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    The Cougar Man
    The Cougar Man
    The Cougar Man
    Ebook126 pages2 hours

    The Cougar Man

    By Robert O' Hanlin

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    About this ebook

    Ryan O'Neil's life was not a happy one. He had lost his father at ten, and now lived with his mother's new husband and his four sons. Wesley Colson and his boys were cruel and hateful people, and he and his mother bore the brunt of their cruelty. At eighteen he could have left, but he stayed to try and protect his mother...only it didn't work, he found her murdered. He killed Wesley Colson in self defence, but he knew that the Colson boys would not believe it...and they didn't. Now he was on the run and the Colson clan were on his trail.
    There was a passel of Colsons in Sheridan County and they appointed themselves as his judge, jury and executioner...all they had to do was find him. He ran because he did not want to kill anyone else, but he was driven to it. Each time they found him they lost men, but how long could his luck last. Hiding in the Black Hills made him rich, but would he live to spend his gold? They found him again and more of them fell to his deadly fire. He was thinning the Colsons out, but they kept coming...all the way to Denver where he had met the girl of his dreams and things were looking good...until they attacked the woman he loved.
    For the first time he felt hatred and he took the war to them, until he was sick of killing. So he went to the mountains where there was nobody around him that could be hurt or killed by a stray bullet meant for him. He had only an old mountain man, a young Indian girl and two full grow cougars as companions, and life was good again...until they found him.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRobert O' Hanlin
    Release dateAug 24, 2014
    ISBN9780992002565
    The Cougar Man
    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 Cougar Man - Robert O' Hanlin

      THE COUGAR MAN

      By Robert O'Hanlin

      SMASHWORDS EDITION

      PUBLISHED BY

      Robert O'Hanlin on Smashwords

      The Cougar Man

      Copyright 2014 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

      Table of Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 1

      The tall, raw boned man knelt on the trail, looking at the small tracks in front of him. He had seen these tracks before, but this time they were not following where he was going...they were following where he came from.

      He had seen the same track for the last three days, but it was always following behind him partly covering his track. This time it was not good, he didn't like it when people knew where he lived. He studied the small tracks closer and assumed they were made by a boy...or maybe a woman.

      He shook his head...what would a woman be doing up here alone? It was a moccasin track, but that didn't necessarily mean it was an Indian. Most white folks who spend much time in the mountains end up wearing moccasins after they wear out their boots.

      He had met with the Mountain Crow band that lived in the area shortly after he came to the mountains and he was on passable terms with them, but he could never be certain of them being friendly all the time.

      He felt certain that they knew where he lived and had probably watched his comings and goings, but he had never seen any tracks or signs of them before. He could understand a boy being curious and practicing his tracking skills but a woman...what would she be doing here?

      As he sat on a rock mulling over the question he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. He had learned that if he was going to stay alive in the mountains, he had to always be watchful, so he sat perfectly still and looked across to a ledge where he thought he saw the movement.

      After a minute or two...there it was again. It was just a fleeting vision between the rocks but he kept his position and turned his eyes slightly to the side, knowing that sometimes his side vision picked up movement better than staring directly at it.

      This time he was right, he saw the flash of movement again, and looked directly at the area. Now he knew what it was, and that it didn't pose a threat, so he took a small telescope out of his bag and aimed it at the rocks and quietly whispered to himself.

      So there you are, out hunting food today.

      He watched as the big cougar stood on the rock ledge and looked at him, they shared the moment, and then he slinked away behind the rocks.

      It was near this spot the he had killed that cat's mother. Shortly after he settled in his valley he spotted a cougar on the ledge near where this one just disappeared. Cougars were seldom caught in the open, and were virtually impossible to stalk, but he was sitting still when she showed herself at the wrong time, so he took the shot and she went down.

      When he worked his way over to the fallen cat, he heard a noise...he listened carefully until he heard it again, and then he tracked it down. There, in a small crevasse between two big rocks, were two young cougar kittens. Now he understood why the cat had been so careless, she probably knew he was there, but had to return to her young.

