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Show her cattle back. To her this wai much fun! Well, why not? Sh planned it. She goes now to change her wet clothing in the trailer hous and return to the Wagon Wheel." "How did she get on t this Wai outfit? How come she knew her cat tie had been stolen?" "I had sent two good men out ol the Wagon Wheel range to kill ths wild burros that infest it. There must be nearly a thousand of there eating grass they do not pay for. One tf these men came in just before be-fore I started the round-up ovei west, to report that strangers were rounding up Dona Maria's yearlings in advance of us so Dona Maria undertook un-dertook to investigate, since I wai too busy 'witn the round-up. We had one clew a letter I found on the body of Randall H. Wall, whom lulled." "That was a good clue," Don Leonardo Leo-nardo agreed. "You told me of thai letter addressed to Wall at Earp, California. That's why we're here." 'Dona Maria made inquiry at the post-office in Earp " The Henleys , exchange glances "and as she had taken the precaution to bring a saddled sad-dled horse along in a trailer, she rode up to the Wall feeding lots to investigate, taking a roundabout course to avoid being seen. She supposed men came to feed the cattle cat-tle night and morning and that there would be no one thee at noon. So she arrived at noon and there was nobody to interrupt her as she count ed one hundred and thirty-five Wagon Wag-on Wheel feeders in one corral." "Do you mean to tell me, Pedro, that she had the gall to leave them feeders there until Wall had fattened fat-tened Ihpm hpfrp ctpnlinp them nia beside the ox-teams an' fought Injuns with the men folks." "Martinez is not here, Pedro," they heard her say. "He remained behind on a little matter of business," Pedro replied with a smirk. "In ridding one's self of rats, Dona Maria, the wise man destroys the nest. Martinez is a good powder-man &nd I detached him to blow up the ranch-house and barns . . . Ah, there goes the pumping pump-ing plant," as a detonation on the river bank a couple of hundred yards below them on the California side put bells in their ears. "Martinez is not coming with us, Dona Maria. Ma-ria. You forget he is the truck driver. He awaits you down on the river road to load your horse and his in the truck and drive it back to the ranch." t "If that's what you've been up to," Mary laughed, "I'd better get back home as quickly as possible. Pedro, you're a devil!" Pedro bowed low in his saddle. "I am complimented, Dona' Maria, but then what would you? Am I not a graduate of Don Hamilton Henley's school? If Don Hamilton should learn that I had let this re-. ceiver of stolen goods escape without with-out a severe lesson he would be ashamed of me." "I seem to be destined to like Don Hamilton whether I desire to or not. He brands one with his personality per-sonality as one brands a calf." "So does Don Leonardo," Pedro declared loyally. "I'm afraid he does. Well, Pedro, good luck to you and the boys on your way home. You should meet the pack outfit with food and bed- Mary Sutherland Is lnred to Arizona by the advertisements of the Wagon Wheel dude ranch, operated by Ma and Pa Burdan. She Is net at the station by Len Henley, who tells her the ranch Is ont of business and who takes ber to Phoenix. Here he rides the bronc. Mad Batter, In a rodeo and wins three thousand thou-sand for Mary from his dad, who bad bet against Len. Ham has bought the Burcan notes from the bank and feels that Wagon Wheel Is now bis, but Mary has bought an equity In It. She rehires re-hires Ma and Pa Burdan, takes cp on the ranch, and fights rustlers. Later the Wade brothers, cattle rustlers, sell their land to Ham and on promise of leaving the country, are released. CHAPTER XViri Suddenly two horsemen galloped down the fenced road that ran through the center of the Wall ranch; as they emerged on the river road, they separated, one taking a stand on the river road west of its junction with the ranch road and the other to the east of it. The Henleys looked at each other and without a word being spoken leaped their horses up the low bank off the sand-bar and into the bush on the banks of the Colorado where they could see without being seen. They got their rifles out of the scabbards and dismounted. The cattle appeared in sight, hurried hur-ried down the fenced road by four riders who shouted and flailed the stragglers with quirts. The herd was trqtting as the head of it emerged on the river road; the riders rid-ers waiting on each side of the exit shouted and closed in, the