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Show ! to dff BEEF : Vt HAR-0LD BANNING : - ... . .. w.n.u. release 'VrtZeJfi&ffik joined in. Clay's drunk ani they've got him south ol the dead line now. Lew I don't know." Joe- Wheat's usually sour face showed a deep concern. "Looks like they're crowding crowd-ing Clay into something. They've got him cornered and Clay's still a Cross T man. What do you think'" He guessed old Joe was right Clay was a Cross T man till he proved something else. He hadn't done that yet. "We'll ride," he said. "Better not waste any time." In camp he told the men who had started to wash up for supper, "Don't stop to eat." Dripping heads came up as they stared at him. He didn't explain. He wanted the best of this crew around him in town; some would have to stay here on guard. Owl-Head Owl-Head had already been in and showed it. There wasn't much of a meal cooking on the pit tonight. For the others to be left he picked out Moonlight Bailey, ' young Jim Hope and Steve. Getting Moonlight off alone, he said, "If Steve tries to skin out rope him. I don't want him in town at all." He turned across to Joy's wagon, found the canvas closed tight and called inside, "We're going off for a little while. I'm leaving Steve here with you." Her voice came out to him with an even quietness. "I'm riding into town when you do. Will you saddle a horse for me?" "Later, maybe," he said. "Not now." ' The flaps parted. She held them together around her head. She was dressing. Her hair was brushed back smoothly and knotted at the nape of her neck. "I'll go to a ho- I! LEW BURNET la trail boss of the Crosl T aer wblch Is being driven from ! lews to the Indian agent at OgaUala. w year is 1875. TOM ARNOLD, owner, ba, been killed in a stampede. Bis will j name! Lew boss and owner until the j cattle are sold, when STEVE and JOY g are to receive their shares. After over-, over-, coming difficulties and hardships, they enter Indian territory and are attacked by a raiding party of Cheyennes. Their leader, Crazy Bear, kidnaps Joy, but Lew and WILLY NICKLE rescue her. Lew tbea forces the drive onward at a (aster pace. CLAY MANNING, Joy's fiance, Is strangely changed. He has lost his self-assurance, and appears moody and surly. : CHAPTER XVI On the far side of the quieted cattle, cat-tle, Lew saw Clay ride out with Joe Wheat and Neal Good on their first guard and passed him in the dark still later at the change of watches when he began his own second guard from eleven until two; so that his first sense, when Owl-Head Jackson's Jack-son's rough hand wakened him in the morning, was one of refusing what he heard, j Bent above him in the half-light, t the cook was saying, "Lew! Hey there. Something's missin'. We're & short a man." He sat up in his blankets. Clay, his bedroll and his war bag were gone. ' He still refused it. Drugged with a heavy sleep, he said irritably, "All right, all right. I see. Never mind." Eut afterward, dressed, he walked guard horses and found that Clay I had taken the one he had ridden last Following fresh tracks on the dewy grass, he traced them to the creek and across it and saw they I were aimed for town. ' All the camp was aroused and knew of it by the time he got back. " , Owl-Head's busy tongue was letting them know. He saw Joy crouched at the parted wagon flaps, her long ' ; dark hair sleep-tossed, a quilted 1 i blanket around her. She called to I him, and going over, he spoke first, "It's all right now. Nothing's happened." hap-pened." j "But where has he gone?" Her voice was quick. Fear haunted the loft sleepiness of her ,eyes. "Into town," he said. "I don't know why or anything about it It's his own business." Her hand came out to him and gripped his arm hard. "Lew, you can't let him. You've got to get him I back. Send someone in," she . j begged. "You must." He spoke gently. "Joy, . when a I man's got something on his mind he has to work it out himself. Clay must know what he's doing. I'm going to leave him alone." "And If anything happens " She stared at him. "And I knew you might have helped " "I'll take the blame," he said. "I know." Here was what he had understood that night in the Wichita hills. Above everything else there i would be this loyalty to Clay. He taw her eyes go beyond