Judson's Joke
: Red Butte WesternBarton Rufford, ex-distiller of illicit whiskey in the Tennessee
mountains, ex-welsher turned informer and betraying his neighbor
law-breakers to the United States revenue officers, ex-everything which
made his continued stay in the Cumberlands impossible, was a man of
distinction in the Red Desert.
In the wider field of the West he had been successively a claim-jumper,
a rustler of unbranded cattle, a te
gang of train-robbers, and finally a faro "lookout": the armed guard
who sits at the head of the gaming-table in the untamed regions to kill
and kill quickly if a dispute arises.
Angels acknowledged his citizenship without joy. A cold-blooded
murderer, with an appalling record; and a man with a temper like smoking
tow, an itching trigger-finger, the eye of a duck-hawk, and cat-like
swiftness of movement, he tyrannized the town when the humor was on
him; and as yet no counter-bully had come to chase him into oblivion.
For Lidgerwood to have earned the enmity of this man was considered
equivalent to one of three things: the superintendent would throw up his
job and leave the Red Desert, preferably by the first train; or Rufford
would kill him; or he must kill Rufford. Red Butte Western opinion was
somewhat divided as to which horn of the trilemma the victim of
Rufford's displeasure would choose, all admitting that, for the moment,
the choice lay with the superintendent. Would Lidgerwood fight, or run,
or sit still and be slain? In the Angels roundhouse, on the second
morning following the attempt upon Lidgerwood's life at the gate of the
Dawson cottage, the discussion was spirited, not to say acrimonious.
"I'm telling you hyenas that Collars-and-Cuffs ain't going to run away,"
insisted Williams, who was just in from the all-night trip to Red Butte
and return. "He ain't built that way."
Lester, the roundhouse foreman, himself a man-queller of no mean repute,
thought differently. Lidgerwood would, most likely, take to the high
grass and the tall timber. The alternative was to "pack a gun" for
Rufford--an alternative quite inconceivable to Lester when it was
predicated of the superintendent.
"I don't know about that," said Judson, the discharged--and consequently
momentarily sobered--engineer of the 271. "He's fooled everybody more
than once since he lit down in the Red Desert. First crack everybody
said he didn't know his business, 'cause he wore b'iled shirts: he
does know it. Next, you could put your ear to the ground and hear that
he didn't have the sand to round up the maverick R.B.W. He's doing it. I
don't know but he might even run a bluff on Bart Rufford, if he felt
like it."
"Come off, John!" growled the big foreman. "You needn't be afraid to
talk straight over here. He hit you when you was down, and we all know
you're only waitin' for a chance to hit back."
Judson was a red-headed man, effusively good-natured when he was in
liquor, and a quick-tempered fighter of battles when he was not.
"Don't you make any such mistake!" he snapped. "That's what McCloskey
said when he handed me the 'good-by.' 'You'll be one more to go round
feelin' for Mr. Lidgerwood's throat, I suppose,' says he. By cripes!
what I said to Mac I'm sayin' to you, Bob Lester. I know good and well
a-plenty when I've earned my blue envelope. If I'd been in the super's
place, the 271 would have had a new runner a long time ago!"
"Oh, hell! I say he'll chase his feet," puffed Broadbent, the fat
machinist who was truing off the valve-seats of the 195. "If Rufford
doesn't make him, there's some others that will."
Judson flared up again.
"Who you quotin' now, Fatty? One o' the shop 'prentices? Or maybe it's
Rank Hallock? Say, what's he doin' monkeyin' round the back shop so much
lately? I'm goin' to stay round here till I get a chance to lick that
scrub."
Broadbent snorted his derision of all mere enginemen.
"You rail-pounders'd better get next to Rankin Hallock," he warned.
"He's the next sup'rintendent of the R.B.W. You'll see the 'pointment
circular the next day after that jim-dandy over in the Crow's Nest gets
moved off'n the map."
