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Show WpHMlit1 -fig, ftwt3 ft Jj HAR-OLD CHANNI NG WIR.E . h&Mz LEW BURNET Is trail boss of the fs T herd which is being driven from . .s to the Indian agent at Ogallala. j ' iu year is 1875. TOM ARNOLD, owner, , has been killed in a stampede. Ills will ; names Lew boss and owner until the cattle are scld, when STEVE and JOY j are to receive their shares. After over- j coming difficulties and hardships, they enter Indian territory and are attacked by a raiding party of cheyennes. Their leader, Crazy Bear, kidnaps Joy, but Lew and WILLY NICKLE rescue her. Lew then forces the drive onward at a j faster pace. CLAY MANNING, Joy'l nance. Is strangely changed. He has j lost his self-assurance, and appears j moody and surly. i CHAPTER XVI 1 On the far side of the quieted cat- I tie, Lew saw Clay ride out with Joe j Wheat and Neal Good on their first I guard and passed him in the dark I still later at the change of watches when he began his own second guard from eleven until two; so that his first sense, when Owl-Head Jackson's Jack-son's rough hand wakened him in the morning, was one of refusing what he heard. Bent above him in the half-light, the eook was saying, "Lew! Hey there. Something's missin'. We're I short a man." He sat up in his blankets. Clay, his bedroll and his war bag were gone. He still refused it. Drugged with a heavy sleep, he said irritably, "All right, all right. I see. Never mind." But afterward, dressed, he walked guard horses and found that Clay had taken the one he had ridden last Following fresh tracks on the dewy grass, he traced them to the creek and across it and saw they were aimed for town. All the camp was aroused and knew f it by the time he got back. Owl-Head's busy tongue was letting them know. He saw Joy crouched at the parted wagon flaps, her long dark hair sleep-tossed, a quilted blanket around her. She called to him, and going ever, he spoke first, "It's all right now. Nothing's happened." hap-pened." "But where has he gone?" Her voice was quick. Fear haunted the soft sleepiness of her eyes. "Into town," he said. "I don't know why or anything about It It's his own business." Her hand came out to him and gripped his arm hard: "Lew, you can't let him. You've got to get him back. Send someone in," she begged. "You must." He spoke gently. "Joy, when a man's got something on his mind he has to work it out himself. Clay must know what he's doing. I'm going to leave him alone." "And If anything happens " She stared at him, "And I knew you might have helped " "I'll take the blame," he said. "I know." Here was what he had understood that night in the Wichita hills. Above everything else there would be this loyalty to Clay. He saw her eyes go beyond him. He turned his head. Steve was coming toward them, walking fast, two high spots of color staining his flat cheeks. Quick and blunt, he said, "Lew, I'm going In to town," and wheeled on to saddle up. v He called out, "Wait a minute, kid." following. "There's plenty of time. We're all going in tonight." He sharpened his stare into the nervous eyes. "You knew about this?" "Not till just now, no." "Then you can wait." He started off and turned back. He felt no gentleness with Steve. "Don't you try to skin out either. I'll be on watch for that." With the arrowhead shaped and grazing forward he rode back to Joe Wheat in the next swing position. "Joe," he said, "I want you to work this out for me. You go in and see what Clay's up to. Get a line on the Open A and its men you know the joints in there better than any of us." "Guess I do." The old man grinned and rubbed his corded neck. "We'll cross the river," Lew finished, fin-ished, ,and go into camp about five miles west of town. Get your news and come back there. That will be some time late this afternoon." If he could have his own way he'd pass Dodge without a stop. Time was crowding him, a threat always over his head. They still had six weeks until September first the delivery date in Ogallala, but also four hundred long miles. He'd like to pass Dodge secretly and keep on. Yet even if Clay had not spoiled that he knew it couldn't be done. No trail crew would stand for It. Dodge was a mecca, a safety valve. The afternoon was almost spent when he swung the point off again to bring the herd into