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Show f 5" it IjU HAR.OLD CHAN N I N G Wl R Ivfe). . S ' W.N.U. RELEASE Wyoming, that STEVE ARNOLD may be involved in the robbery, and that JOV ARNOLD Is not yet married to CLAY MANNING, Cross T foreman. Later, Lew encounters four men. They offer him the Job as trail boss. When he re- "Everything! What it's like and 1 what you do there." "Well, I lived in a dugout," he said, "in the bank of a creek and spent most of my time fighting rats." "No" she laughed "I don't mean that. Aren't there some mountains?" moun-tains?" "Oh, sure; mountains, high ones. Some of them with snow all the year. In summer the streams don't go dry there. I guess it's sort of a pretty place," he admitted. "I liked the pines." "Then it's beautiful. I'm going to love it. I know I will!" That stopped him. He put down his fork. "Joy, what do you mean?" Her cheeks were flushed; the suppressed sup-pressed excitement had turned her breathless. "I wanted to be the first to tell you. I asked Dad to let me. You don't know, do you?" "No," he said, "I don't know anything." any-thing." It burst from her then wildly. "I'm going north! We're all going. We're moving up there for good." "You don't mean with the herd." -"Yes!" He could only stare at her. There had been nothing of this in Tom's letter either; no more than that he was sending his longhorns on a drive north. Yet it wasn't his though of the long trail up which few women had ever gone that held him silent, but the three of them, Clay and Joy and himself, riding that trail together. His silence brought a little scowl across her dark eyes. "What's the matter?" "Joy," he asked, "when are you and Clay getting married?" Her lips parted and closed; the high color drained from her cheeks. fuses, they capture him and keep him prisoner at their camp. During the night Lew recognizes Clay Manning's voice, shouting: "I'm through." Willy Nickle releases Lew, and he arrives at the ranch just as the Cross T herd is stampeding. a month's riding to get one of Owl-Head's Owl-Head's meals!" Joy released his arm and sat down i on a halved log with short legs at her father's knee. He ranged himself him-self beside the fireplace, its blaze warming him and a sense of comfort com-fort sweeping over him powerfully. This was home. Here in this room was the peace of family life for more than forty years. With his pipe going he looked down and said, "Well, Tom, here I am. There's one thing I'd like to know first. Joy says you're moving north. I thought it was only a trail herd." Arnold nodded. "She's right. We're leaving here for good." His head lifted sharply in an old challenging chal-lenging fling of his gray hair. He said, "You needn't look so confounded, Lew! A man has moved before. And I don't own the Cross T any longer. The cattle are mine, yes, but not this." He waved into the room. "Nor the land." "Sold out?" "No." Arnold turned his head a little. "Joy, I'd like to talk with Lew alone." "Dad!" She sprang up and threw her arm across his shoulders. She shook him. "You can't go on keeping keep-ing things back from me! What's the use? I'm not a little girl any more!" "Well, all right," he said to her. "You know most of what's happened. hap-pened. You might as well hear the rest." She sat down again on the halved log with short legs and watched his face. "We had a bank robbery a month ago. Lew," he said. "At a bad time. Trail buyers had been here making up their herds for the north. The money they paid to a dozen Ox Bow cattlemen was on deposit in my vaults." It was characteristic of Lew Burnet Bur-net not to tell that he already knew this. He waited. Arnold's eyes centered themselves into the smoldering juniper logs. He said quietly, "I took the blame. It's my bank and these cattlemen are my friends'. They've got only small outfits, and if they lose their money now it'll break them. I know by law I don't have to make it up. But I'm going to. I've already turned the ranch in for assets, appointed a new president, and I'm out." "You pay a big price for your peace of mind, Tom." "It's all a man's got worth keeping," keep-ing," Arnold said. He sat back in his chair. "I'm making a new start in the north. That's the only reason, rea-son, as far as anyone should know, why I'm leaving the Little Co- I LEW BURNET, riding back to southern Texas In 1875 meets WILLY NICKLE, an old trapper. Willy tells Lew the news: that the bank at Ox Bow has (been robbed, that TOM ARNOLD, owner of the Cross T, plans to move to CHAPTER ni The Longhorns were still in a closely packed formation but be-, be-, ginning to string out, wedge-shaped, with a small bunch of leaders at the point. Coming abreast of these, he threw his horse against their hard-ribbed