Over on the Dry Side Read Online Free

all backed into a corner with a full-growed cougar lookin’ ’em straight in the eye. When that door opened he turned on me, ears back an’ tail a-lashin’. Now nobody in his right mind corners a cougar, ’cause cornered they’ll fight. But I wasn’t of no mind to let that cougar make a bait of one of our pigs, so I ups with the shotgun and let him have a blast just as he leapt at me.
    That cougar knocked me a-rollin’, tail over teakettle back out the door, an’ my head smacked up agin a rock and laid me out cold. But when Pa got home I had me a cougar skinned and the hide nailed up to dry out on the outside cabin wall.
    â€œLook, kid,” the bigger man said. “You’re a mite sassy for a boy your size. Somebody’ll take you off that horse an’ give you a whuppin’, if you don’t watch out.”
    â€œMebbe,” I said. “But he’d be doin’ it with a chunk of lead in his belly. An’ if there was two of them, two chunks of lead.
    â€œThis here’s a free country, wide open for all, and if you’re worried about gettin’ shot at, you just high-tail it back to your claim, because I reckon I could see a claim and men workin’ and I’d put no bullet near ’em…’less they asked for it.
    â€œI come up this mountain for meat, an’ when I go back down, I’ll have it.” I had that Henry right across my saddle. Both men was pistol-armed and one of them had a rifle in his boot, but it was in the boot and them handguns was in their holsters. My Henry was lookin’ right at them.
    â€œYou get your meat,” the stocky one said again. “But make sure you stay shy of this mountainside or you’ll get all the shootin’ you want and then some.”
    They turned their horses then and went back up the trail, and soon as they were out of sight, I reined my dapple over and whisked through the trees, myself. No tellin’ when they might try to circle around an’ take a shot at me.
    Followin’ that trail that day didn’t look like good business, so I angled off through the trees, just getting myself out of harm’s way. I wasn’t no way eager for a shootin’ over anything like that, but I didn’t figure to back up, neither. So I worked my way up a slope, turned north and then west with the lay of the land and the trees, and suddenly I come out atop a mesa, riding down amongst some all-fired big ponderosas, scattered spruce and aspen. Coming down through some big old trees I come upon a cabin.
    It set on a slab of solid rock with a big wide view of the whole country spread out in front. A body could see the Sleeping Ute, the great juttin’ prow of Mesa Verde, and way afar off, the Abajo and La Sal mountains of Utah. Some trees growin’ on the edge of the cliff kind of screened the cabin off, but a man with a good glass could of picked up ridin’ men some distance away.
    The builder had cut grooves in the solid rock and put in fitted squared-off timbers that were nigh two-foot through. They’d been fitted like they’d growed that way, and the roof was strongly built and solid.
    I knocked on the door, expectin’ no answer, and none came. So I lifted the latch and stepped in.
    I got a surprise.
    The place was empty. But the floor was swept clean, the hearth dusted, and everything spic an’ span. There was a faint smell in the room that wasn’t the smell of a closed-up place. It was a fresh, woodsy smell. And then I seen on a shelf behind me a pot with flowers in it and some sprigs of juniper.
    The flowers wasn’t two days old, and when I looked in the pot there was water for ’em.
    There was no bedding. There were no clothes hung on the pegs along the wall, and no dishes for cookin’ ’cept for a coffeepot.
    Outside, there was a bench by the door, and the grass below it looked like somebody had been settin’ there, time to