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Show INSTALLMENT NINF.TF.KN Texas ex-peace officers to Invade the countryside and kill without trial all suspected rusUers. By mistake, Terry and his foreman, Larry, are attacked by the Invaders. Jeff, thinking them rusUers, rus-Uers, comes to help them, is wounded. "Will you send a wire to Doctor Harris and ask him to come up and look after our patient here?" "Yes. He'll probably be needed at the Wagonwheel Gap Ranch too. On the way there he can stop here." Ellen walked down with him to the corral. Roan Alford was taking care of the wounded man, and for the time she could be spared. She moved with a fine animal vigor, shoulders and hips in a straight line vertically. Calhoun noted the rhythmic rhyth-mic grace of the slender figure. He had never met another woman like her, so fine and gallant and animated ani-mated with life. There strummed in his blood a strong desire for her for the dark beauty tempered as a Toledo blade, for the sweetness and the courage that she carried like a banner. There would be gifts in her eyes for some lucky man, but they would not be for him. "Larry Richards and I are buying a slice of the Diamond Reverse B," he told her. "I've been thinking we might have a place for Jeff Brand when he gets able to work." She flashed a quick look at him, surprised. "Do you think that would suit Jeff?" she asked. "He's so restless. I wonder if he would be content." A rescue party takes Jeff to town for medical treatment, and Terry and Larry Lar-ry are arrested by the sheriff for safekeeping. safe-keeping. Jeff pacifies mob. Cal, free, doesn't know Ellen loves him, not Jeff But he is soon to learn. CHAPTER XXXIX That the soldiers reached Wagon-wheel Wagon-wheel Gap Ranch just in time to save the invaders is written in the history of Cattleland. Ellison and his men surrendered to the com manding officer of the troops stationed sta-tioned at Fort Garfield. To Sheriff Hart and to the best of the attacking settlers the sound of the bugle sent out by the approaching troops had been almost as welcome as to the beleaguered party. Collins strutted out of the ranch house undaunted by the yells and curses flung at him and his associates. asso-ciates. He stood on the porch and waited for a chance to speak, and when the angry shouts died down flung back defiance at the enemy. "To call me a murderer doesn't make me one," he said, no more disturbed than if he had been sitting sit-ting with cronies at the Cheyenne Club. "We're honest men fighting for our rights. Some of us have been here since the Indian days. Every cattleman among us has helped build up this territory and has been a good citizen. I can call out the names of a dozen thieves I see among you, scoundrels who came here without a cent and have obtained ob-tained herds at our expense, every hoof of them stolen from some of THE STORY SO FAR: Ellen Carey eems interested in two men, Jeff Brand, rustler, and Calhoun Terry, ranch manager. man-ager. Four rustlers had been mysteriously mysteri-ously killed. The big ranchers, much over Terry's protest, hired an army of The voice was that of Lee Hart. He bowlegged forward, and pulled up abruptly as he recognized the two ranchmen. His gaze slid to Yancey. Yan-cey. They could see understanding of the situation filter into his eyes. He opened his mouth to shout, and was a fraction of a second too late. Terry had plunged forward, his right lashing at the man's jaw. Hart went down, and Terry was on him instantly, his fingers closing on his hairy throat to prevent an alarm. Calhoun dragged the heavy body into the aspens. "Give me your bandanna," he said to Yancey, and with it gagged the prisoner. The rope from the saddle he used to tie the man. The moon came out for a moment, mo-ment, then went behind a cloud. Yancey was boosted to the saddle and Terry swung up behind him. "If you can slip through the lines you'd better do it," Calhoun told the Box 55 man. "When they find Hart and he tells what he knows they will be some annoyed at you." "I'll make out," Carey said. Terry moved into the darkness. Carey waited and listened to the sound of the retreating hoofs. There was a long minute of silence, then the crash,of guns and the lift of excited ex-cited voices. "Who was it?" somebody asked. "Don't know. He wouldn't, stop when we gave orders. We missed him, looks like." Carey very much hoped so. "He'll have to settle down sometime, some-time, won't he?" Calhoun said. "I don't know. He's so wild." She went on, almost as if she were talking to herself: "It would be terrible ter-rible for a girl to be married to him. With a husband as reckless and unstable as he is, no woman would be able to keep step. He would bring her great and lasting unhappiness, though very likely she would keep loving him till the end." Calhoun pulled up in his stride. "I thought you were going to marry him." "Did you think I would marry a rustler?" she reproved gently. "Do you mean that you're not in love with him?" he asked, looking directly at her. She laughed, a little tremulously. "Where did you get that ridiculous notion?" He stared at her, a heat beating through his body. "Then you're not in love with him ... or with any other man?" She said in a low voice, "We aren't talking about any other man, are we?" Some hint of her deep emotion reached him. A swift hope blazed up in him. He had thought never to tell her what was in his heart, but now he flung away restraint. He said, "I couldn't be the man." But his voice asked for a denial. When she did not reply, he pressed home his question. Ellen looked up, her face a soft and shining answer. Riding through the night to send the message to the Governor, Calhoun Cal-houn was filled with a sense of the nearness of the girl whose warm body he had held in his arms. The lift of the hour was still on him. With the extravagance of a lover, he was sure that no man since Adam had ever had a sweetheart comparable compara-ble to his. He loved everything about her the parted lips and shining shin-ing eyes, the flowing grace of movement, move-ment, the turn of the lovely head. His ecstasy amazed him. He had counted himself a hard man, cynical, cyni-cal, not given to sentiment. Yet a girl with a wind-blown