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Show THE STORY SO FAR: Buck Hart, brother of Sheriff Hart, is found with a bullet in his back. He was "drygulched" by the big cattlemen, said bis friends, some of them rustlers. He himself was believed to be one. At the general store INSTALLMENT TWO in Round Top, Calhoun Terry, manager of the Diamond Reverse B ranch, resents re-sents intimations that he knows about the killing. Terry was formerly a small rancher. He sold his place to the big ranch and won the enmity of the small men. They regarded him as having gone over to the enemy. He had been their leader and they resented deeply an act which they somehow regarded as somehow not in accord with the interests in-terests of the smaller ranch owners. her aunt in Kansas City, and during that time she had been at home rarely and for short holidays. She turned Buck's head toward the ranch. Breakfast would be waiting wait-ing tor her, and Lane Carey liked to have his daughter eat with him. She guessed how lonesome it had been for him during the years she had been away. At the top of the first rise she stopped a moment to look down into the valley where the Box 55 lay among the cottonwoods by the river. From the hollow beyond, rose a cloud of slowly moving dust. She knew what that meant. Cattle or horses were on the march, traveling so steadily that she could tell they were being driven. Somebody must have got an early start. A rider showed on the nearer lip of the hollow. While she watched, a second came out of the valley and joined him. One of the men rode a bay horse, the other a black. It was too far to be sure, but she thought she recognized the one on the bay. There was a lithe grace about the figure that suggested Jeff Brand. A faint pink beat into her cheeks. That reckless ne'er-do-well had been in her thoughts a great deal during the past two weeks. She found the combination of deference and audacity in him fascinating. Apparently one of the riders caught sight of her. Both of them looked in her direction for a moment, mo-ment, then disappeared into the valley val-ley from which they had come. At breakfast Ellen mentioned the riders she had seen. Lane Carey Terry asked for stock in the company, com-pany, provided he was made manager. man-ager. Since nobody in the territory knew cows better than Terry the directors jumped at the offer. .The news of the deal shocked the small settlers. They felt that he had betrayed be-trayed them. A bitter resentment wiped out his popularity. Politically the small man dominated domi-nated the county. The nesters combined com-bined with the people of the towns to elect tickets opposed to the cattle barons. CHAPTER III Terry tightened the saddle cinch, taking more time over it than was necessary. When at last he mounted and turned his back to them he held his horse to a walk. His enemies were not going to have it to say of him that he had dragged out of town on the run. He caught a glimpse of a face staring star-ing at him from a grimy window of the Red Triangle Saloon. A moment later a gun roared. His hat tilted forward. Through the brim and the crown a bullet had torn its way. Calhoun Terry dismounted. He walked back along the wooden sidewalk, side-walk, close to the wall, and pushed through the swing doors of the Red Triangle. They had tried to kill him from cover. He would find out if they would dare to do it in the open. Three customers were at the bar. Alford Turley Brand. The gaze of Terry picked them up in turn. It observed also that the back door was ajar. He had a mental vision of somebody vanishing into the alley swiftly a moment before his entry, a heavy-set, bowlegged man with an ugly, sullen face. Most of those present were strongly strong-ly individual, of wild and reckless temperaments, familiar with danger, dan-ger, and because of it they saluted in their hearts the cynical audacity of the man who faced them with contemptuous con-temptuous scorn. "By God, you take the cake, Terry," Ter-ry," Brand said with a hard laugh. "You got away with it at Evans' store. Don't you reckon you're pressing yore luck too far?" The cattleman ignored the question. ques-tion. "Didn't Lee Hart have .time to shut the door when he ran away?" Terry asked, his voice gentle, almost al-most caressing. There was a pause, too long, before be-fore Brand spoke. "Hart hasn't been here." There was another moment of silence si-lence before Turley answered: "We heard a shot. It didn't come from here, if that's what you mean." The cowman stretched out his left arm and laid a forefinger on the hole in one of the panes of the window beside hirh. "My mistake," he said. "Fellow shot that hole in the win- Through the window she caught sight of a man alighting from a sorrel sor-rel horse. A faint excitement