Rawhiders (Wells Fargo Trail Book #4) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - James Walker

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179 pages

English

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They Must Risk Everything to Save Their Ranch and Way of LifeWhile Zac Cobb is sent undercover by Wells Fargo to investigate the robbery of cattle payrolls in Kansas, hundreds of miles away a family in Texas is in the midst of great tragedy. Four sisters, the Reddiger girls, are all that remain of a Mennonite family that fought and prayed their way through the hardships of ranching on the parched plains. The murder of their father has left them with only a herd of cattle.To save their parents dreams, the Reddiger sisters must find a way to drive the cattle across the plains of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas and sell the herd at the rough and tumble railhead in Dodge City. United by hardship, they are forced to hire strangers to help them. They are fortunate that one of the men they choose is Joe Cobb, one of Zacs brothers who disappeared during the Civil War.The cattle drive is plagued with difficulties, but the greatest test of the strong family values the girls have been nurtured on is a group of evil men, the Rawhiders, who are determined to stop them. The Rawhiders, however, have never met up with the likes of the Cobb brothers!

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 octobre 1995
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441261939
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0202€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Books by Jim Walker
Husbands Who Won’t Lead and Wives Who Won’t Follow
T HE W ELLS F ARGO T RAIL
The Dreamgivers
The Nightriders
The Rail Kings
The Rawhiders
The Desert Hawks
The Oyster Pirates
The Warriors
The Ice Princess
The Wells Fargo Trail, Book 4
The Rawhiders
Jim Walker
© 1995 by Jim Walker
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
eISBN 978-1-4412-6193-9
This book is dedicated to a young woman with spiritual fire, the kind of person who has made a radical difference in my life and who makes all who come to know her a better person my daughter, Julie.
JIM WALKER is a staff member with the Navigators and has written Husbands Who Won’t Lead and Wives Who Won’t Follow . He received an M.Div. from Talbot Theological Seminary and has been a pastor with an Evangelical Free Church. He was a survival training instructor in the United States Air Force and is a member of the Western Writers of America and the Western Outlaw-Lawman History Association. Jim, his wife, Joyce, and their three children, Joel, Jennifer, and Julie, live in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Characters
Barbara Reddiger Oldest daughter of the Reddiger family. Barb feels a motherly instinct toward her sisters and is protective of them. She wants desperately to continue her family’s heritage and preserve the ranch.
Karen Reddiger Blond spitfire who can ride, rope, and shoot with the best of men. She considers herself the black sheep of the family. Called Car on the trail.
Dorothy Reddiger Outspoken and headstrong third daughter. She doesn’t know how much she still needs to learn about men and life.
Vonnie Reddiger At fourteen, she’s the youngest of the Reddiger girls. She is contemplative, but adventurous.
Frank Emmy Local banker who holds the note to the Reddiger ranch. He is smitten with the attractive Barbara Reddiger, but pulled along by the forces that seek to control the Reddiger property.
Joe Cobb Ex-Confederate soldier, now a cowboy. Joe is savvy in the ways of the West and handles horses well. Older brother of Zac.
Poor Soul Ex-slave of the Cobb household. He is good-natured, literate, extremely quick with a gun, and fearless.
Zac Cobb An agent for Wells Fargo using the alias of Ian Adams, he is a soldier of fortune on assignment. Zac doesn’t know if any of his brothers have survived the war.
Skip Zac’s adopted son. He fears the loss of anyone who gets close enough to love him.
Pete Hammond Trail boss hired by the banker, and a man without scruples.
Wolf Macrae Gunslinging ramrod, assistant to Pete Hammond.
Yanni The son of a circuit-riding preacher who has strayed far from his parents’ teaching.
Jim Crossy Talkative, fun-loving Irish cowboy who can be depended on to show his experience while making light of the world around him.
Lance Randolph Yale graduate, former Philadelphia lawyer, the son of a powerful Eastern family. He has gone west to escape the designs of his father.
Frank Green Nicknamed Greener, Frank is a young man who needs a job to provide for his young wife and expected baby.
Tipper Young fifteen-year-old runaway, branded “bad” by his drunken father after his mother died giving birth to him.
Earl Richards Lord Edward Richards, Earl of Northumberland, sent to the American West by his father in order to prove his mettle as a man.
Bobby Pera Italian trail cook who wants to start a restaurant.
Dr. Marvin Local traveling salesman. An older man, he’s a former minister who, after the death of his family, has chosen a life of providing for other people’s needs.
Quirt Muldoon Three-hundred-pound albino. He seeks to corner the Kansas cattle market by any means necessary and takes special delight in manipulating people.