"Well, I'm some afeared Bart Rufford's likely to move him," drawled
Clay, the six-foot Kentuckian who was filing the 195's brasses at the
bench. "Which the same I ain't rejoicin' about, neither. That little
cuss is shore a mighty good railroad man. And when you ain't rubbin' his
fur the wrong way, he treats you white."
"For instance?" snapped Hodges, a freight engineer who had been thrice
"on the carpet" in Lidgerwood's office for over-running his orders.
"Oh, they ain't so blame' hard to find," Clay retorted. "Last week, when
we was out on the Navajo wreck, me and the boy didn't have no
dinner-buckets. Bradford was runnin' the super's car, and when Andy just
sort o' happened to mention the famine up along, the little man made
that Jap cook o' his'n get us up a dinner that'd made your hair frizzle.
He shore did."
"Why don't you go and take up for him with Bart Rufford?" sneered
Broadbent, stopping his facing machine to set in a new cut on the
valve-seat.
"Not me. I've got cold feet," laughed the Kentuckian. "I'm like the
little kid's daddy in the Sunday-school song: I ain't got time to die
yet--got too much to do."
It was Williams's innings, and what he said was cautionary.
"Dry up, you fellows; here comes Gridley."
The master-mechanic was walking down the planked track from the back
shop, carrying his years, which showed only in the graying mustache and
chin beard, and his hundred and eighty pounds of well-set-up bone and
muscle, jauntily. Now, as always, he was the beau ideal of the
industrial field-officer; handsome in a clean-cut masculine way, a type
of vigor--but also, if the signs of the full face and the eager eyes
were to be regarded, of the elemental passions.
Angelic rumor hinted that he was a periodic drunkard: he was both more
and less than that. Like many another man, Henry Gridley lived a double
life; or, perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that there were
two Henry Gridleys. Lidgerwood, the Dawsons, the little world of Angels
at large, knew the virile, accomplished mechanical engineer and master
of men, which was his normal personality. What time the other
personality, the elemental barbarian, yawned, stretched itself, and came
awake, the unspeakable dens of the Copah lower quarter engulfed him
until the nether-man had gorged himself on degradation.
To his men, Gridley was a tyrant, exacting, but just; ruling them, as
the men of the desert could only be ruled, with the mailed fist. Yet
there was a human hand inside of the steel gauntlet, as all men knew.
Having once beaten a bullying gang-boss into the hospital at Denver, he
had promptly charged himself with the support of the man's family. Other
generous roughnesses were recorded of him, and if the attitude of the
men was somewhat tempered by wholesome fear, it was none the less
loyal.
Hence, when he entered the roundhouse, industrious silence supplanted
the discussion of the superintendent's case. Glancing at the group of
enginemen, and snapping out a curt criticism of Broadbent's slowness on
the valve-seats, he beckoned to Judson. When the discharged engineer had
followed him across the turn-table, he faced about and said, not too
crisply, "So your sins have found you out one more time, have they,
John?"
Judson nodded.
"What is it this time, thirty days?"
Judson shook his head gloomily. "No, I'm down and out."
"Lidgerwood made it final, did he? Well, you can't blame him."
"You hain't heard me sayin' anything, have you?" was the surly
rejoinder.
"No, but it isn't in human nature to forget these little things." Then,
suddenly: "Where were you day before yesterday between noon and one
o'clock, about the time you should have been taking your train out?"
Judson had a needle-like mind when the alcohol was out of it, and the
sudden query made him dissemble.
"About ten o'clock I was playin' pool in Rafferty's place with the butt
end of the cue. After that, things got kind o'hazy."
"Well, I want you to buckle down and think hard. Don't you remember
going over to Cat Biggs's about noon, and sitting down at one of the
empty card-tables to drink yourself stiff?"
Judson could not have told, under the thumbscrews, why he was prompted
to tell Gridley a plain lie. But he did it.
"I can't remember," he denied. Then then needle-pointed brain got in its
word, and he added, "Why?"
"I saw you there when I was going up to dinner. You called me in to tell
me what you were going to do to Lidgerwood if he slated you for getting
drunk. Don't you remember it?"