stirred in her. She heard someone walking across from the big house. Her father fa-ther said, "How's everything, Jeff?" The drawling answer was, "Fine and dandy, Lane." Carey relieved his daughter and she walked out of the post-office. Three men lounged on the porch. One of them joined Ellen and strolled to the house with her. "Thought I saw you this morning while I was riding," she said. Brand slanted a look at her. "Not unless you were up at Jack Turley's place," he answered. "I've been busy breaking a colt to the saddle." "No, I was out Flat Top way." He shook his head. "Must have been someone else." He smiled at her. "I'll have to do better than that. Can't have you mistaking every ev-ery bowlegged waddy for me." "It doesn't matter, does it?" "A lot. Take a good look at me, young lady." She did not avail herself of the offer. "I've seen you before," she mentioned. "And you'll see me again, any number of times." "Dear me! Is that a threat or a promise?" she asked lightly. His cool eyes rested on her dark good looks. "It's a promise, to myself." my-self." "You don't know how grateful I am," she mocked, with an ironic curtsey. "Are you grateful enough to let me take you to the Sleepy Cat Ranch dance?" he wanted to know. She considered that a moment. "No, I don't think so." She added, "Of course I'm greatly flattered." "Why won't you go with me?" "Must I give reasons?" "Are you going with someone else?" "Since you ask yes." "Who?" "You'll find out in time, if you are there." He did not like it. She saw that. There was a suggestion of sulkiness in his good-looking face. "I hope he'll enjoy himself, whoever he is." There was an implication in his manner that the unknown escort might not find pleasure in all of the evening. "I do hope so. If he looks bored it will be a bad social start for me, won't it?" "He won't be bored," Brand predicted. pre-dicted. "I'll help you entertain him." Ellen read Into his words vindictive vindic-tive resentment. She stopped, slim and straight, dark eyes flashing. "I don't think that will be necessary, Mr. Brand." "It will be a pleasure," he told her. They had reached the house. The girl moved up the porch steps and turned to look down at him. She said slowly, "I can see I'm not going go-ing to like you." ) Not at all abashed, he smiled up at her confidently. "Oh, yes, you are. Very much. I'll take care of that." She felt anger stirring in her. "Some people would call it impudence," impu-dence," she said, a tide of color in her cheeks. Ellen turned and walked into the house, leaving him there. In Jeff's eyes, as he walked back to the post-office, little devils of mischief mis-chief gleamed. Long ago he had discovered that one way to stir a girl's interest in him was to arouse her resentment. It kept her mind full of him while she was devising ways of satisfying it His quick glance picked up another an-other horse at the hitch-rack across the road from the post-office. It did not take him a second look to read the brand. "A gent from the Diamond Reverse Re-verse B with us this morning?" he asked one of the loungers. "His royal nibs," a young man in chaps answered. "None other than Mr. Calhoun Terry." Terry came out to the porch, let . his gaze drift around slowly, and crossed the road to his horse. There was a cool arrogance in the way he ignored Brand that got under that young man's skin. Jeff could not let it alone. "I see you are still wearing the hat that went to the wars, Mr. Terry," Ter-ry," he jeered. "Did you do anything any-thing about that matter you were going to take under consideration?" Without a word Terry swung to the saddle and jogged down the road. Jeff glared angrily, at his broad, flat back, then turned and walked into the office. 1 "What did Terry want?" he asked ' abruptly. Carey looked at him, surprised. 1 "Wanted to know if I had seen any thing of a bunch of she stuff miss ing from a park where he had them herded." "What did you tell him?" "I don't like the way you ask that question, Jeff," the ranchman said quietly.' Brand corrected his manner. "Sorry. I meant, were you able to give him any information?" "I told him Ellen had seen a bunch being driven into the hills," Carey said, the eyes in his tanned, leathery face without expression. "Who was driving it?" "She wasn't close enough to tell." That night at supper Ellen said to her father, "Are you going to beau me to the Sleepy Cat dance?" "What's the matter with the young men? Are they all asleep?" he asked. "Not all of them. I had an invitation invi-tation from a very good-looking man." (TO BE CONTINUED) A moment later a gran roared. took this more seriously than she had expected. "You weren't near enough to know who they were?" The girl's answer was delayed only a fraction of a second. She told the truth, with a