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Show !8f By EUGENE CUNNINGHAM JPP -tr'' l EUGENE CUNNINGHAM W.N1.U. RELEASE THE STORY SO FAR: Coo Cameron, who bas bummed bis way from Chicago, Chi-cago, Joint the 20 Bar outfit beaded for Wild Horse wltb a herd of cattle. It's his first experience as a cowhand, but Con does well, and when they set to Wild Horse the old trail boss. Buzz Up-perman, Up-perman, buys him clothes and Rives him a horse and saddle. With Caramba Vear, another 20 Bar rider, they go to the Drovers' Saloon. There they see Asa Brock, who has bought their cattle, quarrel quar-rel with a new cattle man named Nevil Lowe. Brock is a sharp trader and has all of Wild Horse, Including Dynamite Downes, the marshal, on his side. Con and Caramba Join a faro game and win a little. Then Con misses Caramba and quits to look for him, even though It's an unwritten law of Wild Horse that no cowboy quits while he's winning. Now continue wltb the story. CHAPTER II Con moved away from the faro game as Nobby growled at the inscrutable in-scrutable dealer to "rattle the box." Keith Yoker grinned at him as he passed and he nodded and smiled at the cattle king. But inwardly he was furious. "I've got to keep remembering that this gang of toughs don't bother both-er with fist-fighting. Any more than they give a square deal in the games," he reminded himself as he looked around the saloon for Caramba. Ca-ramba. He saw nothing of the cheerful cowboy, but at one end of the gamblers' gam-blers' half of the huge room he almost al-most stumbled over a litter of equipment equip-ment still partly crated. He went out into the twilight and moved up and down the long, snaky town. Lights were everywhere, now. He came finally to the big two-itory two-itory hotel and stopped to look across the tracks at its veranda. The tiny frame railway station was )ust beyond. As he stood wondering If Caramba had really thought about marrying Mrs. Kleiss, a short combination combi-nation train came through the town and drew up at the station. Con crossed to watch men get off, others get on. ' The talL dark young man, Nevil Lowe, hurried past Con, with a girl half-running beside him. Lowe carried car-ried two large valises. Con looked with interest at the girl. She was dark-eyed, dark-haired, small and graceful. At the step of the one passenger car Lowe put down the luggage and she caught him about the neck, kissed him and let him go. "It's going to be just a grand trip!" she said. "But I'll miss you terribly." "Yes you will!" Lowe drawled. He swung her up, pushed the valises va-lises after her and waved.' The engineer en-gineer sounded his whistle and as Con turned away the train began to move. Lowe's wife, probably, he decided. As pretty a girl as he had ever seen, certainly. He went toward the hotel and in the door of Mrs. Kleiss' dining room looked for Caramba. "Well!" Caramba said from behind be-hind him. "I was just hunting you! Figured you'd be along pretty oon." "What happened to you?" Con demanded de-manded curiously. "Well, I Didn't I tell you I was going out a while? I just thought of something " "Ah!" Con said softly, beginning to grin. Before Caramba could answer, Nevil Lowe and a bustling little lit-tle woman came into the stair hall from the veranda. "She'll have a fine ' time," the woman said briskly. "Deserves it, too! Couple months trailing never think she could see her prettied up. Didn't find your man? Carousing, Carous-ing, likely! I'd be careful, I was you. Awful town! Some would cut your throat for a dollar. You're all right when you're with your herd " "Well, thanks for the advice, anyway. any-way. Thanks for being so kind to Janet, too. I'll get that war bag from the room." He went upstairs, and Mrs. Kleiss, looking sharply, quickly, from point to point of her premises, saw the two at the dining-room door. "Who's this boy, Wil-liam?" she asked Caramba. "This is Con Cameron, Meroba," Caramba said hesitantly. "I told you about him." "I'm glad to meet you, Con," Mrs. Kleiss cut in. "I hope you're not spreeing! Silly to let those crooks skin you. I told Wil-liam leave your money with me no temptation, then. If you want to do the same, I'll put it in my safe." "Why. thanks. But I'm not staying stay-ing long in Wild Horse. I did sort of want to stay for well ... the ceremonies. But " "Nice to