Judson was looking the master-mechanic fairly in the eyes when he said,
"No, I don't remember a thing about that."
"Try again," said Gridley, and now the shrewd gray eyes under the brim
of the soft-rolled felt hat held the engineer helpless.
"I guess--I do--remember it--now," said Judson, slowly, trying, still
ineffectually, to break Gridley's masterful eyehold upon him.
"I thought you would," said the master-mechanic, without releasing him.
"And you probably remember, also, that I took you out into the street
and started you home."
"Yes," said Judson, this time without hesitation.
"Well, keep on remembering it; you went home to Maggie, and she put you
to bed. That is what you are to keep in mind."
Judson had broken the curious eye-grip at last, and again he said,
"Why?"
Gridley hooked his finger absently in the engineer's buttonhole.
"Because, if you don't, a man named Rufford says he'll start a lead mine
in you. I heard him say it last night--overheard him, I should say.
That's all."
The master-mechanic passed on, going out by the great door which opened
for the locomotive entering-track. Judson hung upon his heel for a
moment, and then went slowly out through the tool-room and across the
yard tracks to the Crow's Nest.
He found McCloskey in his office above stairs, mouthing and grimacing
over the string-board of the new time-table.
"Well?" growled the trainmaster, when he saw who had opened and closed
the door. "Come back to tell me you've sworn off? That won't go down
with Mr. Lidgerwood. When he fires, he means it."
"You wait till I ask you for my job back again, won't you, Jim
McCloskey?" said the disgraced one hotly. "I hain't asked it yet; and
what's more, I'm sober."
"Sure you are," muttered McCloskey. "You'd be better-natured with a
drink or two in you. What's doing?"
"That's what I came over here to find out," said Judson steadily. "What
is the boss going to do about this flare-up with Bart Rufford?"
The trainmaster shrugged.
"You've got just as many guesses as anybody, John. What you can bet on
is that he will do something different."
Judson had slouched to the window. When he spoke, it was without turning
his head.
"You said something yesterday morning about me feeling for the boss's
throat along with that gang up-town that's trying to drink itself up to
the point of hitting him back. It don't strike me that way, Mac."
"How does it strike you?"
Judson turned slowly, crossed the room, and sat down in the only vacant
chair.
"You know what's due to happen, Mac. Rufford won't try it on again the
way he tried it night before last. I heard up-town that he has posted
his de-fi: Mr. Lidgerwood shoots him on sight or he shoots Mr.
Lidgerwood on sight. You can figure that out, can't you?"
"Not knowing Mr. Lidgerwood much better than you do, John, I'm not sure
that I can."
"Well, it's easy. Bart'll walk up to the boss in broad daylight, drop
him, and then fill him full o'lead after he's down. I've seen him--saw
him do it to Bixby, Mr. Brewster's foreman at the Copperette."
"Say the rest of it," commanded McCloskey.
"I've been thinking. While I'm laying round with nothing much to do, I
believe I'll keep tab on Bart for a little spell. I don't love him much,
nohow."
McCloskey's face contortion was intended to figure as a derisive smile.
"Pshaw, John!" he commented, "he'd skin you alive. Why, even Jack
Hepburn is afraid of him!"
"Jack is? How do you know that?"
McCloskey shrugged again.
"Are you with us, John?" he asked cautiously.
"I ain't with Bart Rufford and the tin-horns," said Judson negatively.
"Then I'll tell you a fairy tale," said the trainmaster, lowering his
voice. "I gave you notice that Mr. Lidgerwood would do something
different: he did it, bright and early this morning; went to Jake
Schleisinger, who had to try twice before he could remember that he was
a justice of the peace, and swore out a warrant for Rufford's arrest, on
a charge of assault with intent to kill."
"Sure," said Judson, "that's what any man would do in a civilized
country, ain't it?"
"Yes, but not here, John--not in the red-colored desert, with Bart
Rufford's name in the body of the warrant."
"I don't know why not," insisted the engineer stubbornly. "But go on
with the story; it ain't any fairy tale, so far."