Nat Black Muldoon’s devious, mean-spirited lieutenant who demonstrates his skills with a bull-whip on any man who opposes him.
Rass Bodine Muldoon’s hot-headed assistant who is fast with his guns.
Jock O’Connor Huge Irish red-haired fellow, the brute strength segundo to Muldoon’s operation.
Contents
Cover
Books by Jim Walker
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
About the Author
Map
Characters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
Fact Is Stranger Than Fiction
Chapter 1
Like an invisible river, the wind lapped against the mourners. The warm Texas sun shone brightly and birds flitted across the tops of waving bluebonnets. It was a beautiful day for a funeral.
Twenty-two people stood beside Will Reddiger’s casket in the family burial plot. Eight years earlier the three sisters had buried their mother here; now it was time to bury their father. Barbara, the oldest, was twenty-five and towered over the other two. According to local custom she should have been married by now. Even Dorothy was old enough to be married, at the tender age of sixteen. She had fair skin and auburn hair. LaVonne, called Vonnie by the family, was an impish and gangly fourteen-year-old just beginning to bud into womanhood. Karen, a fourth sister, wasn’t present at the funeral, at least not in close proximity. At twenty-two, she was the wild beauty of the bunch. Their father always said that no man would ever get close to her a second time. When he told her that, the other girls would all laugh. Karen would purely shame the men who came around her, she would. No matter what they were doing riding, roping, shooting, or just playing checkers Karen always seemed to do it better. All that, and she played the piano too.
Maybe her father loved her so much because in some way she reminded him of what he had been like in his young, wild days, when Texas was growing up. He had killed Comanches and built the ranch into a place that everyone envied. People liked the ranch, and they admired the water rights even more.
The grass on the Circle R was greener, and there were pecan trees scattered along the lowlands. Vonnie loved to climb them and shake the nuts down. She’d bounce on the limbs, all the while shaking them with her arms, listening to the fat pecans hit the ground.
The sisters held hands tightly. Being the youngest, Vonnie was always between her sisters in church; this was no different, a sort of outdoor church service.
As the group sang “Shall We Gather at the River,” Vonnie looked up the boulder-strewn hill to where Karen was watching. No one else saw her. She sat on her favorite mare, the one with the white stockings. Karen had told them all that she didn’t want to remember her father as a hole in the ground. Barb had tried to shame her into coming, but whenever Karen made up her mind about a thing, that was that. She said she didn’t want to stand around listening to a bunch of hypocrites spout off about how much they all admired her father when none of them had lifted a finger to help him when he was alive, and few had tried to find his killer.
Vonnie clenched her jaw as she thought of the upcoming auction of her family’s property. Her father had gotten the bank to agree to hold off, but now it would go on as scheduled. All these people were saying such nice things now, but Vonnie knew they’d be there on Wednesday, be there to buy everything she’d ever known. They finished the songs and listened to the preacher pray, then one by one, each put a spadeful of dirt over Will’s box.
The parson held his Bible and looked up into the sky. Vonnie followed his gaze and imagined her papa and momma looking down on them all. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord,” the parson drawled.
Vonnie heard the preacher’s voice clear enough, but still didn’t understand much of what he was saying. She had always been thankful for what the Lord gave, but hated Him for what He had taken away. Blessing Him for it would be a long time coming.
“By golly, I’m so sorry about your papa, Vonnie,” the storekeeper said. Vonnie hated it when grown-ups put their hands on her head. It always made her feel small. Mr. Bickerstaff was a nice enough man, but Vonnie couldn’t fight shy of the feeling that maybe he was owed money. He and his wife moved on down the line, talking to each of the sisters. As every other merchant walked by, Vonnie couldn’t get over the feeling that maybe they were looking to collect from what was left of the Reddiger family. Will would have wanted them paid, if they were owed, but still, the thought made Vonnie feel uncomfortable.
One by one, the mourners filed past the girls, and each said something. Many of the women had brought food. Some of the ladies had brought apple and berry pies and set them in the back of the buggy. At least it was still their buggy for a short time yet. Karen would never want to give up the horses, but the buggy and tack would have to go, along with the ranch. In a few days, somebody else would own the place where they had been raised, and somebody else would own the land where the graves were dug. Vonnie had already made plans to ride back in the morning with flowers and her Bible. She wanted to be alone with the two of them just them and her.
Frank Emmy, the bank