Free Flint (1960) by Louis L'amour Page B

horse?"
    "Line up the holes in his clothes with the wounds, and you'll see he had to be, and the only way a man can shoot down on a mounted man is to be up higher -- in rocks, maybe. Or on a ridge."
    Gaddis indicated the group below. "Did they jump you?"
    Flint glanced at them. "They were working up to it, but I never could see any sense in talking when it's a shooting matter." He gathered the reins. "This isn't my affair, and I wanted no part of it."
    "No matter how it was before," Gaddis said dryly, "you'd better take another look. It's your fight now. They'll make it your fight."
    Flint turned his mare. "Adios," he said, and rode away.
    Pete Gaddis took out the makings and started to build a smoke. He knew it was impossible, and yet it had to be that way.
    And after all this time, too.

    Chapter 6
    He awakened in a cold sweat, awakened suddenly and sharply, chilled through and through, and when he fought himself to a sitting position and crawled from the bunk to the fireplace, his teeth were rattling with cold.
    Desperately, his hands shaking, he threw together the materials for a fire. The match flickered briefly and then went out.
    Almost crying with cold, he struck another, shielded it in his hands until the flame caught. The yellow tongue reached out, lapped curiously at the pine bark, then, catching hold, it crackled with excitement.
    The fire brought weird shadows to the cold walls, shadows that made grotesque thumbs at him, but the cold retreated and warmth came as he crouched before the fire, wrapped in blankets. And then the retching started.
    He went outside into the white moonlight and clung to the door post and vomited terribly, and there was blood mingled with the vomit. He clung to the door for a long time, too weak to get back inside, and the sweat dried on his body and the white moon looked down upon the jagged black lava that walled his home.
    After a while he staggered back to the fire, replenished it, and dozed before it until day came.
    At dawn Flint made the beef broth that seemed better for him than anything else. The pain in his stomach grew less but it did not leave and he rested the day through, reading from a book of poetry.
    The horses were accustomed to his presence now. Even Big Red failed to blow his warning. Sometimes they would feed up to within a few feet of him, and the mare was always around, begging for sugar. Today he even teased the stallion into taking sugar. The red horse refused it from his hands but, after he left it on a flat rock, came to get it.
    He had no regrets for the shooting. He had wanted to avoid trouble, but they had brought it to him, and they had intended to kill Flynn as well as himself.
    The warm sun felt good. He read, dozed, then awakened to read again. There was so much he had always wanted to read...
    Later he spaded up a small garden patch, and planted several rows of vegetables, beans, carrots, onions, and potatoes. He might not live to enjoy them, but he might become so weak before he died he could not leave the hideout for more food.
    Soon he must go to Alamitos.
    Nancy Kerrigan sat at her desk. Flynn was still unconscious and she had no idea whether he had filed the claims or not. But she had started work on the cabins, and one of her hands who had been a farmer would break the ground for crops.
    Gaddis was seated nearby. In reply to a question he replied, "No, ma'am, I ain't seen him since that day and, whoever he is, I figure he wants to be left alone."
    "I have a feeling I have seen him before."
    "Yes, ma'am, he has that look about him. He looks familiar to me, too. My advice is to leave him alone."
    "Why hasn't he been seen? Where is he?"
    "I been puzzling about that. Johnny and me, we tried to trail him." He took out the makings. "Mind if I smoke, ma'am?" He built a cigarette. At the blacksmith shop somebody was working and the afternoon was made more pleasant by the distant ringing of the hammer. "Lost his trail, and he meant that we should. He drops