Read Online Novel 1956 - Silver Canyon (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour - Free Book Online

miles of argument and talk, I turned in my saddle.
    â€œFrom here, I ride alone. It’s too dangerous for you. But you can tell Morgan Park…”
    So I sat and watched her ride away toward the Boxed trail, thinking what a lucky man I’d be to have her.
    She sat her saddle like a young queen, her back straight and her shoulders trim and lovely. She turned as if aware of my eyes, and she looked back, but she did not wave, nor did I.
    Then I reined my horse around and started for town.
    Often I shall live over that parting and that long ride down from the mountains. Often I will think of her and how she looked that day, for rarely do such days come to the life of any man. We had argued, yes, but it was a good argument and without harsh words.
    And now before me lay my hours of trouble. There was only one way to do it. For another there might have been other ways, but not for me. My way was to ride in and take the bull by the horns, and that was what I meant to do. Not to the Two-Bar yet, but to town.
    They must know that I was alive. They must know the facts of my fight and my survival.
    I was no man to run, and it was here I had staked my claim and my future, and among these people I was to live. It was important that they understand.
    So I would ride into town. If Jim Pinder was there one or both of us would die.
    If Bodie Miller was there, I would have to kill him or be killed myself.
    Any of the riders of the Boxed M or CP might try to kill me. I was fair game for them now.
    Yet my destiny lay before me and I was not a man to hesitate. Turning the buckskin into the trail, I rode on at an easy gait. There was plenty of time…I was in no hurry to kill or to be killed.
    Rud Maclaren was not a bad man, of this I was convinced. Like many another, he thought first of his ranch, and he wanted it to be the best ranch possible. It was easy to see why he wanted the water of the Two-Bar-in his position I would have wanted it too.
    But Maclaren had come to think that anything that made his ranch better also made everything better. He was, as are many self-made men, curiously self-centered. He stood at the corners of the world, and all that happened in it must be important to him.
    He was a good man, but a man with power, and somewhere, back in those days when I had read many books, I’d read that power corrupts.
    It was that power of his that I must face.
    The trail was empty, the afternoon late. The buckskin was a fast walker and we covered ground. Smoke trailed into the sky from several chimneys. I heard an axe striking, a door slam.
    Leaving the trail, I cut across the desert toward the outskirts of town, a scattering of shacks and adobes tha offered some concealment until I’d be quite close. close.
    Behind an abandoned adobe I drew rein. Rolling a cigarette, I lit up and began to smoke.
    I wanted a shave…sitting my saddle, I located the barber shop in my mind, and its relationship to other buildings. There was a chance I could get to it and into a chair without being seen.
    Once I had my hair cut and had been shaved, I’d go to mother O’Hara’s. I’d avoid the saloons where any Pinder or Maclaren riders might be, get a meal, and try to find a chance to talk to Key Chapin. I would also talk to Mrs. O’Hara.
    Both were people of influence and would be valuable allies. I did not want their help, only their understanding.
    Wiping my guns free of dust, I checked the loads. I was carrying six shells to each gun. I knocked the dust from my hat, brushed my chaps, and tried to rearrange my shirt to present a somewhat better appearance.
    â€œAll right, Buck,” I said softly, “here we go!”
    We walked around the corner and past a yard where a young girl was feeding chickens, past a couple of tied horses, and then to the back of the barber shop. There was an abandoned stable there, and swinging down, I led the buckskin inside and tied him.
    It was a long, low-roofed building,