"When he'd got the warrant, Schleisinger protesting all the while that
Bart'd kill him for issuing it, Mr. Lidgerwood took it to Hepburn and
told him to serve it. Jack backed down so fast that he fell over his
feet. Said to ask him anything else under God's heavens and he'd do
it--anything but that."
"Huh!" said Judson. "If I'd took an oath to serve warrants I'd serve
'em, if it did make me sick at my stomach." Then he got up and shuffled
away to the window again, and when next he spoke his voice was the voice
of a broken man.
"I lied to you a minute ago, Mac. I did want my job back. I came over
here hopin' that you and Mr. Lidgerwood might be seein' things a little
different by this time. I've quit the whiskey."
McCloskey wagged his shaggy head.
"So you've said before, John, and not once or twice either."
"I know, but every man gets to the bottom, some time. I've hit bed-rock,
and I've just barely got sense enough to know it. Let me tell you, Mac,
I've pulled trains on mighty near every railroad in this country--and
then some. The Red Butte is my last ditch. With my record I couldn't get
an engine anywhere else in the United States. Can't you see what I'm up
against?"
The trainmaster nodded. He was human.
"Well, it's Maggie and the babies now," Judson went on. "They don't
starve, Mac, not while I'm on top of earth. Don't you reckon you could
make some sort of a play for me with the boss, Jim? He's got bowels."
McCloskey did not resent the familiarity of the Christian name, neither
did he hold out any hope of reinstatement.
"No, John. One or two things I've learned about Mr. Lidgerwood: he
doesn't often hit when he's mad, and he doesn't take back anything he
says in cold blood. I'm afraid you've cooked your last goose."
"Let me go in and see him. He ain't half as hard-hearted as you are,
Jim."
The trainmaster shook his head. "No, it won't do any good. I heard him
tell Hallock not to let anybody in on him this morning."
"Hallock be--Say, Mac, what makes him keep that--" Judson broke off
abruptly, pulled his hat over his eyes, and said, "Reckon it's worth
while to shove me over to the other side, Jim McCloskey?"
"What other side?" demanded McCloskey.
Judson scoffed openly. "You ain't making out like you don't know, are
you? Who was behind that break of Rufford's last night?"
"There didn't need to be anybody behind it. Bart thinks he has a kick
coming because his brother was discharged."
"But there was somebody behind it. Tell me, Mac, did you ever see me too
drunk to read my orders and take my signals?"
"No, don't know as I have."
"Well, I never was. And I don't often get too drunk to hear straight,
either, even if I do look and act like the biggest fool God ever let
live. I was in Cat Biggs's day before yesterday noon, when I ought to
have been down here taking 202 east. There were two men in the back room
putting their heads together. I don't know whether they knew I was on
the other side of the partition or not. If they did, they probably
didn't pay any attention to a drivellin' idiot that couldn't wrap his
tongue around an order for more whiskey."
"Go on!" snapped McCloskey, almost viciously.
"They were talking about 'fixing' the boss. One of 'em was for the slow
and safe way: small bets and a good many of 'em. The other was for
pulling a straight flush on Mr. Lidgerwood, right now. Number One said
no, that things were moving along all right, and it wasn't worth while
to rush. Then something was said about a woman; I didn't catch her name
or just what the hurry man said about her, only it was something about
Mr. Lidgerwood's bein' in shape to mix up in it. At that Number One
flopped over. 'Pull it off whenever you like!' says he, savage-like."
McCloskey sprang from his chair and towered over the smaller man.
"One of those men was Bart Rufford: who was the other one, Judson?"
Judson was apparently unmoved. "You're forgettin' that I was plum' fool
drunk, Jim. I didn't see either one of 'em."
"But you heard?"
"Yes, one of 'em was Rufford, as you say, and up to a little bit ago I'd
'a' been ready to swear to the voice of the one you haven't guessed. But
now I can't."
"Why can't you do it now?"
