Judd Morgan Passes

: A Story Of The Outdoor West

Gimlet Butte devoted the night of the Fourth to a high old time. The

roping and the other sports were to be on the morrow, and meanwhile the

night hours were filled with exuberance. The cowboy's spree comes

only once in several months, but when it does come he enters into the

occasion with such whole-hearted enthusiasm as to make up swiftly for

lost time. A traveling midway had cast its tents in a vacant square in

comp
tition with the regular attractions of the town, and everywhere the

hard-riding punchers were "night herding" in full regalia.



There was a big masked ball in the street, and another in the Masonic

Hall, while here and there flared the lights of the faker with something

to sell. Among these last was "Soapy" Sothern, doing a thriving business

in selling suckers and bars wrapped with greenbacks. Crowds tramped the

streets blowing horns and throwing confetti, and everywhere was a large

sprinkling of men in high-heeled boots, swinging along with the awkward,

stiff-legged gait of the cowboy. Sometimes a girl was hanging on his

arm, and again he was "whooping it up with the boys"; but in either case

the range-rider's savings were burning a hole through his pockets with

extreme rapidity.



Jim McWilliams and the sheepman Bannister had that day sealed a

friendship that was to be as enduring as life. The owner of the sheep

ranch was already under heavy obligation to the foreman of the Lazy D,

but debt alone is not enough on which to found soul brotherhood. There

must be qualities of kinship in the primeval elements of character. Both

men had suspected that this kinship existed, but to-day they had proved

it in the way that one had lost and the other had won the coveted

championship. They had made no vows and no professions. The subject had

not even been touched in words; a meeting of the eyes, followed by the

handshake with which Bannister had congratulated the winner. That had

been all. But it was enough.



With the casual democracy of the frontier they had together escorted

Helen Messiter and Nora Darling through a riotous three hours of

carnival, taking care to get them back to their hotel before the night

really began "to howl."



But after they had left the young women, neither of them cared to sleep

yet. They were still in costume, Mac dressed as a monk, and his friend

as a Stuart cavalier, and the spirit of frolic was yet strong in them.



"I expaict, mebbe, we better hunt in couples if we're going to help

paint the town," smiled Mac, and his friend had immediately agreed.



It must have been well after midnight that they found themselves

"bucking the tiger" in a combination saloon and gambling-house, whose

patrons were decidedly cosmopolitan in character. Here white and red

and yellow men played side by side, the Orient and the Occident and

the aboriginal alike intent on the falling cards and the little rolling

ball. A good many of them were still in their masks and dominos, though

these, for the most part, removed their vizors before playing.



Neither McWilliams nor his friend were betting high, and the luck had

been so even that at the end of two hours' play neither of them had at

any time either won or lost more than fifteen dollars. In point of fact,

they were playing not so much to win as just to keep in touch with the

gay, youthful humor of the night.



They were getting tired of the game when two men jingled in for a drink.

They were talking loudly together, and it was impossible to miss the

subject of their conversation.



McWilliams gave a little jerk of his head toward one of them. "Judd

Morgan," his lips framed without making a sound.



Bannister nodded.



"Been tanking up all day," Mac added. "Otherwise his tongue would not be

shooting off so reckless."



A silence had fallen over the assembly save for the braggarts at the

bar. Men looked at each other, and then furtively at Bannister. For

Morgan, ignorant of who was sitting quietly with his back to him at the

faro-table, was venting his hate of Bannister and McWilliams.



"Both in the same boat. Did y'u see how Mac ran to help him to-day? Both

waddies. Both rustlers. Both train robbers. Sho! I got through putting

a padlock on me mouth. Man to man, I'm as good as either of them--damn

sight better. I wisht they was here, one or both; I wisht they would

step up here and fight it out. Bannister's a false alarm, and that

foreman of the Lazy D--" His tongue stumbled over a blur of vilification

that ended with a foul mention of Miss Messiter.



Instantly two chairs crashed to the floor. Two pair of gray eyes met

quietly.



"My quarrel, Bann," said Jim, in a low, even voice.



The other nodded. "I'll see y'u have a clear field."



The man who was with Morgan suddenly whispered in his ear, and the

latter slewed his head in startled fear. Almost instantly a bullet

clipped past McWilliams's shoulder. Morgan had fired without waiting

for the challenge he felt sure was at hand. Once--twice the foreman's

revolver made answer. Morgan staggered, slipped down to the floor, a

bullet crashing through the chandelier as he fell. For a moment his body

jerked. Then he rolled over and lay still.



