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Show Sfi USELESS 3fh a COWBOY j0Mt WMiiTW - rr iiM4Sj THE STORY THUS FAR:. Melody Jones and George Fury rode Into Payne-vllle Payne-vllle on a route to California. While there Melody was mistaken for the wanted want-ed outlaw, Monte Jarrad. and Fury for his half-wit uncle, Roscce. Cherry, a girl friend of Monte's, rushed them out of town to the farm, where they met her brother Avery. Informed that a posse was after them, Melody and Fury left for the border. Avery and Cherry went to Monte's hide-away In, the barn and explained about Melody. In the meantime mean-time Melody and Fury returned. They hid In the attic of the house and later heard Avery and Cherry discuss them. They were soon discovered and brought down. CHAPTER VII Out by the kitchen door the bear cub had uttered a little explosive snarl, alTiost like a bark; and it was growling through its nose now, in a high trill, very shrilly. Melody swung his feet to the floor, took a long step to the lamp, and blew it out. As he sat down again on the edge of the bed there was a moment of complete stillness, so that they could hear each other breathing in the dark. Then he heard her come close to him and drop to one knee, so that they could speak even more softly than before. Her hands found his arm. "Why did you do that?" "That bear seen somethin'," Melody Mel-ody told her. "I suppose he did," she said, at the limit of exasperation. "He's always al-ways seeing something. There's coyotes coy-otes all around here." "It was something else," Melody said vaguely. They were quiet again, and he could almost hear her thinking. "What was it you wanted me to do for you?" he asked her. "It's changed," she said. Her breathing had altered, so that he knew some new angle had come up to frighten her. "I'll tell you about it. I'll tell you the whole thing. .But I have to show you something first. I can't show you until morning. So you'll have to stay right here until daylight." "Whut?" "You can sleep right where you are. That's what you want, isn't it? It is, isn't it?" "I don't believe this," Melody said. "I'll make out all right somewhere some-where else," she said shortly. "Will you do It? Will you do what I ask, and stay put for something new?" The moon was well up now, and very bright. Its gunmetal half-light, color blind to all red or yellow tones, was so clear in that dry desert air that he could have read an obituary notice by it; but the shadows were as black as if they were painted out with soot. Keeping to the band of darkness close to the house wall, Melody Jones moved around the corner cor-ner of the house to the back, where the bear cub was chained. The bear cub growled at him once, and then accepted him, perhaps because be-cause he had come from within. While it snuffled at the wool sox in which he stood, Melody sifted the night with his eyes. Where he now stood he faced the barn and the broken up-country. He combed the foreground first, then the distant contours; and he had time . to estimate this country into which he had ridden by mistake, sensing its shape. The bear cub stopped snuffling, and began to worry at Melody's sock. Melody moved out of reach i and sat down. The cub followed to ! the end of its chain, then sat down t ' beside him with its hind feet in its j paws, and looked at the country like Melody. It both looked and acted like a very little potbellied dwarf of a man, so much as Melody could see. Melody first knew something was wrong again because the bear cub was so still. Leaning hard upon pure instinct, Melody centered the whole soul of his attention upon the shadow of a rock, half way up a hill behind a steep corral. Not because he was brave, not even because he was curious, but because it seemed to be the next thing to do, Melody Jones relaxed his hands and stepped into the moonlight. moon-light. He kqew he could be killed from almost any place, within reasonable rea-sonable gunshot; but nothing happened. hap-pened. After a moment or two of standing there, Melody walked forward, for-ward, silent in his sock feet, toward the door of the barn. Melody Jones' vague bewilderment bewilder-ment was a wild and casual thing compared to Monte Jarrad's total astonishment. Monte had not seen Melody moving in the black shadow of the house. He had not even seen him when Melody silently crossed the thirty yards of open moonlight between house and barn. In those moments Monte had been standing braced between the bales, and he was holding his eyes shut while he waited for a certain amount of thunder thun-der and lightning to stop playing around In his wounded side. He was mending very fast, much faster than he could have hoped, but the first exercise in three days was something he had to pay for. Then he thought he heard breathing, breath-ing, where no breathing should have been, and he opened his eyes to see Melody Jones silhouetted in the moonlit door, easily within reach of Monte's hand. Monte Jarrad had no notion of who Melody was; he had never seen him in his life. He failed to match up this unaccounted visitor with the tramp rider who had been mistaken for Monte himself in Payneville. Beyond Be-yond the fact that the figure was that of a stranger, and had appeared with amazing stealth, identity made no difference. The country was full of people hunting for Monte Jarrad. Melody Jones finished scratching his head and wandered off a little way through the tangle of impedimenta impedi-menta in the barn. As soon as his back was turned Monte drew his gun. Melody seemed to hear the faint whisper of the leather. He turned back, looked about him suspiciously; and then walked straight toward Monte. The man between the bales could not believe that he was unseen, the thin stripes of moonlight made the figure of Melody Jones so plain. Monte's six-gun centered on Melody's belt buckle, and the hammer moved back silently, just short of the click. Monte Jarrad's first astonishment had passed off, and he knew now what he had to do. He still did not dare to fire. He believed now that his one best bet was to brain the stranger with his gun barrel, as quietly as was practicable, and hide him under the hay. Melody Jones unhurriedly stood up. Casually he hitched up his belt as he strolled to the moonlit door. Monte subsided into the shadows as Melody took one more leisurely look at the hay rake, the wagon wheels, and the dark space where Monte stood. Then Melody left the barn, and moved without haste toward the house. Changing his position, Monte watched Melody