"Sit down and I'll tell you. I've been jarred. Everything I've told you
so far, I can remember, or it seems as if I can, but right where I broke
off a cog slipped. I must 'a' been drunker than I thought I was. Gridley
says he was going by and he says I called him in and told him,
fool-wise, all the things I was going to do to Mr. Lidgerwood. He says
he hushed me up, called me out to the sidewalk, and started me home.
Mac, I don't remember a single wheel-turn of all that, and it makes me
scary about the other part."
McCloskey relapsed into his swing-chair.
"You said you thought you recognized the other man by his voice. It
sounds like a drunken pipe-dream, the whole of it; but who did you think
it was?"
Judson rose up, jerked his thumb toward the door of the superintendent's
business office, and said, "Mac, if the whiskey didn't fake the whole
business for me--the man who was mumblin' with Bart Rufford
was--Hallock!"
"Hallock?" said McCloskey; "and you said there was a woman in it? That
fits down to the ground, John. Mr. Lidgerwood has found out something
about Hallock's family tear-up, or he's likely to find out. That's what
that means!"
What more McCloskey said was said to an otherwise empty room. Judson had
opened the door and closed it, and was gone.
Summing up the astounding thing afterward, those who could recall the
details and piece them together traced Judson thus:
It was ten-forty when he came down from McCloskey's office, and for
perhaps twenty minutes he had been seen lounging at the lunch-counter in
the station end of the Crow's Nest. At about eleven one witness had seen
him striking at the anvil in Hepburn's shop, the town marshal being the
town blacksmith in the intervals of official duty.
Still later, he had apparently forgotten the good resolution declared to
McCloskey, and all Angels saw him staggering up and down Mesa Avenue,
stumbling into and out of the many saloons, and growing, to all
appearances, more hopelessly irresponsible with every fresh stumble.
This was his condition when he tripped over the doorstep into the
"Arcade," and fell full length on the floor of the bar-room. Grimsby,
the barkeeper, picked him up and tried to send him home, but with
good-natured and maudlin pertinacity he insisted on going on to the
gambling-room in the rear.
The room was darkened, as befitted its use, and a lighted lamp hung over
the centre of the oval faro table as if the time were midnight instead
of midday. Eight men, five of them miners from the Brewster copper mine,
and three of them discharged employees of the Red Butte Western, were
the bettors; Red-Light himself, in sombrero and shirt-sleeves, was
dealing, and Rufford, sitting on a stool at the table's end, was the
"lookout."
When Judson reeled in there was a pause, and a movement to put him out.
One of the miners covered his table stakes and rose to obey Rufford's
nod. But at this conjuncture the railroad men interfered. Judson was a
fellow craftsman, and everybody knew that he was harmless in his cups.
Let him stay--and play, if he wanted to.
So Judson stayed, and stumbled round the table, losing his money and
dribbling foolishness. Now faro is a silent game, and more than once an
angry voice commanded the foolish one to choose his place and to shut
his mouth. But the ex-engineer seemed quite incapable of doing either.
Twice he made the wavering circuit of the oval table, and when he
finally gripped an empty chair it was the one nearest to Rufford on the
right, and diagonally opposite to the dealer.
What followed seemed to have no connecting sequence for the other
players. Too restless to lose more than one bet in the place he had
chosen, Judson tried to rise, tangled his feet in the chair, and fell
down, laughing uproariously. When he struggled to the perpendicular
again, after two or three ineffectual attempts, he was fairly behind
Rufford's stool.
One man, who chanced to be looking, saw the "lookout" start and stiffen
rigidly in his place, staring straight ahead into vacancy. A moment
later the entire circle of witnesses saw him take a revolver from the
holster on his hip and lay it upon the table, with another from the
breast pocket of his coat to keep it company. Then his hands went
quickly behind him, and they all heard the click of the handcuffs.
The man in the sombrero and shirt-sleeves was first to come alive.
"Duck, Bart!" he shouted, whipping a weapon from its convenient shelf
under the table's edge. But Judson, trained to the swift handling of
many mechanisms in the moment of respite before a wreck or a
derailment, was ready for him.