bodies, firing his gun close to the long, gaunt faces. They were running like frightened jack rabbits- But they edged away from his blazing gun. That broke their galloping stride for a moment. Slowly the black wedge began to curve, until in time the point was bent in and joining to the base. The cattle were still running, but in an endless merry-go-round now, getting nowhere. Their run slackened. Under Un-der the pressure of men closing in they made at last a solid, milling pool. He turned his horse oft" to one side where a little group of riders had halted. . In the dust and dark he had recognized rec-ognized no one and had not been recognized himself. Then their talk began to reach him. Someone said, "We're lucky, that's all. They didn't get a good start." "Wasn't luck either," another put in. "Who was it got up to the point so fast?" That was Tom Arnold's rough low voice. They were aware of his horse then coming out of the dark, and their talk broke off. He rode in, grinning. grin-ning. "Hello, Tom," he said. "Lew?" Arnold's low voice lifted. "Boys, it's Lew Burnet!" The group moved and they were suddenly around him, their horses crowding his legs, and he was shaking shak-ing hands and grinning in the warmth of friendly faces Tom Arnold Ar-nold and Joe Wheat and old "Rebel John" Quarternight, who had taught him all he knew about cattle. He was aware, afterward, of one rider who had remained apart from these others, and he called out, "Hello, Clay." Clay Manning brought his horse around. "How are you. Lew?" His big shape leaned across the saddle horn, with all expression on a wide mouth closely guarded. He was a high, square-built man, young and blond and strikingly good-looking; one who could be forgiven, Lew often of-ten thought, for watching his shadow on the ground. But always there seemed to be some impatience driving driv-ing him. It could throw him at times into reckless good humor or plunge him again into violently irritable ir-ritable moods. There had been some reason for his wait off there in the dark, but now, casually enough, he said, "Guess you got here just in time. How'd you come?" "Down the valley," Lew said and added, "from Dripping Spring today." to-day." At that he saw the brief, direct di-rect stare Clay gave him; yet in the faint light he could read nothing noth-ing more. One by one at spaced intervals the guard riders had come past, and as their dim figures loomed out of the dark Tom Arnold had kept close watch. He swung back now, asking ask-ing suddenly, "Clay, where's Steve? You were together." "I'll look," Clay said and started off. Near him Joe Wheat straightened up his thin slat frame, offering, "Better take someone. I'll go with you." But Clay refused with a quick impatience. "Stay with the guard. Nothing's happened. Tom, you going go-ing back to the house? We'll get no more trouble now. There's too many of us. Someone ought to be with Joy." "I'm going," Arnold said. "Send Steve in when you find him. Lew, come on with me." They loped into the black valley mouth side by side, but aware of Tom Arnold's strict silence he held down the questions that crowded his mind. With the day's dust scrubbed from his face and his long hair watered back slick he went out into the hall and turned to the Cross T's family dining room. Owl-Head Jackson, the cook, came into the dining room from the kitchen carrying a heaped platter of food. "Lew!" He grinned. "You broomtailed maverick, it's good to see that ugly face of yours again!" From the front room Joy called, "Pour a cup of coffee for me, Owl-Head," Owl-Head," and came on back. Lew pulled out a chair for her, and afterward, when he had taken his own seat across the round table, ta-ble, she sat there smiling at him, yet didn't srieak. They could only look at each other, oth-er, as if now, suddenly, they could not find their old familiar words of talk. She had changed. He had known her as a leggy, half-wild kid with a boyish frankness and a way of deviling the life out of him one moment and mothering him the next She was a woman now, with the frankness gone and a woman's knowledge in her faint smile and a woman's fullness shaping her softly in this year. Her smile brightened. "Eat your supper. Lew!" That made him grin; for that came out of their old times together, Joy mothering him again. "You must be starved," she said. "Now that I think of it," he admitted, ad-mitted, "I am." She let him eat for a little while and then laid her arms on the table and leaned forward under the lamp's ruddy glow. A quick and strange excitement had come into her eyes. "Tell me about Wyoming!" "That's a lot of country," he said. "Wl qt do you want to know?" manche." "But there's another?" The gray head nodded. "Steve. A man was