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Show yWAR and LOVE in the CATTLE lANDS jfijjjl path today. Haven't you beard bou Heardlf'it at Evans' store .Sam; cfX crowded me a Uttle b.t -My advice Is lor you to Ugh out" The editor shook his compos tog-stick at the cat0eman- lkDC quick. Before toe boys talk flu. over too much." I expect that's good medicine Terry admitted. "I'll be gomg pre 2u? What do you know about this HaH killing? Is there any evidence about who did it?" Assassin unknown. Harvey stopped talking in headlines and banged a table excitedly with his fist "Goddlemighty, man! Don i worry about who killed Hart but Tbout who is going to kill Calhoun Terry if you don't get a jump on you. Lee Hart is here, and a bunch of his friends." "I've met them," Terry said. We passed the time of day. No tracks left by the murderer, you say. Not far as I know. Where's your horse?" "You've heard no talk no names mentioned?" "No except that the big fellows hired -it done as a warning. You don't have to decide that now. Fork your horse, Cal, and light out of town. " "It's not quite as bad as that, Horace Hor-ace " the ranch manager said. "Lee and his friends have said their little piece for today, I reckon. But this killing of Buck Hart disturbs me. I'll not say he didn't have it coming. com-ing. He was a proven thief, even if a rustler's court and jury did turn him loose. But it's bad medicine just the same. I don't know who did it. He was a bully, and plenty of people would have liked to see him dead. The point is that the big ranches will be blamed for this. Trouble will come of it." "They'll be rightly blamed, in my opinion," Garvey said tartly. "But no use going into that. You know CLiioHa ctanHs In this Terry. Maybe you could put a name to him." Calhoun's patience was wearing thin. It was known that he let go of his temper only rarely, but when he did someone was likely to get hurt. "Better go home and think that over, Hart," he advised very quietly. quiet-ly. "You're not quite yourself today. to-day. I'll not hold you accountable for what you say." The storekeeper spoke up. "That's right, Lee. You've bad a heavy blow. We all sympathize with you. Don't make a mistake before you have thought this over." Hart waved him aside. "You're not in this, Evans. Keep out of it. I'm telling Mr. Terry that the man or the men who killed my brother have got to reckon with me." "And I'm telling you," the ranch superintendent replied curtly, "that you're making a fool of yourself, for all I know of your brother's death is what you've told me yourselves." Jack Turley spoke, for the first time. He was a big broad-shouldered man with a long reach of well-muscled limb. The nose in his leathery brown face had been broken bro-ken by a pitching horse. "The killer left a note pinned on Buck's coat," he said evenly. "It claimed he was killed because he was a rustler." "That proves nothing," Calhoun said quickly. "Except that the guilty man was trying to cover his tracks and put it on someone else." "We think different," Roan Alford contradicted, anger riding his voice. controversy between the settlers and. the big cattlemen. It's for the people." peo-ple." He brushed that aside with an impatient gesture. "I'm thinking about you, Cal. You're too bull-headed. Some low-down scoundrel will get you from the brush one of these days if you're not careful." "I don't think so," Terry replied carelessly. "You're unpopular as the devil." "Are you congratulating me on the enemies I have made?" the cowman said, his smile scornfuL "They are a fine lot." "Some of them are good men, and you would know it if you were fair-minded." fair-minded." "Read the riot act to me, Horace." Hor-ace." Calhoun Terry put a big brown hand on the scrawny shoulder shoul-der of the editor. "Say whatever is in your mind." The younger man knew that Garvey Gar-vey was his friend, and had been ever since the day when Calhoun had stepped with a horsewhip between be-tween a hectoring ruffian and the little editor. CHAPTER I Calhoun Terry drew up at the edge of French Mesa and looked down on Hound Top. It was an ugly little place, bleak and sun-dried, but ever since he could remember, it had been his town. Here he had come with his father in a buckboard, a very small boy, and exchanged his nickel for striped stick candy from a. jar on the counter of Clint Evans' Ev-ans' store. They had been good days, those carefree ones before