him. He turned his head. Steve was coming toward them, walking fast, two high spots of color staining his flat cheeks. Quick and blunt, he said, "Lew, I'm going in 1 to town," and wheeled on to saddle i up. He called out, "Wait a minute,, kid." following. "There's plenty of time. We're all going in tonight." He sharpened his stare into the nervous eyes. "You knew about this?" "Not till just now, no." , "Then you can wait." He started o" and turned back. He felt no gentleness with Steve. "Don't you try to skin out either. I'U be on watch for that." . With the arrowhead shaped and Pazing forward he rode back to Joe "heat in the next swing position. 1 'Joe," he said, "I want you to work this out for me. You go in ; and see what Clay's up to. Get a on the Open A and its men Jou know the joints in there better ttan any of us." "Guess I do." The old man Pinned and rubbed his corded neck. "We'll cross the river," Lew finished, fin-ished, "and go into camp about five ' i m"es west of town. Get your news ' ai come back there. That wiU be "me time late this afternoon." "he could have his own way ' 2,ed Pass Dodge without a stop. ; "me was crowding him, a threat a'ways over his head. They stiU : "ad six weeks until September first, J e deUvery date in OgaUala, but also four hundred long miles. He'd ! e ' Pass Dodge secretly and keep - Yet even if Clay had not spoiled j"8' he knew it couldn't be done, "trail crew would stand for it. Se was a mecca, a safety valve, ihe afternoon was almost spent, en he swung the point off again bring the herd into a milling stop n an open flat and saw the cook's tovmn a"d Joe Wheat arriving from nal JVheat came on waving a sig-alone sig-alone rde Ut t0 meet 11)6 ma" lind him, Joe?" He's there." Wheat nodded, een there all day. But I don't low "' SP'ann's there and a fel- balled Stoddard, said to be the ft A boss. First it was only them kin and Clay was Pitting up some trarl, taIk- They kePl north of 4116 that drinkin8- Dodge still has 1 oead line. They don't carry ' "s that part. But along this """on Ave more Open A riders I his question while they entered the high, square lobby and found she could get a ground-floor room. But he took her arm as a Negro porter picked up her bag and started start-ed off. "What are you going to do?" She turned to face him. Her lips were pale. "Nothing. Find Clay. Tell him I'm here." He looked at her, filled with a wretched pity for that belief, that all he had to do was tell Clay she was here. "All right," he said. "I'll let him know." Outside and mounted, there was one other thing he wanted to do first. He turned into a cross street and rode two blocks to Railroad Avenue, Ave-nue, turned down that toward the river and reached a section of warehouses, ware-houses, the depot, a huge barn with corrals sprawled behind it Rachal Brothers' livery. He said once more, "Wait here," and entered the livery office. Pete Rachal was inside, sunk deep in a brindle cowhide chair, a man grown fat and wealthy now, and yet an outlaw once whose rustled herds had pioneered the trail to Dodge. He was a Texan who could never go back. But any Texas cowboy, cleaned of his money, needn't go hungry here nor sell his horse and saddle. Pete Rachal was their hock shop and bank. He lifted a stubby hand with its thumb missing and let it fall. "Burnet, "Bur-net, how are you? Heard your Cross T was getting in." "How'd you hear that?" "Horseback information. Someone dropped it off." "Anything else?" "Some trouble I heard with the Indian In-dian Supply Company's Open A. Bad?" "Bad enough," he said. '-'That's why I've come to you. How many of the 'boys have you got in soak here?" "Say!" Rachal put out his hand and moved an oil lamp on a table until it lighted a storeroom behind it "Take a look." Lew crossed to the doorway. Forty or fifty saddles were hung in there on pegs along the wall. He turned back, grinning a little. "They'll never nev-er learn, I guess. Well, you know the men. You round up ten of the best and have them back here inside of an hour. I'U pay their bills and give them jobs." Pete Rachal's blue eyes studied him over their heavy pouches. "Cow work?" "I've got enough men," he said, "to handle the cows. We're headed through to OgaUala. I don't figure to be stopped." "That bad, is