a milling stop on an open flat and saw the cook's wagon and Joe Wheat arriving from town. Wheat came on waving a signal. sig-nal. He rode out to meet the man alone. "Find him, Joe?" "He's there." Wheat nodded. "Been there all day. But I don't figure it Splann's there and a follow fol-low called Stoddard, said to be the Open A boss. First it was only them three and Clay was putting up some kind of talk. They kept north of the tracks, drinking. Dodge still has that dead line. They don't carry guns in that part. But along this af'.ernoon five more Open A riders joined in. Clay's drunk and they've got him south of the dead line now. Lew, I don't know." Joe Wheat's usually sour face showed a deep concern. "Looks like they're crowding crowd-ing Clay into something. They've got him cornered and Clay's still a Cross T man. What do you think?" He guessed old Joe was right. Clay was a Cross T "man till ha proved something else. He hadn't done that yet. "We'll ride," he said. "Better not waste any time." In camp he told the men who had started to wash up for supper, "Don't stop to eat" Dripping heads came up as they stared at him. He didn't explain. He wanted the best of this crew around him in town; some would have to stay here on guard. Owl-Head Owl-Head had already been in and showed it. There wasn't much of a meal cooking on the pit tonight. For the others to be left he picked out Moonlight Bailey, young Jim Hope and Steve. Getting Moonlight off alone, he said, "If Steve tries to skin out rope him. I don't want him in town at all." He turned across to Joy's wagon, found the canvas closed tight and called inside, "We're going off for a little while. I'm leaving Steve here with you." Her voice came out to him with an even quietness. "I'm riding into town when you do. Will you saddle a horse for me?" "Later, maybe," he said. "Not now." The flaps parted. She held them together around her head. She was dressing. Her hair was brushed back smoothly and knotted at the nape of her neck. "I'll go to a ho- EC (fff rm "Heard your Cross T was getting In." tel," she said, "and not be any trouble. But I'm going." He knew that quietness in her voice; there was a will behind it. And he understood. Clay was in trouble, and all of a woman's urge, and perhaps her intuition, was driving driv-ing her to the man. He gave in to that knowledge, saddled a horse and brought it back for her to ride. As he moved the horse for her to mount she handed him a carpetbag heavy with her things. He looked at it, shaping a question ques-tion which then he did not ask. He lilted her up to ride sidesaddle. She hooked her right knee over the horn. Half an hour's loping travel brought the gray sod houses at the outskirts of the town. Even before that the voice of Dodge had been around them in a mingling of sounds that rose and fell and sometimes died away to a breathless hush. Most of the way there had been little talk. Joe Wheat, Quarternight and Ash Brownstone made their older old-er men's group, riding together. Charley and Neal Good had paired off. He rode next to Joy's stirrup himself, at no time trying to break the silence she had seemed to want. Beyond the soddies, with clusters of board houses beginning to outline irregular streets, he aimed toward a row of lights where Second Avenue, Ave-nue, running north from the river, split the town in the middle. He leaned over to say, "I'll take you to the Wright House. That's the best." She nodded. They rode on into louder waves of sound. Then they had entered Second Avenue, coming at once out of darkness dark-ness into the' glow of square oil lamps on posts at the four corners of each intersection. Down at the avenue's farther end he could see the plaza filled with dust and the moving swarms of horses and men. But the Wright House was two blocks back from that jammed center. cen-ter. He turned in front of it and stopped against the long hitching rail. He said to the others, "Wait here," and handed Joy down from her saddle. Whatever she planned he didn't know and still held back his question while they entered the high, square lobby and found she could get a ground-floor room. j But he took her arm as a Negro porter picked up her bag and start-: ed off. "What are you going to do?" ; She turned to face him. Her lips were pale. "Nothing. Find Clay. Tell him