Free Shadow of the Gallows by Steven Grey Page A

farmer,’ Jackson said, as they came to a halt. ‘Helped by the fact that he had water on his land.’
    ‘The land certainly looks good enough that someone might well have wanted to take it from him.’
    Jackson agreed with a little shrug.
    ‘Where did you find the body?’
    ‘Over here.’ Jackson led the way towards the corral. ‘It looked like he’d dismounted but didn’t have time to do anything else before he was shot.’
    ‘Who found the body?’
    ‘Peter Warren. That was the young man in the fight yesterday.’
    Cobb nodded to show he remembered.
    ‘In the weeks leading up to the shooting, the Warren boys, Peter and David anyway not Martin so much, had become thick as thieves with Bannister. Peter was riding over to see Bannister to talk to him about what they should do next. He rode into town to fetch me and the doctor. Doc reckoned Bannister had been dead a couple of days.’
    ‘And there wasn’t much to see?’
    ‘No. No useful tracks or anything. But I did discover where the ambusher lay in wait. Behind there.’ Jackson pointed across the dry strip of ground to an outcrop of rocks. ‘I’ll show you.’
    ‘How did you know that was where he waited?’
    ‘Because that was the one place I did find something. Footprints and a cigarette end. Someone had been there for a while.’
    ‘Just one person?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘And there was nothing to show who that was?’
    ‘No.’
    Cobb immediately saw that the rocks made a good hiding place. A man could stay there, out of sight, until his quarry put in an appearance. And it wasn’t far from the corral so that even a reasonable shot would have had no difficulty in finding his target. Bannister wouldn’t have stood a chance.
    ‘Where’s the Drake brothers ranch from here?’
    ‘Just over the ridge. About half a mile away. When Bannister moved in the ranch was here already,although it wasn’t owned by the Drakes then. This land never belonged to the ranch which runs towards the foothills in the other direction. Of course, in the early days, the ranch’s cattle could easily be driven to the waterhole because no one owned the land. As soon as he moved in Bannister strung up barbed wire.’
    ‘I bet that didn’t go down too well.’
    ‘That it didn’t.’
    ‘Why didn’t the previous ranch owners try to buy this land and the water?’
    ‘I don’t know. It was before my time. Maybe they didn’t think there would come a time when the rest of the country would be so dry and suffering from lack of water.’
    ‘But Bannister was here by the time the Drakes moved in?’
    ‘Oh yeah.’
    ‘So they couldn’t have bought it legitimately.’
    ‘Not ’less Bannister was willing to sell.’
    Cobb rode his horse to the top of the ridge and came to a surprised halt. ‘Come here,’ he called. ‘Look at this.’
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Someone has already decided that the water on Bannister’s land shouldn’t go to waste.’
    From here it was possible to see that a large section of barbed wire had been broken down and cattle had walked, or more likely been driven, through it. At least fifty or sixty head, enough to leave behind a trail as they made their way to the waterhole and the good grass that surrounded it.
    ‘Oh hell.’ Jackson pushed his hat to the back of his head. ‘Now, Mr Cobb, has that been done by accident or on purpose?’
    ‘That, Owen, is the question. I think we’d better ask the Drake brothers, don’t you?’
    ‘Yeah. They could be the only ones responsible.’
     
    Red-faced with fury, Fred Warren pulled the buckboard to a halt outside the doctor’s surgery. He leapt down and without even bothering to secure the horses to the hitching rail marched towards the building.
    ‘Oh-oh, here’s Pa,’ Peter said nervously.
    The doctor beat a hasty retreat; let them all get on with it, he thought.
    As soon as he saw Peter and David, Warren yelled, ‘You bloody fools!’
    ‘It wasn’t our fault,’ Peter began, but Warren shouted