he had been bitten by the urge to make of himself him-self something more than a thirty-dollar-a-montb cowpuncher. It had been a gay world. Money had burnt a hole in his pocket, and he had counted friends by the score. Half a dozen years had made a change. He had developed from a hired hand on horseback, one of a hundred who rode the Buck River country, to a man of weight in the community. A seasoned man, hard and steely, he followed with no lack of assurance the path he had picked out for himself. him-self. If his popularity had vanished and his friends had dropped away, that was the price he paid for success. suc-cess. A young man in shiny leather chaps met and passed him without a flicker of recognition in the blue eyes, grown suddenly hard and cold. He was Bill Herriott, joint owner with his father of a small ranch near the Diamond Reverse B. Terry had known him ever since they had ridden their first roundup. A dozen times they had stood together, a pair of gangling boys, in the stag line of country dances. The road ran into the courthouse square. Terry swung from the saddle sad-dle and hitched at a rack in front of Clint Evans store. Two men in dusty boots and wide white hats were lounging in the entrance en-trance of the store. Their talk died away at the approach of Terry. With studied care, they drew aside to let him pass. Not so long ago Roan Alford would have greeted him with Jubilant welcome. Jack Turley was a newcomer in the country. Evans waited on Terry. The storekeeper store-keeper was a tall, lean man with chin whiskers and a clean-shaven upper lip that gave him a precise, almost sanctimonious appearance. He had the same dry, ageless look he had brought with him from Vermont Ver-mont twenty-five years earlier. He nodded greeting. "How are you, Cal?" he asked. A third man had joined the two in the doorway, and all of them were watching Terry. The late-comer was Lee Hart, a heavy-set, bow-legged bow-legged man of about forty. His brother Nate was sheriff of the county. coun-ty. All the Harts had been for a long time enemies of Calhoun Terry. As Terry bought a bill of goods, apparently ignoring those who watched him, the deeper current of his mind was busy with the resentment re-sentment beating against him almost al-most like something tangible. Calhoun Cal-houn had lived too long outdoors in a wild country not to have that sixth sense of danger close and immediate. imme-diate. He asked for a case of cartridges for a Winchester. Evans got the cardboard box and put it with the other supplies. From the shadowed darkness back of the big drum stove a voice came cold as a wind blowing over a glacier. "Going hunting again, Terry?" Calhoun picked out the significant word in the query. "Again?" he asked, stressing the syllables. "Why, yes, that's what I said." There was both mockery and defiance de-fiance in Jeff Brand's jeering voice. "Don't tell us they didn't let you in on the killing of Buck Hart?" Terry looked at the man with hard intentness. "Is Buck Hart dead?" "You know damn well he's dead." "Take care, Brand," the ranch manager warned. Brand laughed hardily. Reckless lights gleamed in his eyes. "You're one of the big moguls now, aren't you? They wouldn't murder Buck without yore say-so, would they?" "Who killed him?" "Hell, I'm not giving you information. infor-mation. Not none. You don't need any. Your friends the big cattlemen cattle-men killed him, because he was in the way." "How do you know? Were there any witnesses?" In Brand's voice was a rustle of dry sarcasm. "Not likely. Their work isn't as raw as that. But they did it by hired deputy." Terry's answer rang out sharp and clear. "I don't believe it. Buck had private enemies. He was a man that made them." Lee Hart bowlegged forward from the door. "Sure he had private enemies," ene-mies," the heavy-set man broke in harshly. "You done said it, Terry. One of them might have plugged him in the back. But he got his orders from above." "Buck was shot from behind," Calhoun said, his inflection making a question of the statement. "Drygulched from the brush." Hart crowded on, the heat of anger rising in him. "Maybe by one of them enemies you've mentioned, I It was an ugly little place, bleak and sundried. "The big cattlemen are bull-headed enough to let us know Buck was rubbed out as a warning to the rest of us." When Calhoun spoke there was a slurring drawl in his speech. Through the slow drag of. the