Rebel Spurs

Rebel Spurs by Andre Norton

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Title: Rebel Spurs
Author: Andre Norton
Release Date: March 17, 2007 [Ebook #20840]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO 8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REBEL SPURS***

Rebel Spurs
Andre Norton

THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK
Published by The World Publishing Company 2231 West 110th Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio
Published simultaneously in Canada by Nelson, Foster & Scott Ltd.
First Edition

Copyright ? 1962 by Andre Norton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher, except for brief passages included in a review appearing in a newspaper or magazine. Printed in the United States of America.

Project Gutenberg Transcriber's Copyright Note:
Project Gutenberg has not been able to find a United States copyright renewal. To the best of our knowledge, this work has fallen to the public domain.

For HENDRY PEART and CARROLL COLLINS who share my interest in "The West."

[Illustration: Bookcover Illustration]
Jacket painting by Peter Burchard

REBEL SPURS
ANDRE NORTON
(front dusk jacket)
In 1866, only men uprooted by war had reason to ride into Tubacca, Arizona, a nondescript town as shattered and anonymous as the veterans drifting through it. So when Drew Rennie, newly discharged from Forrest's Confederate scouts, arrived leading everything he owned behind him--his thoroughbred stud Shiloh, a mare about to foal, and a mule--he knew his business would not be questioned. To anyone in Tubacca there could be only one extraordinary thing about Drew, and that he could not reveal: his name, Rennie.
Drew had come west from Kentucky to find a father he had thought dead until the year before. Kinship with a man like Hunt Rennie, however--the legendary Don Cazar, owner of a matchless range and prize stallions--was not a claim to be made quickly or lightly. Posing as Drew Kirby the young veteran contrived to get himself and his friend Anse hired as corral hands at Rennie's Range, but he was hardly prepared for the suspicion and danger which stood between him and his father. As hotheaded as his father, Drew was ready to move on to California--until the day all proof of his Rennie name was stolen from him, and his unwarranted arrest for horse-thieving brought on the accusations of the one man whose trust he needed.
Andre Norton's Ride Proud, Rebel! dramatically portrayed the last year of the Confederacy, when brave men like Drew Rennie met defeat with honor. In this sequel, Drew's struggle to establish his identity and begin life anew in a raw, unsettled land reflects the courage of thousands of rootless men set adrift by the Civil War.

BY ANDRE NORTON
The Defiant Agents Ride Proud, Rebel! Storm Over Warlock Galactic Derelict The Time Traders Star Born Yankee Privateer The Stars Are Ours!
EDITED BY ANDRE NORTON
Space Pioneers Space Service

1
Even the coming of an autumn dusk could not subdue the color of this land. Shadows here were not gray or black; they were violet and purple. The crumbling adobe walls were laced by strings of crimson peppers, vivid in the torch and lantern light. It had been this way for days, red and yellow, violet--colors he had hardly been aware existed back in the cool green, silver, gray-brown of Kentucky.
So this was Tubacca! The rider shifted his weight in the saddle and gazed about him with watchful interest. Back in '59 this had been a flourishing town, well on its way to prominence in the Southwest. The mines in the hills behind producing wealth, the fact that it was a watering place on two cross-country routes--the one from Tucson down into Sonora of Old Mexico, the other into California--had all fed its growth.
Then the war.... The withdrawal of the army, the invasion of Sibley's Confederate forces which had reached this far in the persons of Howard's Arizona Rangers--and most of all the raiding, vicious, deadly, and continual, by Apaches and outlaws--had blasted Tubacca. Now, in the fall of 1866, it was a third of what it had been, with a ragged fringe of dilapidated adobes crumbling back into the soil. Only this heart core was still alive in the dusk.
Smell, a myriad of smells, some to tickle a flat stomach, others to wrinkle the nose. Under the rider the big stud moved, tossed his head, drawing the young man's attention from the town back to his own immediate concerns. The animal he rode, the two he led were, at first glance, far more noticeable than the dusty rider himself.
His saddle was cinched about the barrel of a big gray colt, one that could not have been more than five years