      He carefully picked the kittens up and placed them in his bag, not realizing at the time what he was taking on. He took them home and fed them water and honey and small bits of meat to keep them alive...and they both lived.

      Now they were full grown, and one of them was watching him from across the chasm, he knew when he returned home they would be waiting by the door as they always were. At first he kept them in the cabin with him, but they soon grew too big and demanding for even him to handle.

      Playing with them when they were little was fun and entertaining, but now it was a handful wrestling with two full grown cougars. He had to put bars on his window and strengthened the door to keep them out until they learned to use the shelter he built them at the front of the cabin.

      They had been a chore that required him to hunt everyday just to feed them until they were full grown, but eventually he cut back on their food and they began hunting for themselves. Still every night he could count on them being back at his front door wanting him to come out and play.

      He turned back again to take another look at the puzzling tracks on the trail, and his mind began racing again. He knew that it was almost impossible to live in the Crow country without being watched, but he had learned a lot from his friend John Johnson who had lived alongside the Crow for years.

      He had come to the mountains to be alone and not have to deal with the troubles he left behind, and now as he sat beside the trail watching the sleek cat, his mind drifted back to what had brought him here.

      He would never forget the day his mother sat him down and told him that his father would not be coming home from the war. He was only ten at the time and idolized his father. His father was a good man and a farmer living on a small but productive farm in the eastern part of Nebraska, and he and his mother did their part to make the farm successful.

      Joseph O'Neil was a good and kind father and had only enlisted in the army the year before. Ryan didn't understand about war, but he did understand he would never be seeing his father again.

      It left him, and his mother Sarah, on their own at a time when things were hard for a single woman with a ten year old boy. They tried to keep the farm up but it was too much for them so his mother took what she could for the farm, and they went to stay with his mother's sister for a while...until his mother met another man.

      He remembered how happy she was when she met Wesley Colson and started to feel like a woman again, now that a man was paying attention to her. She was learning how hard life was for a woman alone with a young boy, and he seemed like a good man, so they were married. She and Ryan moved to the Colson farm in western Nebraska with Wesley and his four boys, and it was only after they were married that Sarah and Ryan found out what kind of people he and his boys were.

      Colson was a stern and demanding man who took everything out on her or Ryan, it seemed that his four boys could do no wrong, and they treated Sarah and Ryan as bad as their father did. Ryan endured it for the sake of his mother and he didn't realize it, but she was enduring it for his sake.

      The boys continually picked on him and he learned that it was better for him and his mother if he just took it, so when they hit him he just fell down and didn't try to fight back...they thought he was a weakling and a coward, but he was neither.

      He was strong from the work he was doing and he was secretly taking boxing lessons with a neighbor. Wilhem Gruber was a couple years older that Ryan and he was a big tough boy who learned that to earn his place in life, he had to learn to defend himself.

      Ryan was friendly with his sister Johanna and convinced Wilhem to teach him how to box, because he knew someday he would get the opportunity to pay them back for all the beatings he took, so he practised hard and relentlessly.

      He remembered the look of surprise in Wesley Colson eyes as he pushed the knife deep into his chest. Their eyes held and as he fell backwards and hit the floor, Ryan found himself staring into another set of eyes, they were the eyes of Wesley's youngest boy Willy, who was sitting on a chair at the table.

      Stare was all he did. Willy was the only one of the boys that didn't pick on Ryan, they were the same age, but he was a little slow witted and hadn't picked up the bullying habit from his father or the boys. Ryan had always figured that the reason the others never picked on Willy was that he never reacted to their jibes and jokes...it was no fun teasing someone who didn't react.

      He tried to take a lesson from Willy, and not react to the constant badgering the boys did to him, but it was not working the same. He knew when the boys came home and found their father dead, they would blame him.

      He went through the house and gathered some of his belonging and put them in a sack, then he found Wesley's gun and holster and strapped it on, and went to the place where his mother had

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