Читать книгу Mail Order Cowboy - Laurie Kingery - Страница 15

As Nick tied his bay at the hitching post outside the general store, he saw two men standing talking at the entrance, one with his hand on the door as if he meant to go inside. Nick recognized one of them as Bill Waters, the neighboring rancher who’d pressured Milly to sell out yesterday. He’d never seen the other one, the one with his hand on the door.

“Hank, I’m tellin’ you, the problem’s gettin’ bad around here,” Waters was saying, “what with them roamin’ the roads beggin’ fer handouts and such. Why, a friend a’ mine over in Sloan found half a dozen of ’em sleepin’ in his barn when he went out one mornin’. He got his shotgun and they skedaddled away like their clothes was on fire.”

The other man guffawed.

“We got t’nip it in the bud, before they try movin’ in around Simpson Creek. That’s why I’m revivin’ the Circle. Bunch of us are meetin’ at my ranch tomorrow night. Can you make it?”

Nick wondered idly who the men were talking about. Beggars of some sort—out-of-work soldiers from the recent war? Certainly not the warlike Comanche. Poor Mexicans? And what was the “circle” Waters referred to?

“Excuse me,” he said, when the men seemed oblivious of his desire to enter the store.