Sharp Shooters
by Bruce Thorstad[ Historical Fiction ]
The latest from Bruce H. Thorstad's "Gents" series find the boys in another sticky situation of their own concoction. Cass McCasland really knew how to get Riley Stokes into trouble. He had cooked up a hustle that combined the boys' twin fortés. With Cass' talent for betting and Riley's skills as a sharpshooter, Cass hoped to win them both a whole heap of cash? But even rich men--especially rich men--don't like getting swindled by two raggedy con artists from everywhere and nowhere. Now the partners in crime have higher stakes to worry about--they're gambling with their lives? On the run from a slew of men with murder on their minds, it will take Riley's sharp eye, Cass's sharp wit and a whole lot of luck to get them out of this one!
1
Too Much Bear
I HEARD OF PUNCHERS IN WYOMING ONE TIME WHO ROPED THEMselves a grizzly. The bear had wandered out of the Bighorn Mountains onto the flat, thinking he'd breakfast on a steer or two. When the cowhands spotted him, they loped in and hazed him awhile, just to take some starch out of him. Then they threw out their loops, and the big bear was caught.
These were sprouts as cowhands go, but they were savvy enough to keep their ropes taut and the bear between them. Well, Mr. Grizzly raged and the morning aged, but the punchers had him dead to rights. Before long, up starts a discussion of just what to do with him.
"Sure thing a zoo would want him," one waddy opined, which was sensical enough had any zoo been within five hundred miles of there. "Haul him to town in a wagon," said another. The thinking was folks would pay good money to see a captive grizzly.
Then a seasoned hand rode up and looked the situation over--the bear snarling and his jaws popping and his claws flashing like new razors. The sprouts, they wilted, expecting a chewing out on account of no one was minding longhorns.
Well, the old boy didn't say they'd done good and he didn't say they hadn't. What he said was, "Whatever you're fixing on doing, don't let go of that grizzly!"
Which came a trifle late for the cowhands, who already had their hands full, in the same fashion as similar advice would have come a hair tardy to Cass McCasland in that summer of 1875, when he was hatching more extravaganzas than P. T. Barnum and mixing me up in them. In the end, it was a hard lesson learned by both of us--that there is such a thing as roping too danged much bear.
I should say I am Riley Stokes, originally from back in the Kentucky hollers, and Cass is my business partner, sometimes my pal. Being from Texas, he is subject to highfalutin notions, which, from my observation, is a weakness of the breed generally.
Every soul on earth has his burdens to shoulder. Cass has been chief among mine going on forty years. It is my self-elected office, and darned near a life's work, to take Cass down a peg when it's plain as sin he needs it.
Which is a long way of saying that what follows hereinafter might in some way be my fault. On account of that summer I am telling about, Cass needed taking down a peg or five--if not ten or more--while I, my attention snared by fame's siren song, for once neglected my duty.
Pull a chair up. Have a mug of this coffee. If you're not too awful in a hurry, I will relate the full particulars.