I'm here." , He looked at her; filled with a wretched pity for that belief, that all ha had to do was tell Clay she was here. "All right," he said. "I'll let him know." Outside and mounted, there was one other thing he wanted to do first He turned into a cross street and rode two blocks to Railroad Avenue, Ave-nue, turned down that toward the river and reached a section of warehouses, ware-houses, the depot, a huge barn with corrals sprawled behind it Rachal Brothers' livery. He said once more, "Wait here," and entered the livery office. Pete Rachal was inside, sunk deep in a brindle cowhide chair, a man grown fat and wealthy now, and yet an outlaw once whose rustled herds had pioneered the trail to Dodge. He was a Texan who could never go back. But any Texas cowboy, cleaned of his money, needn't go hungry here nor sell his horse and saddle. Pete Rachal was their hock shop and bank. He lifted a stubby hand with its thumb missing and let it fall. "Burnet, "Bur-net, how are you? Heard your Cross T was getting in." "How'd you hear that?" "Horseback information. Someone dropped it off." "Anything else?" "Some trouble I heard with the Indian In-dian Supplj Company's Open A. Bad?" "Bad enough," he said. That's why I've come to you. How many of the boys have you got in soak here?" "Say!" Rachal put out his hand and moved an oil lamp on a table until it lighted a storeroom behind it "Take a look." Lew crossed to the doorway. Forty or fifty saddles were hung in there n pegs along the wall. He turned back, grinning a little. "They'll never nev-er learn, I guess. Well, you know the men. You round up ten of the best and have them back here inside of an hour. I'll pay their bills and give them jobs." Pete Rachal's blue eyes studied him over their heavy pouches. "Cow work?" "I've got enough men," he said, "to handle the cows. We're headed through to Ogallala. I don't figure to be stopped." "That bad, is it?" "That bad." "You come back," Rachal said. "I know the right ones for that." "In an hour," he promised and went out in time to hear Charley Storms' rising complaint, "What's he holding us back for?" And then, "Hey, Lew, how about some fun?" "Charley," he said, "too bad, but you'll have to wait." Only Joe Wheat knew fully what they had come in for. He got into his saddle. "We're looking for Clay. Joe, where was it you saw him last?" "They'd worked the Lady Gay and Mrs. Gore's," Wheat said, "and were drinking at Dutch Jake's when I left." "Likely moved on from there by this time. We'll comb the plaza first." He led out between the livery and the depot, entering at once into the open plaza two blocks wide and four long. , Here in this dusty compound all the visible life of Dodge was centered, cen-tered, hemmed in by the high-fronted buildings with their plank walks and wooden awnings running from end to end. He knew the horse Clay had ridden rid-den and watched for it among the three hundred or more saddle animals ani-mals lined solidly along the gnawed hitching rails. In the brighter fans of light from the windows of Del-mnice's Del-mnice's Restaurant, a dozen barbershops, bar-bershops, The Alamo and The Al-hambra Al-hambra saloons he watched the brown faces of men. They jammed the plank walk shoulder to shoulder In their moving stream. Clay's big shape was not in this crowd, and past the Long Branch Corner, boasting the longest bar in the world and fifty gambling tables, ta-bles, he said, "We might as well go across." But the hitching rails were mostly vacant, and Joe Wheat said, "I guess he's gone. Lew. This is where I saw his horse." He nodded. "I'll take a look." Men drifted through these places, tried others and came back again. He got down from his saddle and walked along, peering over the bat-wing bat-wing doors. Dutch Jake's place was empty now. In those farther on only a few drunks were propped against the bars. He had almost reached the corner, with open ground and the river crossing at right angles be; av.d. when he passed a man standing as motionless as a post against ur.K.'-.Med wall of the saloon front: i::cd him and halted and turned b;uk to I-oi; at him again. Instantly the dark ficure sprang out and ran the width uf tiic street to a saddled horse. He hadn't soon 1 the man's faoc. but it was plainly j someone stationed on lookout dutv j (TO BE CONTINUED) |