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Show f'W?,sJ' Jj VHAR.OLD CHAN N I N 6 Wl R MM C Kg ' W.N.U. RELEASE LEW BURNET, riding back to southern Texas from his Wyoming ranch In the spring of 1875, meets an old trapper, WIIXY NICKLE, who tells him that the bank at Ox Bow has been robbed. Re also says that TOM ARNOLD, owner of the Cross T ranch, is planning to move his herd to Wyoming, and hints that Tom will need a trail boss. Willy voices his dislike of CLAY MANNING, ranch foreman. fore-man. On the night of the robbery, Willy says he saw Tom's son, STEVE ARNOLD, AR-NOLD, riding with four strangers. Willy also mentions that some gang is stealing horses from the Cross T herd. Lastly, Willy tells Lew that JOY ARNOLD has not yet married her fiance, Clay Manning. CHAPTER II Lew reflected that he needed only cattle or money to stock his Wyoming Wyo-ming ranch. . . . That brought him back to Tom Arnold's letter, puzzled puz-zled and wondering, sure ol one thing. Tom's promises were never small. "You come south and boes this trail drive for me," the letter said, "and I'll make you a proposition." As always when riding the Little Comanche certain familiar landmarks land-marks rose ahead, each one with a special meaning, and he could see in them the ten years he had spent here, ever since he was a homeless, home-less, drifting kid of fourteen and Tom Arnold had taken him in. He could see those growing 'years of school and ranch life and the close, wild companionship of Three Apaches himself and Joy and Steve. In his young way then he had thought it would go on like that as long as they lived. The three of them would always be together. Even earlier in that evening of the Ox Bow dance, a year ago, there had been nothing to warn him. That was why it had struck so hard. He remembered Joy's strange silence si-lence on the ride home, with Clay Manning holding his horse close to her stirrup, his talk and laughter even more gusty than usual; and then the secret that had burst from him against Joy's sudden protest, "No, Clayl Not yet!" But Clay had said, "Why not? I'll tell the whole world, honey, you're going to be my wife!" He remembered how that word "wife" had struck into his brain. She was only a little girl! But then he had looked across his saddle at her in a new way, brought by that word, and she was no longer a little girl; she was a woman, nineteen, ready to marry a man. Something had ended for him that night, something he had taken for granted and counted on, unknowingly, unknowing-ly, until it was suddenly gone. He had tried to fill that gap with a new life in Wyoming and knew now that he never could. It was not only Joy, he realized. It was what the three of them had had together, himself and Joy and Steve. Guardedly, with all his alert senses centered on the dark choked growth of Crazy Woman's mouth, he moved across the narrow entrance at a slow pace, watching for signs. Then in a sand wash below the opening he came upon a swath of tracks and halted to read them with a detailed care. They were all of horses, unshod, all going into Crazy Woman, none coming out. That would have been the bunch, he judged, which old Willy Nickle had told about last night. At least twenty in the herd. He urged his black horse forward, and in another hour, when a patch of willow at Ten Mile Spring blocked the way, it was his eagerness that made him cut into an opening through the trunks instead of going around. He knew instantly it was a mistake. Nothing had warned him. This was an isolated five acres of growth on the barren valley floor. But it was also, he saw at once, an ideal lookout post for the men stationed here. His first urge was to rein back and make a run. Yet it was already too late for that. Four men had spread out in a little clearing directly di-rectly ahead of him, hands close to their holstered guns. And then, even as the urge ran through him and was gone, he knew that whatever game he was to play here on the Little Comanche would have to open some time. He might as well open it now. He rode in and stepped down from his saddle, while the outspread four closed in again to face him across the ashes of their camp. He nodded. nod-ded. -'How are you, gentlemen? Had my eyes peeled for bucks and feath- , ers. Glad to see white men again." i He jerked his head south. "Maybe 1 you can tell me how far to Ox Bow 1 town?" I That eased them. It placed him as a stranger. He saw the tight readiness go out of their arms a little. One asked, "You headed for Ox Bow?" I "And beyond," he said. He pulled 1 out his pipe and loaded it, explain-. ing, "Been coming down the trail." Squatting, he searched the ashes for a live coal. He found the ashes i warm with a bed of fire underneath. ; So these men had cooked a noon meal here and were waiting for ; what? Rising, he faced the one man who i had spoken. "What's the brand on this range?" The answer came gruffly. "Cross T. Know it?" He shook his head. "New to me." The man was hard to place, squat and powerfully built, black-bearded over a pugnacious jaw, shrewd gray eyes. There was the look of the cattleman about him, except for his hands. Even gloves could not have protected them so much from the calluses and burns of a cowman's rope. They were soft; the skin above his wrists was white. The squat man asked, "What outfit?" out-fit?" "Circle Dot," Lew said, naming a brand far to the south. He saw the gray eyes hold a moment's mo-ment's speculation, move to the other oth-er three men and pause, and there seemed a silent question asked and answered. They came back then, veiled behind drooping lids. "You looking for a trail job?" "No, not yet. I aim to get my old one with the Circle Dot." He knocked out his pipe and put it in the side pocket of his rawhide coat, standing there afterward with the thumb of his right hand hooked over the pocket edge. "If you've been north three times and know enough," the man suggested, sug-gested, "maybe you can get a better bet-ter deal here. What routes do you know?" "My own," he said and smiled faintly. "And that knowledge comes high." "Keep it then!" "Sure. I'm not asking you for a job." Puzzled, he turned away. He had thought this was a camp of horse thieves. "Well, I'D tell you." The decision deci-sion came slowly, still with a guarded guard-ed reluctance. "We need a good man. We're shorthanded on a herd starting north tomorrow. The right kind can draw seventy a month."