words a challenge lifted. "Come clean, Roan, and say yore piece. Are you meanin' that I had anything to do with this?" Time stood still while Alford made up his mind. "I'm not claiming that," Alford said at last, the sulky words coming thickly. He had been a friend of Calhoun Terry's father in pioneer days. Perhaps he remembered that during the long moment before he spoke. "But I say your friends were in it, by God." "No," Terry . disagreed. "They wouldn't do that. If they wanted to get rid of a rustler they would hang him openly." Lee Hart lifted a hand with a violent vio-lent gesture. "Meanin' that Buck was a rus' tier?" he exploded. "Meaning what I said and no more. Don't put words in my mouth, Lee. I never was in it," Calhoun Cal-houn said. "You're barking up the wrong tree. If I ever want to kill a man I'll tell him so face to face." He turned, with arrogant contempt, con-tempt, and settled with Evans for the supplies he had bought. He pushed between Alford and Turley and walked out of the store. They watched him go, a man strong and virile, too sure of himself to look back and make certain that one of those he had infuriated would not shoot him in the back. A smile broke the hard lines of Terry's face and for the moment showed it warm and friendly. "I'll take your advice, oldtimer. I'm on my way now." The cowman waved a hand in farewell and walked out of the building. build-ing. As he crossed the courthouse grounds he passed the county judge just mounting the steps. They bowed to each other, stiffly, without speaking. speak-ing. Judge Curtis had been elected by the votes of the small settlers. The allies of Terry called him a rustler's judge. They meant that no cow thief could be convicted in his court. That the old days of the free open range were passing forever Terry knew. For a decade and a half the cattleman had been king. His stock had ranged the plains unhampered and had multiplied exceedingly. The big ranches had paid good dividends to the stockholders in Edinburgh, London, or Boston. Then evil days had fallen on the industry. The cattle cat-tle boom had collapsed. There were several reasons for this. One of them was bad management. manage-ment. Those in charge of some of the large ranches had fallen into the habit of living in Cheyenne or Denver Den-ver and leaving the properties mostly most-ly to the care of subordinates. In order to show profits they had overstocked over-stocked the ranges and in some cases sold too many cows and calves. The grass was eaten short and the winter feed killed. Moreover, More-over, as the country opened to settlement set-tlement nesters moved in and home-steaded home-steaded the waterholes. There was conflict between them and the cattle cat-tle kings who had up to this time possessed the land. As a result of this, rustling greatly increased. It was easy for a small outfit on the edge of a big one to increase its holdings by branding calves of the large concern. Year by year the antagonism increased until it grew very bitter. The great ranches were doomed, the managers saw, unless they could stop the stealing of their stock and hold sufficient range to feed the herds. Calhoun Terry was particularly hated by the smaller ranchmen because be-cause he had been one himself That was after he had ridden as a lad for the Bottleneck Ranch. From his father he had inherited a place in a bend of the Buck River that bit in and took a great mouthful out of the natural range of the Diamond Reverse B. For several years he had been a leader of the little stockman, stock-man, an irritant thorn in the side of the great ranch. A man of vision he saw that the two properties ought to be combined. At a board of directors di-rectors meeting of the Diamond Re verse B he proposed to sell his place (TO BE CONTINUED) CHAPTER II Terry put his purchases in the saddlebags. He showed no haste, no hint that he considered himself in danger. When he had finished he stepped back to the sidewalk and sauntered down the street. He passed through the courthouse grounds to the opposite side of the square and walked into the office of the Log'an County Gazette. Nobody was in the front office, but he found the editor, Horace Garvey, setting up an editorial in the back room. Garvey peered at him over his spectacles. The editor was a dried-up dried-up little man with a face like parchment. parch-ment. "You must be crazy, Cal." Garvey snorted. "This town is on the war- |