have you. That will be Wednesday night, though." "Oh!" Con cried, looking at Caramba. Ca-ramba. "I thought William would rush you off tonight tomorrow at latest Well, I know you're both going go-ing to be absolutely happy and 1 congratulate you, William!" In the dining room, not so crowded crowd-ed at this second table, Con sat carefully care-fully across from Caramba and shook with quiet amusement Caramba Ca-ramba scowled at him. "Well, I really was thinking about doing it, all the time," he said irritably. ir-ritably. "Maybe not right off, but Anyhow, she's a fine woman. We're going to build onto the corrals and do a livery business. I'll handle that end. Beats punching cows." "Of course it does!" Con assured His right hand twisted slightly and closed on the butt of a Colt. him. "And she is a nice woman-Did woman-Did youssee the girl with that fellow Nevil Lowe? His wife, I reckon it was. Pretty as a red wagon." "Meroba had her in charge. I didn't see her. She come up with the herd and now she's gone off visiting. What you aiming to do. tonight?" "Dance!" Con informed him, grinning. grin-ning. "I peeped into one dance hall awhile ago and there was a pretty blonde girl there who smiled, at me and I think she's just cut out to teach a pore cowboy how to chouse his new boots around." He shrugged and Caramba nodded agreement. Con drifted toward the dance halls, when he and Caramba had fed their horses. In the Odeon he found the blonde girl he had noted before supper. She was pretty and danced well, but when Con began to collect cigars after his second drink, she left him for easier prey. On the sidewalk outside the Odeon be looked across at the rival dance hall, decided against it and went on to the Drovers'. Baldy was nowhere in sight and for a little while Con watched the several games played. He saw Dynamite Downes and Asa Brock drinking. The buyer went out and a towheaded youngster in all the glory of a cowboy dude pushed in beside the marshal. One of the cowboys near Con indicated the white-hatted, kid-booted, boy. "El Muchacho and that's a murder mur-der on the road to happen! Him, 1 mean. Comes from down below the River. He's a deputy marshal and his killings is legalized before they come off. He shot one man here just for brushing against him." Con nodded. He was watching Nevil Lowe walk in. Downes and Muchacho continued to face the bar mirror and drink. But Asa Brock appeared from somewhere some-where as if he had been watching for Nevil Lowe. His red face was twisted in a grin and he took Lowe by the arm and this time they went together to the bar. That cowboy who had identified the deputy marshal mar-shal for Con shook his head. "Slick Asa's got him another shorthorn," he said sourly. "By morning there'll be another hide a-flapping a-flapping on the Brock fence. That fellow's got some of the best looking half-blood horses I ever put a coveting covet-ing eye on, too. Well " He moved on 10 the faro bank and Con looked at the pile of ten pin alley al-ley equipment. When he turned to the bar again. Brock was talking earnestly to Lowe, waving his hands. Lowe, smiling, shook his head. Brock continued to talk as they left the bar and came toward the row of thick pillars which divided di-vided the barroom.- But he gave up whatever persuasions he was trying and waddled off, when Lowe shook his head. Lowe stood .staring around. Con studied him, from where he stood beside a heap of bowling balls. Then from the bar came the deputy marshal, mar-shal, Muchacho. He came up to Lowe and from under the wide brim of his white Stetson narrowed blue eyes surveyed the taller man up and down. When Muchacho lifted his left hand from the belt and reached toward Lowe's coat, Con held his breath. Lowe swayed back slightly, avoiding avoid-ing the hand. Muchaco's grin widened. wid-ened. His right hand twisted slightly slight-ly and closed on the butt of a Colt. Con 'looked vaguely about him. Then he stopped quickly, picked up one of the bowling balls and sent it expertly across twenty feet of floor to crash into Muchacho's ankles and send him spinning, sprawling. Lowe's hand jerked up under his coat and came out with a pistol. From the bar Dynamite Downes plunged out. He had a pistol in each hand. "One for you!" Con snarled, picking pick-ing up a second ball. Downes gaped at the ball hurtling toward