"Bart's afraid he can't duck without dying," he said grimly, screening
himself behind his captive. Then to the others, in the same unhasting
tone: "Some of you fellows just quiet Sammy down till I get out of here
with this peach of mine. I've got the papers, and I know what I'm doin';
if this thing I'm holdin' against Bart's back should happen to go
off----"
That ended it, so far as resistance was concerned. Judson backed quickly
out through the bar-room, drawing his prisoner backward after him; and a
moment later Angels was properly electrified by the sight of Rufford,
the Red Desert terror, marching sullenly down to the Crow's Nest, with a
fiery-headed little man at his elbow, the little man swinging the weapon
which had been made to simulate the cold muzzle of the revolver when he
had pressed it into Rufford's back at the gaming-table.
It was nothing more formidable than a short, thick "S"-wrench, of the
kind used by locomotive engineers in tightening the nuts of the
piston-rod packing glands.
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What he next knew was a fire of agony that wrapped his whole body and consciousness flashed back on him. Strong arms lifted him up, up; above him he sensed the eyes of his torturer, dim in moonlight, and he beat his clubbed left fist into that face.... Joan Reads By Firelight
There is no silence so fearful, so breathless, so searching as the night silence of a wild country buried five feet deep in snow. For thirty miles or so, north, south, east, and west of the small, half-smothered speck of gold in Pierre Landis's ca... Joan Runs Away
It was a January night when Joan, her rough head almost in the ashes, had read "Isabella and the Pot of Basil" by the light of flames. It was in March, a gray, still afternoon, when, looking through Prosper's bookcase, she came upon the tale again... John Craven's Method
Mr. John Craven could not be said to take his school-teaching seriously; and indeed, any one looking at his face would hardly expect him to take anything seriously, and certainly those who in his college days followed and courted and kept pace wit... John Gale's Hour
It was a heathenish time of night to arouse the girl, thought Burrell, as he left the barracks, but he must allay these fears that were besetting him, he must see Necia at once. The low, drifting clouds obscured what star-glow there was in the hea... Johnny Arrives
Meanwhile Hopalong and Red quarrelled petulantly and damned the erring Johnny with enthusiastic abandon, while Dent smiled at them and joked; but his efforts at levity made little impression on the irate pair. Red, true to his word, had turned up at... Johnny Learns Something
For several weeks after Hopalong got back to the ranch, full of interesting stories and minus the grouch, things went on in a way placid enough for the most peacefully inclined individual that ever sat a saddle. And then trouble drifted down from th... Johnson's Old Woman
It was growing dark, and the Sonora trail was becoming more indistinct before me at every step. The difficulty had increased over the grassy slope, where the overflow from some smaller watercourse above had worn a number of diverging gullies so li... Jones On Cougars
The mountain lion, or cougar, of our Rocky Mountain region, is nothing more nor less than the panther. He is a little different in shape, color and size, which vary according to his environment. The panther of the Rockies is usually light, taking th... Jose Sanchez Swears An Oath
On this same evening a scene of no little significance was taking place at Las Palmas. Ed Austin was entertaining callers, and these were none other than Tad Lewis and Adolfo Urbina. The progress of events during the last few days had shaped thi... Juan Valdez Scores
The first thing Bucky did after leaving the two young women was to go down in person with one of the guards to the cell of David Henderson. The occupant of the cell was asleep, but he woke up when the two men entered. "Who is it?" he demanded. ... Judd Morgan Passes
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 d... Judge Ellsworth Exacts A Promise
On his way to the Lewis ranch Dave Law had a struggle with himself. He had earned a reputation as a man of violent temper, and the time was not long past when a fraction of the insult Ed Austin had offered him would have provoked a vigorous count... Judson's Joke
Barton Rufford, ex-distiller of illicit whiskey in the Tennessee mountains, ex-welsher turned informer and betraying his neighbor law-breakers to the United States revenue officers, ex-everything which made his continued stay in the Cumberlands im... June Asks Questions