killed in town the night of the robbery, Rayburn. our sheriff. sher-iff. Nobody knows who pulled the bank job or killed Rayburn, but some talk about Steve has reached my ears. I don't believe it. If I did I'd hang his hide on a fence! I do know he was off somewhere all that night. He came back late the next day, drunk." On her low seat Joy had made no sound, but something brought Lew's gaze down to her and he saw the tight lines of fear and horror in her face. She looked only at her father, and then Tom Arnold's voice dropped all the way to an old man's deep , bitterness. "I've done all I can to help that boy. I still won't admit his wildness has taken him as far as this talk says. But it brings home to me that he's gone out of my hands. There's only one more thing I can do, get him out of this country, away from the friends he's made here. The trail north is one job he can't shift out of. It'll make a man of him or break him, I'm pretty sure." "It will," Lew agreed. "I've seen it work both ways." "And then in Wyoming," Arnold said, "it's-Steve that can make a new start, I hope. Not me. I'm too old now." "Dad, you aren't," Joy murmured. mur-mured. "What a thing to say!" Using a sliver of wood Lew explored ex-plored the hearthstone crack for a cricket, didn't find him and looked up to say, "There wasn't much in your letter, Tom. And I know less since I got here. Like that stampede tonight. I've been wondering what was behind it." "My beef contract," Arnold said. "You know what's happened to the price of longhorns up north?" "I do. Six hundred thousand head came up the trail last year. There'll be a million on the march this spring. That's too many. Unless trail troubles thin it out. a whole lot a man won't get more than ten dollars at the end. What does your contract call for?" "Three thousand head at thirty. I deliver the Indian beef at Ogallala on the first of September. It's my own stuff I'm taking on to Wyoming." Wyom-ing." "Ninety thousand dollars," Lew figured. "That's a jaeic pot for you! You're lucky, Tom." But Arnold shook his head. "I would be if my contract was direct with the government. It isn't. The Indian Supply Company got a' blanket blan-ket award for the northern reservations reserva-tions this year, sn I had to tal-e a subcontract delivering to them. You can see the joker in that. They handle all the money and pay me only when and if I reach Ogallala on September Hist. "They signed with me five months ago. Now they want to back out A couple of their men came do-vn here ofTerlr.g flve thousand collars to cancel-ny deal.- (TO EE CONTINUED) ' "I'm just afraid, 1 guess." When she spoke her voice was very quiet. "I don't know, Lew. Why?" She paused and looked away from him and then didn't wait for his answer. an-swer. "He's been wanting it before we started. But I can't, and perhaps per-haps I'm not being fair. I'm just afraid, I guess." , "Afraid of what?" She brought her eyes back to his face, and he could feel them trace the crescent mark on his forehead and the curved scar along his cheek, lingering there. ' "I don't know," she said. "We've waited too long. ' Too many things have happened now. Whether I'm married or not doesn't seem so important im-portant any more." "I'm sorry, Joy." He reached across the table and took her two folded hands in his big fist, pressed them and let them go. In front of the big rock fireplace, Tom Arnold had done more than wait. He could hear the familiar sound of Lew Burnet's talk in the dining room, a slow and easy sound, and something restful and grateful had come over him with this knowledge knowl-edge that Lew Burnet was back. Thinking of Steve, Tom Arnold sat wholly still, held by a dead, heavy feeling compounded . of loneliness and a father's defeat It was his own fault, he guessed. For he knew himself for what he was strict and unsparing, with a single-minded belief be-lief that a man was born into this rich new land to make the best use of his time. That was the code he had tried to force upon a youngster who had rebelled against it from the first. But that he would go on trying, he knew also; he had lived too long in his own way successfully success-fully to change it now. The talk in the dining room ended. end-ed. He heard the chairs scrape back and thought of another ambition ambi-tion he'd had once and watched die. Then the two figures were pacing toward him, Joy with her hand in Lew Burnet's arm, looking small and so much alive beside his straight high shape. Her cheeks were flushed. And he understood what it was in the man that could make him watch her in an amused but intently steady way, and the old hope he'd had once rose in him again. He smiled. "You get filled up boy?" "I did." Lew grinned. "It's worth |