Read Online Raw Land by Luke; Short - Free Book Online Page A

yet?”
    â€œWhat are you gettin’ at?” Milt said sharply.
    Pres ignored him. “Do you think you could talk him into selling it?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNot even,” Pres suggested slyly, “if I was to turn you up if you couldn’t make him sell in a week?”
    Milt remembered that Pres had already said he needed him. He realized suddenly that Pres Milo was a dull-witted man, that he had already tipped his hand. Milt seized on this shrewdly and he said immediately, “No.”
    â€œWhy not?” Pres asked, surprised.
    â€œMaybe I don’t want to,” Milt drawled. Pres was too surprised to answer, and Milt went on. “You want this place. I want to know why.”
    â€œYou ain’t goin’ to,” Pres said in a hard voice.
    Milt came slowly to his feet. “Okay, you can go to hell.”
    Pres stood up, too. “Feelin’ salty, eh? Maybe I’ll just ride into town and see Phipps tonight and take you with me.”
    Milt laughed. It was a brash, arrogant laugh that Pres had never heard before, and didn’t like. “You will like hell,” Milt drawled. “I won’t do you any good in jail. And I can do you some good outside of jail. You just said so.”
    Pres’s slow understanding took that in, and he realized bitterly that he had tipped his hand too soon. He needed Barron’s help, and Barron knew it. For a bleak three seconds, Pres contemplated shooting him, but plain, hard-headed sense cautioned him against it. Once already this lean-faced young man had led him into trouble with Will Danning. He should have been warned.
    He considered Milt’s spare dark figure standing there, hands on hips, and he felt a grudging admiration for him. It occurred to him with slow conviction that if this Milt Barron was that quick in his thinking, it would be better to have him on his side, instead of fighting him. Afterward, when it was done, he could turn him up and have him safely in prison. All this ribboned through Pres’s mind, and then he lowered his gun.
    â€œI’ll make a bargain with you,” he said.
    â€œLet’s hear it.”
    â€œYou help me get Danning’s place, and I’ll forget what I know about you.”
    â€œThe trouble with saddle tramps like you,” Milt drawled, “is that you never forget. I still want to know why you want Danning’s place.”
    Pres laughed. “I’ll tell you. And you’ll help me to get it. And like you said, I won’t forget. I don’t see no reason why you shouldn’t know.”
    â€œThat’s what I’m telling you,” Milt jeered.
    â€œSit down. This’ll take some time.”
    Milt sat in the still-warm sand again, and again Pres hunkered down.
    â€œThis here Pitchfork spread, including a big chunk of the Sevier Brakes, used to be owned by the Gold Seal Land and Development Company. It was bought from the railroad. This here was an eastern company, and they had a crooked manager. He bought the land from the railroad for fifteen cents an acre, told the company he bought it for a dollar an acre, and then kept the difference and jumped the country. Soon’s the company found out nobody’d buy the land, they sent a man out here and he seen it was just a gravel pile. They was stuck for a big piece of money. Harkins is the only man that ever leased an acre of it. Well, I know these brakes pretty good—”
    â€œYou’ve probably run enough stolen cattle through them, haven’t you?” Milt said dryly.
    â€œThat’s right,” Pres said, unperturbed. “I know ’em pretty good, every trail, every canyon, every water hole. About six years back I come across somethin’ in one of those deep cuts over toward Sevier Creek. That ground was green, kind of like.”
    Milt said sharply, “What does that mean?”
    â€œThis one meant a copper deposit,” Pres said quietly. “I