- That was almost double the usual wage. Lew grinned. "What's wrong with the color of your herd?" "Nothing. It goes out of here with a clean bill of sale. We're traveling fast, that's all. I'm willing to pay for a man who knows some short cuts." "I see." He had his information, a big herd, going north tomorrow to "Nobody asked you to talk so much! Now then, school's out." Ogallala or beyond. He turned himself him-self a little, facing squarely toward the four bunched men. "It's a tempting offer. But I guess not" He saw their quick suspicion and the move that all four started to make. But his own right hand hooked on his coat pocket had only to drop slightly and the gun came up in the curved grip of his fingers. Under its level aim the group fioze. Dryly he said, "Nobody asked you to talk so much! Now then, school's out.". Moving backward slowly, he reached around with his left hand for the bridle reins of his horse. He watched the four men. They held their hands rigidly away from their guns. His groping fingers touched the reins' smooth leather. He heard the animal's nostrils rattle in a snort, felt a quick pull, yet could not take his eyes from the men. He started start-ed to say, "Easy, boy " when a rope slapped out of the air behind him, pinned his arms and jerked him over backward to the ground. Afterward, coming out of the sudden sud-den darkness that a downward blow against his jaw had brought, he felt first the dull ache where he had been struck and then the tight rope that held him. He was lying off at one side of the camp, where they had bound him with the thoroughness of experts, ankles together. hands tied behind his back, a length of rope snubbing him close to the trunk of a tree. All five were crouched now at the ashes of their fire, again in that attitude of waiting. It was still another moment before be-fore he caught the drumming run of a horse. Unchecked, the rush of hoofbeats aimed in toward the willows, wil-lows, slowing only when they reached the outer edge. Then the rider entered with no signal someone some-one wholly familiar in the camp. He twisted his head for a better look, but could see no more than a dim shape of man and animal blended blend-ed together. A voice growled, "You're late!" The blended shape moved little. lit-tle. The rider's answer seemed forced out of him in a desperate way: "You're lucky I came at all! I told you last night there'd tee no more!" Something cold and hard tightened tight-ened down the long length of his body. He'd recognize this voice anywhere. any-where. Clay Manning! "I've filled your bargain. I'm through!" "You think so!" There was a shifting movement of the dim figures fig-ures standing on the ground. "We don't. Quit now and you know what happens." "That's what I rode to tell you." Clay Manning's voice and the blurred whirling of his horse came in the same instant. "Not tonight!" One of the group yelled, "Stop him!" and a gun's yellow flame streaked across the dark. But the crash of Clay Manning's horse through the willows continued, and then he was running free down the valley floor. The men made a quick shuttling movement among the trees; Lew heard the slap of saddles and cinch leather. Then someone came and bent over him, jerked at the knots, testing them, and without a word ran back. The horses were visible now and the shapes of the riders swinging up. He heard a moment's mutter of talk, like a plan being made and changed and suddenly decided upon. Bolting from the camp, they, too, aimed their headlong head-long run toward the south. Twisting, he made another. savage attempt to loosen the ropes until the breath went out of him in a gasp of their cutting pain. And when he dropped back again, face up, a man was standing over him in the dark. "Thought so!" said old Willy Nickle and came silently forward. "Fixin' to get yourself rubbed out, so you were. Don't you never take an old coon's advice, no sirree!" The sharp blade of his scalping knife parted the loops of rope. Forcing his stiffened body up onto legs that had gone numb, Lew said, "I had to know." He threw open the camp bedrolls until he found one where his gun had been hidden. "So you did," old Willy admitted. He wiped the knife on his greased sleeve. "Seems like I was watching watch-ing from the rims. Saw you come in here. Never saw you come out. But didn't them five go south in a hurry? And what for?" "You don't know?" Lew asked. His horse was in the willows, the pack mule near by. He was up in his saddle when old Willy answered, "Couldn't say. Was a fire off south after sundown, too far to tell what." Lew nodded. The horse was moving. mov-ing. Behind him Willy Nickle warned, "They'll lift your hair yet, boy. You better watch!" Then the black's strong lunge carried car-ried him beyond the spring and he was out on the open valley floor, running, with the mule trailing somewhere in the dark. He was soon at the' Cross T. His sense of everything wrong here settled upon him with a heavy weight; the empty corrals, the silence, si-lence, the absence of Cross T men. The faint slit of light widened a little. lit-tle. "Who is it?" The demand came quick and sharp, hardly more than a tight whisper. He didn't move. "Joy!" "Lew!" The door swung back. She made a small dark figure rushing toward him. He caught her and her arms went around him and clung with something some-thing desperate and almost fierce in their grip. "Lew!" she said again. And then, "I can't believe it!" Holding her, all the month-long ache was swept from his body. His tiredness was gone. It was like hunger satisfied. She moved first, drawing away, and he asked, "Joy, what's happened?" "I don't know!" The fear he had quieted broke into her quickened voice again. "Our grass stacks were burned late this afternoon, and a little while ago Clay rode in and said something to Dad. I didn't hear. But all the men went with him." "Where?" "Down the valley. Our trail herd's been gathered there on the flats." He took her hands. "Are you alone?" "No. Owl-Head's here." "Then I've got to go. I can help." She gripped him. "But I haven't even seen you! Wait, Lew. Wait a little" A sudden burst of gunfire rattled in the distance. A rumble like far-off far-off thunder trembled up from the valley mouth. In the first moments of running his horse beyond the ranch buildings he couldn't place the direction of that low rumble. He veered off to cut in at the head of the stampede, drawing his gun. A dust fog rolled out to meet him; the clack of horns and hoofs and the heavy breathing of perhaps four thousand animals swept aside every other sound. (TO BE CONTINUED! |