him, hesitated, stiffened as for a jump, but was too slow. The ball struck a warped place in the floor, jumped and cannoned into his thigh. He sat down, dropping one pistol, pis-tol, and fired the other jerkily. Men were yelling and the Drovers' was darkening, shot by shot. Con put a hand on the window sill, vaulted out and ran down the side walL Horses were tied at a rack behind be-hind the Drovers' and he unhitched one quickly. He swung into the strange saddle and turned the horse. Inside the Drovers' was pandemonium, pandemo-nium, but no more shooting. He rode up to Mrs. Kleiss' corral, twisted twist-ed reins around saddle horn and slapped the horse into a trot. The drowsing hostler gaped at him when he came to the corral gate. Con and Caramba had talked briefly brief-ly to him, but now Con only said that he was riding out to see a man. He saddled quickly, took belt and holstered pistol from an alforja and looked to the hang of his gun with more interest than he had ever felt in his forty days of wearing it. "If I'm not back by the time Caramba Ca-ramba Vear gets in," he said easily to the hostler, "just tell him that that he was right about Baldy and me being different. Give him this five he'll ask about it. Aad have a drink on me before you sleep." After a while he turned vaguely westward and then through the night he rode and rested, rode and rested. With daylight he was in open country coun-try and Wild Horse, or any other town, might have been thousands of miles away. The hills were still far away when the sun dropped over them. Cottontails Cot-tontails jumped up before Pancho and it was easy to kill a half-dozen with the pistol. He camped on another an-other tiny creek and broiled his sup per. Before daylight he had eaten rabbit again and packed one, cooked, in an alforja. By noon he was against the hills and he had enjoyed every hour of his riding. He came upon a Triangle Tail rider rid-er in late afternoon and turned off with the cheerful youngster to a line camp. Two more cowboys, one from the adjoining Hogpen outfit, were already at the camp. Con passed the cigars accumulated in Wild Horse and ate venison steaks and beans and sourdough biscuits. "It ain't the rabbit or the venison veni-son or the turkey or the beef that you mind," the Hogpen cowboy said understandingly. "It's not having salt How about some stud horse poker?" None of them had much money. The Hogpen man and 'Con won the few dollars of "Easy" and "Two Eyes," the Triangle Tail punchers. Then Con's three fours beat the Hogpen Hog-pen player's kings and queens and stripped him. "Two Eyes," the cross-eyed man, staked a .44 Winchester carbine with scabbard and shells against thirty dollars, on a single cut of the cards. He shuffled the deck and at Con's insistence took first cut. His six of diamonds lost to Con's king of hearts. "Why'n't you ride over to headquarters head-quarters and hit up the Ramrod for a job?" Easy asked him. "This is a good outfit, by and large. And ambitious! am-bitious! Man, if your cards alway run the way we've seen 'em, you ought to own the outfit inside a year." "Oh, I've got too much iron in my blood," Con evaded him. "Besides, you're too close to town." "Yeh," the Hogpen rider drawled, studying the end of his cigarette, "this is close to Wild Horse. And a man don't like to have to walk around with a bowling ball in his hand, when he's in town." "Oh!" Con said softly. "So the tale has got around ..." "I run into one of the 92 busters this morning," the Hogpen man explained, ex-plained, with sudden grin. "He was in the Drovers' when that little son, Muchacho, aimed to kill the stranger. strang-er. I kind of wondered about you from the first But don't worry, Cameron; you can shave off your whiskers and show your own face. You're with kinfolks!" They talked of Wild Horse and its controlling ring. All agreed that the man who was in the black books of the leaders was safe only behind a small army or when out of reach. "They know your name, looks like," the friendly Hogpen cowboy said. "So it looks like rolling up miles, for you!" When he saddled Pancho and hung the little carbine cannily under his leg, next morning, the trio gave him directions about his road. Particularly, Particu-larly, they warned him against the town of Fronteras, and every rest dent or visitor of it. TO BE CONTINUED) |