Read Online Blood Valley by William W. Johnstone - Free Book Online

hangin’ on my shirt, I’d better start talkin’ and do it swift. ’Cause messin’ with a woman in the west was the fastest way I knew of to get your neck stretched.
    One of them punchers done got his rope out.
    I told ’em who I was and what had happened, so far as I knowed. They was as disgusted as me about it.
    â€œI don’t like nesters and barbed wire,” one said, “but this is awful. I’ll go get Miss Maggie and Miss Jean. We’ll bring a buckboard.” He wheeled his horse and was gone.
    I took the slicker off my saddle skirt and gently covered the naked girl. I felt some better when that was done. It just wasn’t decent, her layin’ there with no clothes on.
    â€œThem was good folks for nesters,” the Arrow rider said, dismountin’. He plopped his hat back on his head. “I knowed them all. And that there was a good girl. The woman know who done it?”
    â€œShe has suspicions, just like me and you. But provin’ it is something else.”
    He made a low sound in his throat. “Yeah, ain’t that the truth?”
    He introduced hisself as Ben and we shook on it.
    Both of us done our best not to look at the slicker-covered body with the bare feet stickin’ out.
    â€œBen, what’s your opinion of what’s happenin’ around here? If it’s an upcomin’ range war, why? Nesters and barbed wire?”
    Barbed wire had been slowly workin’ its way west since first being introduced back in the early ’70s. Personal, even though I could see where it might serve some purpose, I didn’t like it. All kinds of barbed wire was being strung . . . and people was gettin’ killed for doin’ it.
    I still carried the scars on me from where I’d gotten all tangled up in it once. And I mean . . . once.
    â€œStrictly personal opinion, Sheriff?”
    â€œHave at it.”
    â€œI think Lawrence and Mills want to be kings of this area. I don’t think it’s nothin’ but greed. Pure and simple.”
    Maybe that was all there was to it. Maybe they’d just gotten so big and powerful, they believed they was kings. “I was sorta ruminatin’ about gold or maybe oil . . . ?”
    Ben shook his head. “There might be enough gold around here to fill a tooth. As for oil, I don’t think so. I ain’t never seen none of it. And I been around here a long time.”
    â€œIt’s just hard to believe that anybody as rich and powerful as Lawrence and Mills would sink so low as that.” I pointed to the dead girl.
    Ben spat on the ground. “It’ll get worser, Sheriff. Believe it.”
    I believed it.
    Maggie Barrett and Jean Knight come ridin’ out with the buckboard. They was gals in their mid to late forties, I’d guess, and they rode astride, just like a man. Each of ’em had a six-gun belted around their waist and a rifle in the saddle boot. They looked like they knew how to use the weapons, too. And would.
    I met them look for look. “I’m Maggie and that’s Jean.” She jerked a gloved hand toward the other woman. “And you’re the new big, bad sheriff, huh?”
    â€œI don’t know about the big or bad, ma’am. But I’m the sheriff.”
    â€œYou’re mighty young,” Jean said. “But you got a hell of a reputation behind you, Sheriff Cotton.” She let her eyes drift to the slicker-covered body. “And what are you aimin’ to do with the sorry son of a bitch who done that?”
    â€œMore than one, ma’am. I aim to find them, arrest them, try them, and then hang them.”
    â€œAnd if their names are Mills or Lawrence or Romain . . . ?” She let that trail off.
    â€œThey pull their britches on same way anybody else does, ma’am.”
    She stared at me. She was still a handsome woman. Twenty years back, she’d been beautiful. “I think you’ll do, Sheriff Cotton. I