leading lead-ing steer slid down the low bank, across a sand-bar and into the river, riv-er, and the herd followed, willy-nilly, back?" Don Leonardo demanded. "They are fed three months. We figured her cattle had arrived there about May fifteenth." "I wish I had a little cookin' whisky," Don Hamilton complained. "I'm sorter faint to think a dude woman's trickier than I be." "Of course, Don Leonardo," Pedro Pe-dro went on, "when the sherifl comes again to set a guard on the evidence he will discover it has disappeared. dis-appeared. So will Dona Maria! Sc she will send her attorney to request re-quest that the case be dismissed for lack of evidence. She can afford af-ford to do that, for have the cub prits not been tried convicted and punished in the court of her Honor, Judge Sutherland?" "Len," said Don Hamilton, "1 won't be needed on this drive now, so I guess I'll go back to Eagle Landing an' go home in the truck. I got to brew some bitter medicine for them Wade boys." A cowpuncher rode in to the Wagon Wag-on Wheel and sought audience with Mary Sutherland. "I'm Tom Lun-dy," Lun-dy," he introduced himself, "an" ride for the Tomahawk ranch. The Henleys caught some rustlers driv in' a bunch o' Flyin' W steers to-' to-' ward the Colorado River an' captured cap-tured the rustlers an' the steers. They met up with Pedro Ortij drivin' back some steers recovered from the same thievin' syndicate, so they threw in toeether an' thev're . 'J ..3' Across the three hundred yards of muddy river a voice reached the Henleys. "They, follow the leader, Pedro, and he's swimming downstream down-stream with the current. I'll head him you can't cross through the herd to this side to do it hope this Breezy Wade horse doesn't flunk it." The rider west of the herd leaped his horse down the bank to the sandbar sand-bar and with a shout of encouragement, encourage-ment, sent him into the river . . . suddenly he was swimming and headed to cut off the leading steer. "Well," Len said to his father, "who's looney now?" "You are, you bonehead. You let her get away from you." "You argued me out of my natural nat-ural desire." . "You'd ought to have knowed better bet-ter than to listen to a man in his second childhood. Man, look at them cattle swim an' snort. An' look at that dude woman! She realizes her weight forward is bearin' her horse's head under . . . She's gettin' out o' the saddle an' back o' the cantle ... his head's 'comin' up now an' he's swimmin' freer " "Oh, God," his son groaned, "if she should slide off him those steers will swim her down and under!" A pistol cracked and flashed and they saw a little water spout rise a foot from the nose of the leading steer. He turned obliquely at once and other waterspouts followed him until he was headed straight for the comin' up the Santa Maria, on account ac-count they got to trail them cattle where they won't scatter lookin' for water." "I understand, Lundy." "Mr. Len Henley ordered me to ride on ahead an' ask your permission permis-sion to hold the Flyin' W cattle in your field until he can send trucks to take 'em back to the Flyin' W." "When will the drive arrive?" "Late tomorrow1 afternoon." "Tomorrow morning when you return re-turn to the drive, please inform Mr. Henley that it will not be necessary to remove the Flying W , cattle in trucks, because I have bought the Flying W from his father and will merge it with the Wagon Wheel.' Mary Sutherland was thinking, as she lounged in a long chair in the colonnade, that she had done a hard task quickly and all because she had had the money to hire a maximum maxi-mum of labor and equipment. The old unsightly ranch buildings had disappeared, likewise Pa Burdan's pathetic, frost ruined grapefruil grove and on its site, two hundred hun-dred yards from the dude house, new buildings, architecturally pleasing, pleas-ing, had replaced them. The new bunkhouse, kitchen and mess hall were of adobe cool in summer and warm in winter; she had everj piece of necessary equipment and a place for it and everything in its place. She had the Wagon Wheel organized; she had labored and enjoyed en-joyed it and now, in the evening ol her first labor-free day, she watched the sun slide down over the low blue hills to the west while she waited for Len Henley and Pedro and his riders to come down out of the fenced field on the home ranch the thousand acres field she had noi seeded to grass because she had tc have a field in which to hold hei cattle and feed them while gradually gradu-ally shipping them to market ir hired trucks and trailers. She was quite cool and