin’ to crowd us out with regulators.”
“Ain’t there no law in these parts?” Salty asked.
“Pine Knob’s got a marshal, but he don’t take no sides in what goes on outside of town. And a deputy U.S. marshal gets up this way from Helena now and then, but you can’t count on him bein’ around whenever there’s trouble. Folks still handle most problems on their own.”
Frank nodded. That was the way it had been on the frontier for a long time, and despite the inexorable advance of so-called civilization, it was likely to remain that way for a while longer, too.
“We’ve had potshots taken at us before,” Carlin went on, “and there’s been trouble in town between our crew and Brady Morgan and his men, but today’s the first time they’ve tried to out-an’-out murder some of us on Boxed E land.” The cowboy shook his head regretfully. “It probably won’t be the last.”
“No,” Frank agreed, “it probably won’t.”
They rode over a shallow ridge, and Frank spotted some buildings on the flats about a mile away, where a line of cottonwoods marked the twisting course of a stream.
The men reined in, and Carlin pointed.
“That’s it,” he said. “That’s Pine Knob.”
“Why in blazes do they call it that?” Salty asked. “I don’t even see a knob, let alone one covered with pines.”
“Well, it’s not much of a hill,” Carlin explained, “and you can’t see it because it’s on the other side of the creek, past the settlement. A few years ago it was covered with pines, but then folks came in and started the town, and they cut ’em all down for lumber to make the buildin’s. I guess you could say the name’s all that’s left of the original pine knob.”
“If that don’t beat all,” Salty muttered. “Folks are too quick to tear down and build things that ain’t as good as what was there to start with.”
“You could be right, Mr. Stevens. But I gotta admit, I do like havin’ a place closer than Great Falls where a fella can get a drink.”
“Well, you may have a point there,” Salty admitted.
“We’ll head back now. You fellas will keep goin’, right? You don’t aim to make any trouble for the Boxed E?”
“That’s right,” Frank said. “You have my word on it.”
“Good enough for me,” Carlin said with a nod. He turned to Morales and Kitson. “Come on, boys.”
The three men turned and rode back toward the ranch headquarters.
“We didn’t get that dinner the Embry boy promised us,” Salty said. “And I was sure lookin’ forward to it. What say we find us a hash house down yonder in the settlement, get a surroundin’ in our bellies, maybe wet our whistles, and then ride on? Might be able to get out of this valley by dark.”
“I thought you might want to spend the night,” Frank said. “Fill up on something besides trail grub and sleep in a real bed for a change.”
Salty looked over at him for a long moment, then abruptly jerked his battered old hat off and agitatedly ran his other hand through his tangled white hair.
“Dadgummit! I knowed it, I purely did. You can’t just ride away, can you? You got to mix in and get to the bottom of this whole range war mess. You got to find out what the story is on this Brady Morgan varmint!”
“Wouldn’t you be curious if you found out you might have a son you didn’t know about?”
Salty pulled on his beard and said, “I just might. I wasn’t always a scruffy ol’ billy goat, you know. I used to have a way with the ladies.”
“I don’t doubt it. Anyway, I didn’t say we were going to get mixed up in any range war.”
“You didn’t have to say it,” Salty replied with a sigh. “I’ve rode with you long enough now to know how trouble follows the Morgan clan.”
He heeled his paint into motion.
Frank rode after Salty. He hated to admit it, but the old-timer was right. For decades now, trouble seemed to follow Frank wherever he went, and from what he knew of Conrad’s life now, the same was true of Kid Morgan.
He supposed he couldn’t expect things to be any different with this Brady Morgan ... whoever he was.
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2012 William W. Johnstone
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-3007-1
MacCallister: The Eagles Legacy: The Killing Page 26