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    The Line Rider
    The Line Rider
    The Line Rider
    Ebook95 pages1 hour

    The Line Rider

    By Robert O' Hanlin

    ()

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    About this ebook

    This book contains three stories.

    The Line Rider: Life at a line camp is a lonely one that is, until a woman and her boy show up and won’t leave. It took time, but Stretch Walters finally relented and allowed her to stay...but was it a good idea? He was building a bond with the boy and when spring came, he would be breaking that bond.

    Tonopah Joe: The desert can be a deadly place unless you know how to adapt and Tonopah Joe passed along the secrets he knew. Cassidy O’Rourke was glad he had listened to the rantings of his old friend Tonopah Joe because those rantings were the only thing that might save his life.

    Trial by Gun: The life of a gunman is a deadly one even when it is others who are seeking him out. John Dexter didn’t want the reputation, but the reputation of ‘Coinjohn’ came anyway and there seemed no way to escape it...that is until he arrived in the small town of Lincoln and met an understanding sheriff.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRobert O' Hanlin
    Release dateSep 22, 2023
    ISBN9781990394140
    The Line Rider
    Author

    Robert O' Hanlin

    I was born in Canada but spend much of my time roaming the Sonora Desert of Arizona, which is truly a place to inspire a writer.I write in the Western genre inspired by the great Western writer Louis L'Amour. My stories are fiction with a mixture of real history and I hope you enjoy reading them.

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      Book preview

      The Line Rider - Robert O' Hanlin

      The Line Rider

      By Robert O'Hanlin

      SMASHWORDS EDITION

      PUBLISHED BY

      Robert O'Hanlin on Smashwords

      The Line Rider

      Copyright 2023 by Robert O'Hanlin

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Please share it with your friends and family through the source you downloaded it. Please remember that all rights are reserved, and no part of this eBook may be copied or reproduced by any means electronic or mechanical or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critic’s articles or reviews. Your respect for the author is appreciated.

      This is a fictional book and any resemblance of the characters to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

      Books by Robert O’Hanlin

      The Outlaw Series

      The Montana Outlaws

      The Alberta Outlaw

      Last of the Outlaws

      Others

      Windfall

      O'Bannions Return

      Justice in Lonesome Valley

      The Cougar Man

      Branded a Coward

      Once a Gambler

      Put the Gun Down

      Bucking the Odds

      The Talking Stick

      White Lion of the Mountains

      McCracken’s Land

      Back from the Grave

      The Long Way Home

      Brotherly Love

      Revenge

      Digger McGilvery

      Man of the West

      Bounty Man

      Ride for the Brand

      The Rodeo Clown

      Westward the Brothers

      For Want of a Winter Home

      Ride a Hard Road

      Halfbreed

      The Road to Garrison

      The Girls of the Dollar Bill Cabin

      Gallagher’s Boy’s

      Badger’s Folly

      The Way of the Apache

      The Tin Can War

      Hold Back the Wind

      Starr of Abilene

      The Custer Conspiracy

      Texas Bound

      Saddled with Sadie

      The Trail of Coyote Kendall

      Two for the Price of One

      James Youngblood: U.S. Marshal

      A Hard Road to Oliver Station

      Table of Contents

      The Line Rider

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Tonopah Joe

      Trial by Gun

      Chapter l

      Chapter ll

      Chapter lll

      Chapter lV

      The Line Rider

      Chapter 1

      Sarah Adair was eighteen when she was carried off and married. When they pulled out of the yard in his old buckboard, January Maars was all smiles, but she was full of mixed feelings. She hated to leave her mother with all that work. Caring for her eight siblings was a handful, but she knew some of the older ones would soon fill in her shoes.

      On the other hand, she knew it would be one less mouth to feed, which would leave more for her brothers and sisters. The excitement part was looking forward to a new life and an adventure she had only dreamed of. January’s farm was only ten miles away, but to her, it might as well have been a thousand.

      The duties she was doing for her family were now transferred to her new husband, and she boldly took them on. Growing up with eight siblings and a sickly mother left her to run the household…with little time for herself. Having all those duties, she developed a good sense of responsibility…and having to deal with her drunken father gave her an inner strength that never wavered.

      The Cherokee and the other tribes had interacted peacefully with the white man for many years but when gold was discovered in Georgia the resulting gold rush prompted the government to forcefully move what were referred to as the ‘Five Civilized Tribes’ across the Mississippi to a place they called the Indian Territory.

      The Cherokee were among those who traveled the distance along what came to be known as The Trail of Tears, and when they arrived they were allotted a piece of land. Moon Adair was mostly Cherokee and mostly a drunk. Sarah never knew many men in her life, but she was sure that he was the laziest man on earth and although she had to fight off his drunken advances, he was still her father.

      He was no good at farming and raising crops, but he excelled at having children, so being in a family with eight siblings meant there were times that she went without food just to see that the younger ones got some.

      So when January Maars showed up and talked to her father, she was happy to go with him. The only thing she knew about men was that someday she would be married to one and the fact that January was fifteen years older than her did not enter into it.

      She was soon to find that she had just traded one dirt farm for another, and one man who drank for another. Some men get jovial when they drink and others get sentimental, but not January Maars. He did not drink as often as her father, but when he did, he was a mean drunk. She had plenty of experience with her father’s drinking, so she knew enough to stay away from him when he came home drunk.

      For a woman who had never known anything resembling luxury living on the old homestead, her new home was a luxury. She was a hard-working and prideful woman, so looking after the house, cooking the meals, tending the stock, and working the garden came easily to her.

      She continued her work as joyfully as she could even when she was carrying her first child, but shortly after their son was born, things seemed to change. Being a new mother, she had to spend considerably more time and attention on the baby, and that seemed to irk her husband. It all came to a head one night when he came in for supper and it wasn’t on the table waiting, in a fit of rage, he slapped her and pushed her into the kitchen.

      When he sat down with his back to her, she picked up a butcher knife and came up behind him, grabbed his hair, pulled his head back, and put the knife firmly against his throat.

      Don’t move a muscle or I swear I’ll slit your throat. If you ever hit me again or disrespect me, I’ll finish this…even if I have to do it while you’re sleeping.

      She took the knife away and pushed his head toward the table, walked back to the kitchen, grabbed a plate of food, and slammed it down in front of him. He never spoke a word while they finished the meal…but he never struck her again, either.

      January was not lazy like her father, but his farm was a losing proposition, and after years of barely scraping by he suggested that they head west where he had heard that all you had to do was wade up a creek and pick up the gold nuggets, and she was all for it, for in her eyes nothing could be any worse out west.

      The Cherokee had sided with the South during the war mostly in retaliation for what the government did to them but the war had been over for five years and most of the people seeking new homes in the West had already gone, but that was January’s way…always a little late.

      He only got a pittance for the farm, and that was to do them in their travels to the west, so they left the farm with only a covered wagon and what food supplies they had on hand. He was not sure where they were going, but Colorado sounded like the best for him.

      It was almost a thousand miles away, but she had no concept of that kind of distance, so for her, it was just an adventure. Bud was ten now and, for him, it was also an exciting adventure. The thousands of men who had swarmed into Colorado after the discovery of gold had already beaten the trail, so they were able to make about forty and sometimes fifty miles a day, which meant the trip was going to take them around a month.

      January had some luck with his hunting and they had plenty of meat to

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