collected at the prospect of seeing Don Leonardo Leo-nardo again, for she was convinced she had gotten him out of her mind and she waited now, with a certair grim pleasure, to greet him as 8 friend and not as a former sweetheart. sweet-heart. She would prove to him tha she could take it. (TO BE CONTINUED) Arizona shore, and on the downstream down-stream flank of the herd Mary Sutherland's Suth-erland's horse swam easily while she shouted to the swimming steers that followed the leader. . Her horse found footing and she pulled him up and got back into the saddle. Fifty feet away Len Henley Hen-ley and his fathercrouched in the mesquite and watched her as she sat her horse and gazed at her cattle cat-tle straggling up out of the rier to the sand-bar. Behind them Pedro Pe-dro came and pulled in beside her. "Dona Maria," he said complain-Ingly, complain-Ingly, "you should not have ridden the flank of the swimming herd . . . something might have happened. Suppose they had stampeded in the water and swam you down. Never before have I swum cattle ... I am frightened for you." "Yes, I thought of that, but there was no time to waste. Unless we got them headed for this sand-bar and the mouth of the Williams we might have had to swim them miles down-stream to a good crossing and drowned many of them. And then we'd have been caught and arrested and I'd have more horrible publicity." publici-ty." "True words, Dona Maria." "And besides, Pedro, I'm not a dude woman any more. I'm a cow woman and I'm like the Henleys. What I have I hold if I can. However, How-ever, I'd have felt safer with Pablito under me; for a moment I could have hated Don Leonardo for refusing re-fusing to sell him to me." She drew one of the beautiful six-shooters six-shooters Pedro had taken from the body of Randall H. Wall, flipped out the empty cartridge cases, reloaded the weapon and put it back in the holster. "A forty-five bullet makes quite a splash if you ricochet it along the surface," she mused aloud. "That steer was out-swimming my horse so I had to head him by throwing throw-ing water in his eyes." She patted her horse's nee. "In the days when this felloB was keeping bad company he must have had swimming swim-ming lessons, Pedro. He never hesitated. hes-itated. Are all ttfe men over?" She counted them. Ham Henley nudged his son. "Leader," he whispered, whis-pered, "realizes her responsibility as the boss. Oh, man, she's glorious. glori-ous. She's a throw-back to that great-arandmother great-arandmother that hiked to Califor- Her horse found footing and she pulled him up and got back into the saddle. rolls up-river about noon. Those mules and pack saddles you captured cap-tured from the Wades are proving your worth as a mule thief. She waved her hand to her riders, congregated con-gregated in a bunch and waiting for Pedro's orders. "Adios, mucha-chos." mucha-chos." They were all Mexicans, although sons of Arizona, and they gave her back the old sweet answer to farewell: fare-well: "Vaya usted con Dios" Go you with God, and Mary put her horse into the river, lifted herself back of the cantle again and swam him back to the California shore. The Henleys watched her climb out and jog away down the road toward Earp; the Wagon Wheel crew watched her, too ... v Len Henley shouted to Pedro: "Hola, Pedro, we arrive, Don Hamilton Ham-ilton and myself," and the pair jumped their horses down to the sand-bar beside him. Pedro lifted his sombrero politely. "One plans a secret, lawless act and lo, witnesses wit-nesses are not wanting. What do you here, Don Hamilton, with your son?" "Been on a thievin' job ourselves," our-selves," Don Hamilton replied, and told the tale. "Me an' Len was plan-nin' plan-nin' on goin' over an' raisin' a little lit-tle particular hell with that Wall party par-ty until we seen somebody else had beaten our time, Pedro, your Wagon Wheel cattle are mixed with our Flyin' W critters now; we're short-handed short-handed for the drive back, so suppose sup-pose we throw in with you an' your boys an' do the job together. I got our own grub an' beddin' rolls an' the enemy's pack mules." "We, too. are short-handed, Don Hamilton, but that is because, on an adventure of this sort, one has to pick his men," said Pedro. "Where's your salty boss headin' for now?" Don Hamilton queried. "We came over in a truck with our horses and Dona Maria followed in her car, towing the trailer house Don Leonardo was so kind as to give me. We parked down the road late last night and Dona Maria slept in the trailer house, but joined us for breakfast and tc nelp us steal |