"THE TRAIL TO SEVEN PINES" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

Drawing one of the wounded man's guns, Hopalong handed it to him. "Just in case,"
he said. "They might figure you knew something and come back." He drew the belts
nearer. "But I doubt it. I figure you'll be all right."
He headed down the trail at a fast clip, and Topper liked it. He was a horse that
always liked to run, and he ran now. Yet they had gone no more than four miles when
Hopalong saw a black blotch on the trail ahead that speedily developed into a racing
buckboard and a half-dozen riders. There were two men in the buckboard, a blocky
man with auburn hair and mustache, and a taller, younger man with a mustache of clipped
blond hair and cool but friendly blue eyes. They drew up at Hopalong's lifted hand.
"Wounded man up ahead," he said. "Let's hurry. Is Doc Marsh here?"
The blond young man nodded. "I'm Dr. Marsh."
Hopalong wheeled his horse and led them back up the badly washed trail. One of the
men wore a star. He was a tall old man with cold gray eyes and a handlebar mustache.
"Who's alive?"
"Lock, he said his name was."
"Talk any?"
Hopalong was acutely conscious that the others were closing around, listening intently.
"He's badly hurt." Hopalong avoided the question. "They get anything?"
"They got it all!" The burly man driving the buckboard
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made the reply. "Got my whole cleanup! Thirty thousand dollars' worth of gold! One
more like that and I'll be broke!"
Racing into the canyon, they churned to a halt at Hopa-long's gesture and swung down.
Hurrying through the rocks in the lead, Hopalong Cassidy stopped suddenly. His face
slowly turned gray and hard.
Jesse Lock was dead. His gun was clutched in his hand, the muzzle tight against his
temple!
"Suicide!" One of the men drew back. "He shot himself!"
"Looks like it," another man said, and Hopalong lifted his head slowly, having a
feeling there had been almost satisfaction in the man's voice. But he could not make
out which had been the speaker.
"Now what would make him do a thing like that?" It was the man who had first mentioned
suicide. "It doesn't make sense!"
Hopalong moved swiftly away from the others, his hard blue eyes sweeping the ground,
his lips twisted and bitter with the realization of failure. Yet what could he have
done? The man had needed a doctor.
"Must have been in terrible pain," somebody commented. "Just had enough, I reckon."
The sheriff said nothing, and Hopalong stared at him curiously. When the old man
did not speak, Hopalong said quietly, "He didn't kill himself. He was murdered."
"Murdered?" They all stared at him.
"He was murdered," Hopalong Cassidy repeated. "This man was alive and cheerful when
I left him. He would not have shot himself."
"What's it look like to you, Hadley?" The speaker was a tall, bulky man with a broad
red face. "If that isn't suicide, what is it? The gun's still in position."
Sheriff Hadley looked shrewdly at Hopalong and pulled his
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LOUIS L'AMOUR