Read Online Borden Chantry by Louis L’Amour - Free Book Online

them down with smallpox, and Mary Ann, she just pitched in an’ nursed them all. She got them together in the town hall and she stayed right with them, morning, noon, an’ night. Least that’s what they say.”
    Nobody said anything for awhile, and then it was Prissy who suggested, “We could take up a collection.”
    Elsie shook her head. “Nobody’s got much, Prissy, and there’s a good many would say it was the Lord’s will, what’s happening to her. I doubt we could get enough for a ticket on the stage, let alone anything for her keep when she got there…wherever she goes.”
    He said nothing, staring out the window. They were right, of course, something should be done, but he also knew there was no way a collection could be gathered for Mary Ann…unless, he chuckled at the thought, they would do it just to get her out of town.
    His thoughts returned to Johnny McCoy. With luck the Irishman might be sober now, and if he was, he might have a deal to say. He filled his cup and stared up the street, and Prissy had spoken twice to him before he realized.
    â€œMarshal? You found who killed that man?”
    â€œIt takes awhile, ma’am. I’m workin’ on it.”
    She sniffed. “Doesn’t ’pear to me like you’re doin’ much but settin’.”
    â€œNow, Prissy, a man’s a fool to go off half-cocked. A thing like this, a man’s got to think on it. He’s got to figure.”
    Prissy looked at him, and shook her head. “I don’t know, Marshal, maybe you’re not the man for the job. Why, that nice Lang Adams. We could have had him for marshal, and he’s a bright man whose thoughts aren’t all taken up with cows and horses.”
    â€œLang would have been a good marshal,” he admitted. “And I hear he’s a good hand with a pistol. I know he can shoot turkeys.”
    â€œThat’s all you men think about…shooting. Shooting’s got nothing to do with it. You’ve got to
think
, Marshal. Think!”
    â€œYes’m, I know that.”
    â€œNow, old George Riggin, he was marshal here for a long time, and a good man, too. He always said that Dover shooting was a murder, but nobody really believed him. Of course, nobody knew what George was
really
thinking. He just went about his business and if he talked to anybody it was to Helen. If he hadn’t died…well, I always did say that if he hadn’t died he would have found out who killed Pin Dover.
    â€œWhy, I talked to him just a day or two before he was killed and he told me then that he thought he had the answer…George wasn’t one to talk. Not him. He was a stern man, and very quiet, but I’d known George more than ten years and when he was in the post office asking about some mail, he told me that he’d have the killer.”
    â€œNonsense!” Elsie said sharply. “There was no killer. George was just a-funnin’. He did that now and again. And those folks who thought somebody did him in! Why, he just got killed by a rock slide, happens all the time!”
    â€œDoes it?” Prissy said tartly. “One day he says he’ll have the killer, next day he’s dead. I’d say that slide happened mighty nigh right for the killer, whoever he was.”
    Borden remembered the funeral. He had known old George as he had known everybody in town…to speak to. They had talked a time or two, and a couple of times he’d ridden on posses with the old man…he was no fool, George Riggin wasn’t.
    â€œNonsense! Some folks see murder under ever’ rock. Why, take that young man who got killed! I don’t believe for a minute he was murdered any more than any of those drunks who get all whiskeyed up and shoot or knife each other!”
    Most of them thought he was a fool, making a mystery out of something so simple. Borden Chantry looked down at his empty cup and could not