it?" "That bad." "You come back," Rachal said. "I know the right ones for that." "In an hour," he promised and went out in time to hear Charley Storms' rising complaint, "What's he holding us back for?" And then, "Hey, Lew, how about some fun?" "Charley," he said, "too bad, but you'll have to wait." Only Joe Wheat knew fully what they had come in for. He got into his saddle. "We're looking for Clay. Joe, where was it you saw him last?" "They'd worked the Lady Gay and Mrs. Gore's," Wheat said, "and were drinking at Dutch Jake's when I left." "Likely moved on from there by this time. We'll comb the plaza first." He led out between the livery and the depot, entering at once into the open plaza two blocks wide and four long. Here in this dusty compound all the visible life of Dodge was centered, cen-tered, hemmed in by the high-fronted buildings with their plank walks and wooden awnings running from end to end. He knew the horse Clay had ridden rid-den and watched for it among the three hundred or more saddle animals ani-mals lined solidly along the gnawed hitching rails. In the brighter fans of light from the windows of Del-monico's Del-monico's Restaurant, a dozen barbershops, bar-bershops, The Alamo and The Al-hambra Al-hambra saloons he watched the brown faces of men. They jammed the plank walk shoulder to shoulder in their moving stream. Clay's big shape was not in this crowd, and past the Long Branch Corner, boasting the longest bar in the world and fifty gambling tables, ta-bles, he said, "We might as well go across." But the hitching rails were mostly vacant, and Joe Wheat said. "I guess he's gone, Lew. This is where I saw his horse." He nodded. "I'll take a look." Men drifted through these places, tried others and came back again. He got down from his saddle and walked along, peering ovar the bat-wing bat-wing doors. Dutch Jake's place was empty now. In those farther on only a few drunks were propped against the bars. He had almost reached the corner, with open ground and the river crossing at right angles beyond, when he passed a man standing as motionless as a post against an unlighted wall of the saloon front; passed him and halted and turned back to look at him again. Instantly the dark figure sprang out and ran the width of the street to a saddled horse. He hadn't seen the man's face, but it was plainly someone stationed on lookout duty. (TO BE CONTINUED) "Heard your Cross T was getting in." tel," she said, "and not be any trouble. But I'm going." He knew that quietness In her voice; there was a will behind it. And he understood. Clay was in trouble, and all, of a woman's urge, and perhaps her intuition, was driving driv-ing her to the man. He gave in to that knowledge, saddled a horse and brought it back for her to ride. As he moved the horse for her to mount she handed him a carpetbag heavy with her things. He looked at it, shaping a question ques-tion which then he did not ask. He lifted her up to ride sidesaddle. She hooked her right knee over the horn. Half an hour's loping travel brought the gray sod houses at the outskirts of the town.. Even before that the voice of Podge had been around them in a mingling of sounds that rose and fell and sometimes died away to a breathless hush. Most of the way there had been little talk. Joe Wheat, Quarternight and Ash Brownstone made their older old-er men's group, riding together Charley and Neal Good had paired off He rode next to Joy's stirrup himself, at no time trying to break the silence she had seemed to want. Beyond the soddies, with clusters of board houses beginning to outline irregular streets, he aimed toward a row of lights where Second Avenue, Ave-nue, running north from the river, solit the town in the middle. He leaned over to say, "I'll take you to the Wright House. That s the best." She nodded. They rode on into louder waves of sound. en they had entered Second Avenue, coming at once out of darkness dark-ness into the glow of square oil lamps on posts at the four corners of each intersection. Down at the avenue's farther end he could see toe plaza filled with dust and the moving swarms of horses and m. But tie Wright House was two blocks back from that jammed center cen-ter He turned in front of it and stopped against the long hitching S'.r |