Houck, an unwelcome guest, stayed at the cabin on Piceance nearly two weeks. His wooing was surely one of the strangest known. He fleered at June, taunted her, rode over the girl's pride and sense of decorum, beat down the defenses she set up, and... June Discovers A New World
Blister had not overstated the case to Bob when he told him that June had been having the time of her life getting well. She had been a lonely little thing, of small importance in a country very busy on its own affairs. The sense of inferiority ha... June Is Glad
June turned away from the crowd surrounding the dead mad dog and walked into the hotel. The eyes of more than one man followed the slim, graceful figure admiringly. Much water had run down the Rio Blanco since the days when she had been the Cinder... June Prays
When June turned away from her husband of an hour she abandoned hope. She had been like a child lost in the forest. A gleam of light from a window had cheered her for a moment, but it had flickered out and left her in the darkness. In one sense... Just One Thing After Another
A gray clarity of the air told that daylight was near. The skyline retreated, the hills came out of the duskiness like a photograph in the developer tray. Irish dipped down the steep slope into Antelope Coulee, cursing the sprinkle of new shacks tha... Justice In The Saddle
It was an hour after the usual time when we bedded down the cattle. The wagon had overtaken us about sunset, and the cook's fire piloted us into a camp fully two miles to the right of the trail. A change of horses was awaiting us, and after a hasty ... Justice Vs Law
Impatience, intolerable and vicious, gripped Trevison as he rode homeward after his haunting vigil at Manti. The law seemed to him to be like a house with many doors, around and through which one could play hide and seek indefinitely, with no poss... Kangarooed
Lovell and his attorneys joined the cavalcade which returned to the post, while we continued on south, fording the Missouri above Forrest's camp. The two recovered beeves were recognized by their ranch brands as belonging in Bee County, thus identif... Kate Uses Her Quirt
Red-headed Bob Cullison finished making the diamond hitch and proudly called his cousin Kate to inspect the packhorse. "You never saw the hitch thrown better, sis," he bragged, boy-like. "Uncle Luck says I do it well as he can." "It's fine, B... Keep A-comin' Red Haid
When the rangers and the militia stampeded after the Indian scout, Dud Hollister was examining the hoof of his mount. He swung instantly to the saddle and touched his pony with the spur. It shot across the mesa on the outskirts of the troop. Not i... Keith's Masterful Wooing
Keith faced toward home, with Redcloud following at his heels like a pet dog. For some reason, which he did not try to analyze, he was feeling light of heart--as though something very nice had happened to him. It might have been the unexpected cle... Kidnapped
As a lake ripples beneath a summer breeze, so Mesa was stirred from its usual languor by the visit of Simon West. For the little Arizona town was dreaming dreams. Its imagination had been aroused; and it saw itself no longer a sleepy cow camp in t... Kidnapped
Barbara Morgan had yielded to the fever of impatience which had afflicted her during the latter days of Harlan's absence from the Rancho Seco. She had been impatient ever since she had been forced to stay close to the house by Harlan's orders; but... King Hol
There is a very general and very erroneous impression that alcohol builds the mood of a man; as a matter of fact it merely makes his temper of the moment fast--the man who takes his first drink with a smile ends in uproarious laughter, and he who fr... Kitty
It seemed my eyelids had scarcely touched when Jones's exasperating, yet stimulating, yell aroused me. Day was breaking. The moon and stars shone with wan luster. A white, snowy frost silvered the forest. Old Moze had curled close beside me, and now... La Feria
What's this I hear about war?" Dolores inquired of her mistress, a few days after their arrival at La Feria. "They tell me that Mexico is invaded and that the American soldiers have already killed more than a thousand women and children." "Who ... Laska Opens A Door
The first ballots for a United States senator taken by the legislature in joint session failed to disclose the alignment of some of the doubtful members. The Democratic minority of twenty-eight votes were cast for Springer, the senator whose place w... Lassiter
A sharp clip-crop of iron-shod hoofs deadened and died away, and clouds of yellow dust drifted from under the cottonwoods out over the sage. Jane Withersteen gazed down the wide purple slope with dreamy and troubled eyes. A rider ha... Lassiter's Way