The foreman's weapon covered him unwaveringly, but no more steadily than

Bannister's gaze the man who had come in with him who lay lifeless on

the floor. The man looked at the lifeless thing, shuddered, and backed

out of the saloon.



"I call y'u all to witness that my friend killed him in self-defense,"

said Bannister evenly. "Y'u all saw him fire first. Mac did not even

have his gun out."



"That's right," agreed one, and another added: "He got what was coming

to him."



"He sure did," was the barkeeper's indorsement. "He came in hunting

trouble, but I reckon he didn't want to be accommodated so prompt."



"Y'u'll find us at the Gimlet Butte House if we're wanted for this,"

said Bannister. "We'll be there till morning."



But once out of the gambling-house McWilliams drew his friend to one

side. "Do y'u know who that was I killed?"



"Judd Morgan, foreman before y'u at the Lazy D."



"Yes, but what else?"



"What do y'u mean?"



"I mean that next to your cousin Judd was leader of that Shoshone-Teton

bunch."



"How do y'u know?"



"I suspected it a long time, but I knew for sure the day that your

cousin held up the ranch. The man that was in charge of the crowd

outside was Morgan. I could swear to it. I knew him soon as I clapped

eyes to him, but I was awful careful to forget to tell him I recognized

him."



"That means we are in more serious trouble than I had supposed."



"Y'u bet it does. We're in a hell of a hole, figure it out any way

y'u like. Instead of having shot up a casual idiot, I've killed Ned

Bannister's right-hand man. That will be the excuse--shooting Morgan.

But the real trouble is that I won the championship belt from your

cousin. He already hated y'u like poison, and he don't love me any too

hard. He will have us arrested by his sheriff here. Catch the point.

Y'U'RE NED BANNISTER, THE OUTLAW, AND I'M HIS RIGHT-BOWER. That's the

play he's going to make, and he's going to make it right soon."



"I don't care if he does. We'll fight him on his own ground. We'll prove

that he's the miscreant and not us."



"Prove nothing," snarled McWilliams. "Do y'u reckon he'll give us a

chance to prove a thing? Not on your life. He'll have us jailed first

thing; then he'll stir up a sentiment against us, and before morning

there will be a lynchingbee, and y'u and I will wear the neckties. How

do y'u like the looks of it?"



"But y'u have a lot of friends. They won't stand for anything like

that."



"Not if they had time to stop it. Trouble is, fellow's friends think

awful slow. They'll arrive in time to cut us down and be the mourners.

No, sir! It's a hike for Jimmie Mac on the back of the first bronc he

can slap a saddle on."



Bannister frowned. "I don't like to run before the scurvy scoundrels."



"Do y'u suppose I'm enjoying it? Not to any extent, I allow. But that

sweet relative of yours holds every ace in the deck, and he'll play

them, too. He owns the law in this man's town, and he owns the lawless.

But the best card he holds is that he can get a thousand of the best

people here to join him in hanging the 'king' of the Shoshone outlaws.

Explanations nothing! Y'u rode under the name of Bannister, didn't y'u?

He's Jack Holloway."



"It does make a strong combination," admitted the sheepman.



"Strong! It's invincible. I can see him playing it, laughing up his

sleeve all the time at the honest fools he is working. No, sir! I draw

out of a game like that. Y'u don't get a run for your money."



"Of course he knows already what has happened," mused Bannister.



"Sure he knows. That fellow with Morgan made a bee-line for him. Just

about now he's routing the sheriff out of his bed. We got no time to

lose. Thing is, to burn the wind out of this town while we have the

chance."



"I see. It won't help us any to be spilling lead into a sheriff's posse.

That would ce'tainly put us in the wrong."



"Now y'u're shouting. If we're honest men why don't we surrender

peaceable? That's the play the 'king' is going to make in this town. Now

if we should spoil a posse and bump off one or two of them, we couldn't

pile up evidence enough to get a jury to acquit. No, sir! We can't

surrender and we can't fight. Consequence is, we got to roll our tails

immediate."



"We have an appointment with Miss Messiter and Nora for to-morrow

morning. We'll have to leave word we can't keep it."