reservation. "No." Carey Lane was an honest man. He had cows himself, and no man could say he used a running-iron too freely. Though times were hard, he had made a reasonably good living because he had the post-office at Black Butte and ran the stage station. sta-tion. But some of his neighbors were hard pressed. Low prices and short feed had kept them impoverished. impover-ished. Until recently they had made ends meet by working part time for some of the big cattle outfits. But the large ranches, owing to the prevalence prev-alence of rustling, had made a ruling rul-ing not to employ any man who had cattle of his own. The result had been to increase rather than decrease de-crease thefts. He rose from the table and picked up a dusty, weather-beaten hat. "Wish you'd take care of the mail today, honey," he said. "I got to help Jim fix the pasture fence. May not be back in time." "All right, dad." She looked him over critically, as the daughter of a widower grown careless of his appearance is likely to do. He wore no coat. His vest and trousers were wrinkled, and the run-down-at-the-heel boots would have been rejected scornfully by a tramp. "We're going to gat you some new boots next time we go down to Round Top." He raised a protesting hand. "Now, don't you go to ridin' yore old father. These boots are right comfortable. I got them broke inx fine, and I wouldn't swap them for new ones." Black Butte was the halfway house of the stage line. The passengers and driver ate dinner at the Box 55 every day but Sunday. Ellen spent most of the morning at the house. When the stage rolled up to the door Ellen was at the post-office waiting for the lean sack of mail the stage-driver flung on the table for sorting. Six passengers emerged from the Concord and streamed to the eating-house. During the hour the stage was there Black Butte was a gathering-place gathering-place for the neighborhood. Men sat on the porch and exchanged gossip. gos-sip. Cowboys on the bread line came here to learn what ranches needed riders. Snatches of talk drifted back to Ellen. She caught the name "Buck Hart" once, and two or three times that of his brother Lee. They were connections by marriage of the Carey Car-ey family; rather remote, but they called her Cousin Ellen. The girl had raised no objection, though she had no great interest in them. dow in a row two months ago," the bartender explained. Terry did some swift guessing. The bullet which had passed through his hat had come from a rifle. The sound of the shot told him that. But Hart had been armed only with a revolver. Therefore he had borrowed bor-rowed the saloon Winchester. Since he was in a hurry" to get away unnoticed, un-noticed, he had not taken it with him. The weapon must still be in the room, but Calhoun's searching eyes had not found it. Probably somebody had passed it to the saloon sa-loon man, who had hurriedly put it under the bar. Terry held out an expectant hand. "Give me that rifle under the bar," he ordered. The bartender's eyes grew big. "Why, Mr. Terry, I I don't reckon" reck-on" "The rifle," interrupted Terry coldly. "You don't have to give it to him. Hank," Brand told the man. "This fellow ain't cock-a-doodle-doo in this town." Apparently the bartender was of a different opinion. He stooped down and passed a rifle across the top of the bar. An investigation showed that it had been fired very recently. Terry laughed scornfully and handed it back to the man in the white apron. "Somebody may want it again to shoot me in the back when I leave," he said. Terry's gaze passed to rest on Alford. "I'm a little surprised at you, Roan. When I was your neighbor neigh-bor you wouldn't have stood back of a scoundrel who tried to shoot another an-other man in the back." Alford shifted uneasily on his feet. A flush crept up into his wrinkled face. "I don't stand back of anybody any-body doing t now," he said. Calhoun Terry gave him a long, keen look. He could see that the little man was embarrassed and ashamed. "I get it, Roan. Lee took you by surprise. Didn't give you time to stop him." He let his cold eyes sweep the room again disdainfully, then turned and pushed through the swing doors. Walking to his horse, he mounted and rode away at a road gait. CHAPTER IV Though it was not yet seven o'clock the morning sun flooded the land with light. So still was the air that even the aspen leaves did not tremble. It seemed to Ellen Carey, during that momentary impression, a country without voice and empty of life. Yet the fugitive thought had not faded from her mind before a meadowlark flung out its gay and joyous song, before she saw outlined against the horizon a file of antelope passing through the sagebrush. It was all familiar to her, yet how good to see again I For five years she had been away at school with |