Footprints told the story of little Fay's abduction. In anguish Jane Withersteen turned speechlessly to Lassiter, and, confirming her fears, she saw him gray-faced, aged all in a moment, stricken as if by a mortal blow. Then all her... Laughing Bill Hyde
Mr. William Hyde was discharged from Deer Lodge Penitentiary a changed man. That was quite in line with the accepted theory of criminal jurisprudence, the warden's discipline, and the chaplain's prayers. Yes, Mr. Hyde was changed, and the change... Laura London
Kite Bonfils and Maloney took Curly back to Saguache and turned him over to Sheriff Bolt. "How about bail?" Maloney asked. The sheriff smiled. He was a long lean leather-faced man with friendly eyes from which humorous wrinkles radiated. "... Law Invoked And Defied
As soon as the deputies had gone, two of them nursing injured heads, and all exhibiting numerous bruises, Judge Lindman rose and dressed. In the ghostly light preceding the dawn he went to the safe, his fingers trembling so that he made difficult ... Lawful Improvements
Florence Grace Hallman must not be counted a woman without principle or kindness of heart or these qualities which make women beloved of men. She was a pretty nice young woman, unless one roused her antagonism. Had Andy Green, for instance, accepted... Le Roi Est Mort Vive Le Roi
When the news reached O'Halloran that Megales had scored on the opposition by arresting Bucky O'Connor, the Irishman swore fluently at himself for his oversight in forgetting the Northern Chihuahua. So far as the success of the insurgents went, the ... Lee Virginia Wages War
IN truth, Lize had risen that morning intending "to whirl in and clean up the house," being suddenly conscious to some degree of the dirt and disorder around her, but she found herself physically unequal to the task. Her brain seemed misted, and h... Left-handed
Harlan's statement to Haydon, to the effect that he had visited the camps of Kelso, Rance, Larkin, and other outlaws had been strictly accurate. At one time or another each of those outlaw leaders had sent for Harlan, to endeavor to prevail upon h... Liberated
The revolution was, indeed, ended. The unexpected arrival of a relieving garrison in the bay of Todos Santos had completed what the dissensions in the insurgents' councils had begun; the discontents, led by Brace and Winslow, had united with the G... Life Adjusts Itself Again To Some Things
The next day was a day of dust hanging always over the grade because of much hurried riding up and down; a day of many strange faces whose eyes peered curiously at the place where Baumberger fell, and at the cold ashes of Stanley's campfire, and at ... Linked
"So you came at last?" Barbara had some difficulty in keeping resentment prominent in her voice as she faced John Haydon, for other emotions were clamoring within her--joy because Haydon had come, even though tardily; self-reproach because she ... Lite Comes Out Of The Background
For hours Jean had sat staring out at the drear stretches of desert dripping under the dismal rain that streaked the car windows. The clouds hung leaden and gray close over the earth; the smoke from the engine trailed a funereal plume across the gr... Lite's Pupil Demonstrates
Jean awoke to hear the businesslike buzzing of an automobile coming up from the gate. Evidently they were going to make pictures there at the house, which did not suit her plans at all. She intended to spend the early morning writing the first few... Little Black Shack's All Burnt Up
It is a penitentiary offense for anyone to set fire to prairie grass or timber; and if you know the havoc which one blazing match may work upon dry grassland when the wind is blowing free, you will not wonder at the penalty for lighting that match w... Little Lost
Little Lost--somehow the name appealed to Bud, whose instinct for harmony extended to words and phrases and, for that matter, to everything in the world that was beautiful. From the time when he first heard Little Lost mentioned, he had felt a vague... Long John Butterfield
"Boys," said my father next morning, "I've been thinking over this discovery of ours. It won't do to wait till you've finished the ice-cutting to notify Tom Connor. He has been a good friend to us, and I feel that we owe him some return for enabli... Longorio Makes Bold
Upon her arrival at La Feria Alaire discovered that the Federal depredations had been even greater than she had feared. Not only had the soldiers taken a great many head of cattle, but they had practically cleared the ranch of horses, leaving scar...