"Sure. Denver and Missou are playing the wheel down at the Silver

Dollar. I reckon we better make those boys jump and run errands for us

while we lie low. I'll drop in casual and give them the word. Meet y'u

here in ten minutes. Whatever y'u do, keep that mask on your face."



"Better meet farther from the scene of trouble. Suppose we say the north

gate of the grand stand?"



"Good enough. So-long."



The first faint streaks of day were beginning to show on the horizon

when Bannister reached the grand stand. He knew that inside of another

half-hour the little frontier town would be blinking in the early

morning sunlight that falls so brilliantly through the limpid

atmosphere. If they were going to leave without fighting their way out

there was no time to lose.



Ten minutes slowly ticked away.



He glanced at his watch. "Five minutes after four. I wish I had gone

with Mac. He may have been recognized."



But even as the thought flitted through his mind, the semi-darkness

opened to let a figure out of it.



"All quiet along the Potomac, seh?" asked the foreman's blithe voice.

"Good. I found the boys and got them started." He flung down a Mexican

vaquero's gaily trimmed costume.



"Get into these, seh. Denver shucked them for me. That coyote must have

noticed what we wore before he slid out. Y'u can bet the orders are to

watch for us as we were dressed then."



"What are y u going to do?"



"Me? I'm scheduled to be Aaron Burr, seh. Missou swaps with me when he

gets back here. They're going to rustle us some white men's clothes,

too, but we cayn't wear them till we get out of town on account of

showing our handsome faces."



"What about horses?"



"Denver is rustling some for us. Y'u better be scribbling your billy-doo

to the girl y'u leave behind y'u, seh."



"Haven't y'u got one to scribble?" Bannister retorted. "Seems to me y'u

better get busy, too."



So it happened that when Missou arrived a few minutes later he found

this pair of gentlemen, who were about to flee for their lives, busily

inditing what McWilliams had termed facetiously billets-doux. Each

of them was trying to make his letter a little warmer than friendship

allowed without committing himself to any chance of a rebuff. Mac got as

far as Nora Darling, absentmindedly inserted a comma between the words,

and there stuck hopelessly. He looked enviously across at Bannister,

whose pencil was traveling rapidly down his note-book.



"My, what a swift trail your pencil leaves on that paper. That's going

some. Mine's bogged down before it got started. I wisht y'u would start

me off."



"Well, if you ain't up and started a business college already. I had

ought to have brought a typewriter along with me," murmured Missou

ironically.



"How are things stacking? Our friends the enemy getting busy yet?" asked

Bannister, folding and addressing his note.



"That's what. Orders gone out to guard every road so as not to let you

pass. What's the matter with me rustling up the boys and us holding down

a corner of this town ourselves?"



The sheepman shook his head. "We're not going to start a little private

war of our own. We couldn't do that without spilling a lot of blood. No,

we'll make a run for it."



"That y'u, Denver?" the foreman called softly, as the sound of

approaching horses reached him.



"Bet your life. Got your own broncs, too. Sheriff Burns called up

Daniels not to let any horses go out from his corral to anybody without

his O.K. I happened to be cinching at the time the 'phone message

came, so I concluded that order wasn't for me, and lit out kinder

unceremonious."



Hastily the fugitives donned the new costumes and dominos, turned their

notes over to Denver, and swung to their saddles.



"Good luck!" the punchers called after them, and Denver added an

ironical promise that the foreman had no doubt he would keep. "I'll look

out for Nora--Darling." There was a drawling pause between the first and

second names. "I'll ce'tainly see that she don't have any time to worry

about y'u, Mac."



"Y'u go to Halifax," returned Mac genially over his shoulder as he loped

away.



"I doubt if we can get out by the roads. Soon as we reach the end of the

street we better cut across that hayfield," suggested Ned.



"That's whatever. Then we'll slip past the sentries without being seen.

I'd hate to spoil any of them if we can help it. We're liable to get

ourselves disliked if our guns spatter too much."



They rode through the main street, still noisy with the shouts of late

revelers returning to their quarters. Masked men were yet in evidence

occasionally, so that their habits caused neither remark nor suspicion.

A good many of the punchers, unable to stay longer, were slipping out

of town after having made a night of it. In the general exodus the two

friends hoped to escape unobserved.



They dropped into a side street, galloped down it for two hundred yards,

and dismounted at a barb-wire fence which ran parallel with the road.