skirt had crossed his path and changed the world for him. He thought, with a smile, of the verse of the hymn he had once quoted to her: " Though every prospect pleases. And only man is vile. He was ready to revise his opinion opin-ion about that too. Jeff Brand Dave Morgan Sheriff Hart. Tough, hard men all of them, but with a light shining in their hearts that separated them a million miles from vileness. us. He waited till the roar of rage had spent itself, then went on hardily. "I'd do just what I have done again. The time has come when either honest men or the thieves have to get out, and by God! I stand for hanging every rustler I can find until the law will punish them by putting them behind bars. We are not fighting small settlers but thieves. If I have to go to prison for what I have done, I'll still say I did right in trying to rid this country of outlaws." Neither Collins nor any of the other oth-er invaders went to the penitentiary. peniten-tiary. Their trials were postponed for many months. Witnesses vanished. van-ished. The intensity of the feeling against the cattlemen declined. Moreover, the cost of the trials was so great that there was likelihood of county bankruptcy. In the end the indictments were dismissed. But it was plain that the big ranches were doomed. One after another they followed the example of the Diamond Reverse B and went out of business. With the increase in the number of small cattlemen the chances for undetected rustling grew fewer. -Most of the thieves were known, and one by one they flitted to Montana or Idaho or Mexico. Mex-ico. Jeff Brand joined a cattle outfit in the Argentine. At long intervals his friends heard of him. He came back to the States to enlist for the Spanish-American War. A bullet took him in the throat as he was going up San Juan Hill. In the reorganization of the cattle country after the break-up of the big ranches Calhoun Terry took an important part. He was recognized as a strong man, and as the years passed his influence became more than local. There came a time when he had to go to Washington to represent repre-sent his people. He was never quite happy there, for he was no politician, politi-cian, and he was glad when his term of office expired. So was Ellen. El-len. It seemed to her that a city was no place to bring up a large family of boys and girls, and she gave a deep sigh of relief when they were all home again in the West she loved. Her father was an old man by that time, and she knew jt made him happier to be near them In private, sometimes, her husband hus-band tells Ellen that she is still lovelier than the slim, dark-eyed daughters who trouble the hearts of the young men of the neighborhood. She smiles wisely, and is content. For she knows that both Calhoun and she have had a happy life in spite of the occasional storms that have beat up to trouble them. THE END CHAPTER XXXVIII Ellen found it impossible to sleep. After tossing in bed for two or three hours she got up, dressed, and went down into the hotel lobby. Roan Alford Al-ford passed through it, on his way from the bar to the - street. The gray-haired little man's beady eyes fastened on the girl. "What you doing up this time of night, Miss Ellen?" he asked. "You don't want to be losing yore beauty sleep, though gosh, I don' reckon you got any need to worry about that." "I can't rest, Mr. Alford. I'm worried wor-ried about father. I want to go back to the ranch, where I'll be nearer him if anything happens. "There ain't a thing going to happen hap-pen to Lane," he promised. "Neither "Nei-ther side is unfriendly to him." "Anyhow, I want to go back. Do you know anybody leaving for there tonight?" "I am. Right away. But you don't want to go traipsing off in the middle of the night. Wait till morning morn-ing and go up then, if you got to go." "I want to go now. If you'll let me ride with you, I can get a horse." Ellen gave him her most wheedling smile. "Sure you can ride with me. Only I wouldn't want you to go if yore father would have objections." They rode through the night, sometimes in darkness and again under the shine of a moon that had escaped from behind the scudding clouds. It was a long ride, and they reached Black Butte in the small hours just before the faint light of early morning had begun to sift into the sky. ' As they rode up through the darkness dark-ness to the ranch house Roan caught at the rein of Ellen's horse and pulled it to a halt. "Wait a minute. There's someone some-one there on the porch." Already Ellen's gaze had picked up two horses at the side of the building, vague and shadowy in the gloom. The object on the porch stirred. It was a man. Or was it two men? "Who is it?" Alford called. "Calhoun Terry," the answer came. A pulse began to beat in the girl's throat. "Is that father with you?" she asked. Terry rose from where he had been kneeling. "No. Your father i nil ripht. Miss Carev. This a wounded man. He slipped out of the Wagonwheel Gap Ranch with a message, and they wounded him as he was trying to get through the lines." "The Wagonwheel Gap," she repeated. re-peated. "Yes. Ellison's men are surrounded surround-ed there. They want a telegram sent to the Governor." "Has there been a battle?" "Not yet. The settlers are besieging be-sieging the invaders, who are pretty well torted up. I'm afraid there will be a heavy loss ot life if the troops don't stop it." "Where is father?" "He is with Bill Herriott's men. We offered to mediate, but they wouldn't let us." Ellen looked down at the man on the floor. "Is he badly hurt?" she asked. "Shot in the leg. Could you take him in here, until I can arrange to have him moved?" "Of course. Mr. Alford will help you carry him upstairs. I will get a light." "I hate to trouble you. ma'am," Yancey said. "Don't worry about that," she told him. The men carried him upstairs and put him to bed. They dressed the wound as best they could, after which Ellen Joined Calhoun on the porch. "I'll rope one of your horses, if you don't mind," he said to her. "I have to get this message off to the Governor." She took instant alarm. "You're not going back to Round Top?" "No. I'll send the telegram from Jim Creek. It would probably be held up if I tried to get it off from Rour.d Top." |