as he walked past the door of the de Longpre house, and proceeded without any particular particu-lar caution along the house wall. He saw Melody come to the window which Monte knew belonged to Cherry's Cher-ry's room. Nonchalantly, as mat- "You have been mixing with the wrong people." ter-of-factly as If he were vaulting onto a horse, Melody put his hands on the window ledge, and swung a leg over the sill. Still unhurriedly, he disappeared within. Monte's breath sucked in through his teeth. George Fury was riding in, relaxing relax-ing caution as he came close. His carbine was in his hands, but he was now in the act of putting it away in his saddle boot. This nonchalance puzzled Cherry until a moment later when she saw, with a keen chagrin, the reason for George Fury's assurance. assur-ance. Melody Jones was up already, and sitting on the kitchen steps in full view. He plainly had been up for some time, for he had had time to find and catch the horse he called Harry Henshaw. The pony was saddled sad-dled and packed wth Melody's bedroll, bed-roll, and was now finishing a heavy bait of oats laid out on a gunny sack at the edge of the rickety gallery. Cherry lay back soundlessly, more than willing to hear what Melody and George Fury had to say to each other when they thought they were alone. George Fury looked Melody over ironically, which was mostly wasted in the bad light Then he stepped down, dropping his split reins to the ground and loosened his cinches with elaborate deliberation before turning upon his partner. "I went and looked for you by the crick where I left you," Melody said, "and I found Harry Henshaw where you tied him. But you was gone." George eased himself stiffly to the step beside Melody. "Expect me to set there all night?" he grunted. Melody looked at him gravely. "George," he said, "I've rode with you a fur piece, and I swar a feller don't live that can say you would or you wouldn't." George's customary snort came out only as a long sigh; he needed his coffee. "I been down to Payneville." Payne-ville." "I brung you a message." George began digging in his various pockets. pock-ets. "I got it somewheres here." "Message? I don't know anybody in Payneville." "You know one feller at least the feller you hit. This here's from him." He handed Melody a balled-up balled-up wad of wrapping paper. "You better read it if you still can read." The note George Fury had brought from Payneville didn't have much in it either. It simply said: You better come down here and talk. And quick. '"Taint signed." "Name's Ira Waggoner. He wai the stage driver on the coach Monte Jarrad held up, on the Stinkwater road. 'Give this to Monte Jarrad,' he says. He still thinks you're Monte Mon-te Jarrad." "I finally found a man a feller could, talk to down there," George Fury went on. "The town is just as crazy as it was; their minds is et out by drinking water from the Poisonberry River, I rigger now. But this feller was a bullwhacker, just passin' through, and he hadn't drunk any water, so he was all right." "Is he the one that give you the black eye?" "That come later. . . . This feller fel-ler told me a pile of stuff about this Monte Jarrad you're supposed to be. Everybody i in the whoop-hurrah country knows more about him than you do. I don't know how It Is, but somehow you are the one blink that don't never seem to get the word." "Heck, George." Melody seemed depressed. "I don't know why you talk thataway. A feller would think I done something." Melody studied the note from Ira Waggoner again. "Cherry," he said, without raising his voice, "come out here a minute." There was a moment's silence, and Cherry sounded chastened, as she answered him. "All right. Melody." Mel-ody." Cherry looked pale, and showed blue circles under her eyes. Her hands were trying to unrumple her hair, which still looked lighter than her face. There was no exchange of greetings. Melody handed her the note George had brought. "You know somethin' about this?" he asked. Cherry studied the message for a long time. "This isn't for you," she said at last. She looked humorless and scared. "Is that what you wanted me to do," Melody asked, "go down there and straighten this feller out?" "No!" Cherry's nervous balance was breaking up. "That's the one thing you must not do!" "Well," Melody said slowly, "If you don't want me to go down there, I suppose we could have him come out here." "You mustn't talk to Ira Waggoner Wag-goner at all!" Cherry insisted, on the verge of hysteria. "Not now or any other time, no matter where you run into him next!" "What fur not, Cherry? He know somethin'?" Cherry looked as if she were going go-ing to burst into tears, but she pulled herself together. "I didn't say that." "All you said was," Melody admitted, ad-mitted, "you was going to show me something you wanted me to do." Cherry snuffled back the threatening threaten-ing tears and made her voice quiet. "I'm going to. Hook up the buck-board buck-board for me you know the team I use. I'll get you some breakfast while you hitch. And I'll take you to where where we have to go." "All right, Cherry." He went to get his lariat off of Harry Henshaw. "Melody," George said when Cherry Cher-ry had gone Into the house, "you going oft some place with that girl?" "Ain't you comin', George?" George seemed weary and old. "Melody, I ain't." When they had got the buckboard down the axle-cracking trail to the valley floor, with Harry Henshaw on lead behind it, they drove about four miles along the twisting Poison-, berry River. Then Cherry de Longpre Long-pre turned the team out of the ruts, into the unbroken sage. They presently pres-ently came out into an open space in which lay the charred, weathered ruins of a ranch. Cherry pulled up, and sat listening. She asked nervously, "Did you hear a horse whinny?" "No," Melody said, "because there wasn't any done so. If they had, this team would have knowed it, whether we heard it or not. Whut's the matter? You expecting to nfeet somebody?" "No of course not " "Then why did you bring that six-gun?" six-gun?" Cherry looked startled. "I see you put it under the seat," Melody explained. "I brought it," Cherry said slowly, slow-ly, "because you're in bad trouble. If you had to fight, I meant to help you." "Honest? You did? You mean you know how to fight a gun, same as a man?" "I know how to fix 'em," Cherry said sheepishly, "because I clean 'em for Fever Crick and Avery all ; the time. But I don't like guns very well. I've only fired one off I about two or three times." (TO BE CONTINUED) i |