The foreman's wire-clippers severed the strands one by one, and they led

their horses through the gap. They crossed an alfalfa-field, jumped an

irrigation ditch, used the clippers again, and found themselves in a

large pasture. It was getting lighter every moment, and while they

were still in the pasture a voice hailed them from the road in an

unmistakable command to halt.



They bent low over the backs of their ponies and gave them the spur. The

shot they had expected rang out, passing harmlessly over them. Another

followed, and still another.



"That's right. Shoot up the scenery. Y'u don't hurt us none," the

foreman said, apostrophizing the man behind the gun.



The next clipped fence brought them to the open country. For half an

hour they rode swiftly without halt. Then McWilliams drew up.



"Where are we making for?"



"How about the Wind River country?"



"Won't do. First off, they'll strike right down that way after us.

What's the matter with running up Sweetwater Creek and lying out in the

bad lands around the Roubideaux?"



"Good. I have a sheep-camp up that way. I can arrange to have grub sent

there for us by a man I can trust."



"All right. The Roubideaux goes."



While they were nooning at a cow-spring, Bannister, lying on his back,

with his face to the turquoise sky, became aware that a vagrant impulse

had crystallized to a fixed determination. He broached it at once to his

companion.



"One thing is a cinch, Mac. Neither y'u nor I will be safe in this

country now until we have broken up the gang of desperadoes that is

terrorizing this country. If we don't get them they will get us. There

isn't any doubt about that. I'm not willing to lie down before these

miscreants. What do y'u say?"



"I'm with y'u, old man. But put a name to it. What are y'u proposing?"



"I'm proposing that y'u and I make it our business not to have any other

business until we clean out this nest of wolves. Let's go right after

them, and see if we can't wipe out the Shoshone-Teton outfit."



"How? They own the law, don't they?"



"They don't own the United States Government. When they held up a

mail-train they did a fool thing, for they bucked up against Uncle

Sam. What I propose is that we get hold of one of the gang and make him

weaken. Then, after we have got hold of some evidence that will convict,

we'll go out and run down my namesake Ned Bannister. If people once get

the idea that his hold isn't so strong there's a hundred people that

will testify against him. We'll have him in a Government prison inside

of six months."



"Or else he'll have us in a hole in the ground," added the foreman,

dryly.



"One or the other," admitted Bannister. "Are y'u in on this thing?"



"I surely am. Y'u're the best man I've met up with in a month of

Sundays, seh. Y'u ain't got but one fault; and that is y'u don't smoke

cigareets. Feed yourself about a dozen a day and y'u won't have a blamed

trouble left. Match, seh?" The foreman of the Lazy D, already following

his own advice, rolled deftly his smoke, moistened it and proceeded to

blow away his troubles.



Bannister looked at his debonair insouciance and laughed. "Water off a

duck's back," he quoted. "I know some folks that would be sweating fear

right now. It's ce'tainly an aggravating situation, that of being an

honest man hunted as a villain by a villain. But I expaict my cousin's

enjoying it."



"He ain't enjoying it so much as he would if his plans had worked out a

little smoother. He's holding the sack right now and cussing right smaht

over it being empty, I reckon."



"He did lock the stable door a little too late," chuckled the sheepman.

But even as he spoke a shadow fell over his face. "My God! I had

forgotten. Y'u don't suppose he would take it out of Miss Messiter."



"Not unless he's tired of living," returned her foreman, darkly. "One

thing, this country won't stand for is that. He's got to keep his hands

off women or he loses out. He dassent lay a hand on them if they don't

want him to. That's the law of the plains, isn't it?"



"That's the unwritten law for the bad man, but I notice it doesn't seem

to satisfy y'u, my friend. Y'u and I know that my cousin, Ned Bannister,

doesn't acknowledge any law, written or unwritten. He's a devil and he

has no fear. Didn't he kidnap her before?"



"He surely would never dare touch those young ladies. But--I don't know.

Bann, I guess we better roll along toward the Lazy D country, after

all."



"I think so." Ned looked at his friend with smiling drollery. "I thought

y'u smoked your troubles away, Jim. This one seems to worry y'u."



McWilliams grinned sheepishly. "There's one trouble won't be smoked

away. It kinder dwells." Then, apparently apropos of nothing, he added,

irrelevantly: "Wonder what Denver's doing right now?"



"Probably keeping that appointment y'u ran away from," bantered his

friend.



"I'll bet he is. Funny how some men have all the luck," murmured the

despondent foreman.



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