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Show ' $o HAR-0LD CHANNING WIR ready for bed. He had turned into the dark toward his unrolled blankets blan-kets when something sailed past htm and fell with a soft thud. He stooped and pushed the un-burned un-burned ends of Cottonwood together and crouched there, waiting. It was not until the little flame leaped up, shedding a wide circle of light, that a figure stepped from the shadows. Even then he didn't move. He sat wholly still, watching Willy Nickle. feeling as he always did that this was a ghost shape from out of a far-off far-off past. He came forward silently on deerskin deer-skin moccasins with high tops laced halfway to his knees, a small, thin, fragile-looking man, ageless. Long chestnut hair brushed hjs shoulders, but his cheeks and chin were shaved clean. His face was very dark, yet oddly smooth and as gentle as a child's except for the sharp, quick brightness of its small gray eyes. "How are you, Willy?" Lew said and got no answer. His only greeting greet-ing was a nod as the old man came from the shadows with an ancient needle gun cuddled like a baby across his thin chest. Always it was not until three deep puffs of kinnikinnick hit old Willy's brain with their terrific force that talk seemed jolted out of him. Even then it was veiled talk of his own strange kind. You never learned anything from Willy Nickle fcp bluntly blunt-ly asking questions. He took his three puffs and lifted his head and looked sharply all around him. "Well!" he said suddenly. "It has been some. I do say!" His squinted gray eyes came back. Lew nodded. "A year now come calf time," he said. "A year in- CHAPTER I Even those names that meant so much have vanished now, so that you will look in vain for Ox Bow or Dripping Spring or the valley ol the Little Comanche on any recent map. And it is hard to believe that this land, where flashing beacons now guide the roaring course of planes by night, and by day motorcars dart effortlessly across its endless miles, was then but a wild and rolling prairie of buffalo grass, and a journey jour-ney of any length had no certain ending, and all of a restless nation seemed to be following the sun in a mad race set off by the cry, "Go West, young man, go West!" not sixty years ago. This was a time of new and unbelievable un-believable happenings. Pullman's Golden Palace cars were running clear to the Pacific, with their red velvet curtained windows, their gas lamps that made the coaches as brilliant as a ladies' drawing room and their sleeping compartments in which many women still refused to undress when going to bed at night. Three thousand Negroes were marching afoot from Alabama, with their women and children and half-starved half-starved dogs, to claim the forty acres of land and the span of mules which the state of Kansas promised. Boxcar emigrant trains rolled out of the East one upon another, spewing spew-ing settlers along the way, and the high-topped Pittsburg wagons lumbered lum-bered West behind their ox teams, to meet not a barren prairie but the red swarms of Texas longhorns coming up from the South. For this was a time when the man in the saddle was king of the plains and prairie; all others were hoe-men, hoe-men, beneath him, to be swept aside by the relentless. march of his trail herds. Ten million Texas longhorns that had run wild since the Rebellion Rebel-lion were finding a market in the shipping towns of the new railroads; a thousand cattle ranches were being be-ing made in the new lands of Montana Mon-tana and Wyoming, where cattle had never been before. Up that trail, twelve hundred miles long, unchecked un-checked by storm or drouth, by roving rov-ing bands of Comanches or the barbed wire of the hoe-men, the great flood poured northward, a mil-" mil-" lion head in a single year. This was a time of a young man's opportunity. Whatever a man was going to be depended only upon himself. him-self. In the upper valley of the Little Comanche that night only one camp-fire camp-fire pierced the blackness, a small one, glowing faintly where high rim-rock rim-rock guarded a narrow entrance down from the vast empty reaches of the Staked Plain. Lew Burnet was cooking supper over a cautious blaze. He had laid his cottonwood twigs together at the ends, Indian fashion, spreading them outward like the spokes of a wheel. That way they burned with no smoke and a small flame, but made an intense point of heat beneath be-neath his pot of coffee. The coffee boiled and he pushed the pot back. A comb of antelope ribs, already braised, stood propped against a rock. A pile of stick bread lay at his knee. He tore the antelope ribs apart and fell to eating with the hunger of a man who'd had nothing since dawn. His was a young face, with sober strength in its long lines, but strangely marked from the trampling tram-pling hoofs of an outlaw horse years ago. There was left now only a curved crease from his right cheekbone cheek-bone to his chin and a white crescent cres-cent close to the hairline of his forehead. fore-head. Yet those first years when the wounds were raw and ugly had left another mark. He had never forgotten how the girls turned from him, shocked, and he had understood. under-stood. A sensitive nature protects itself in deeply hidden ways, and this early ear-ly accident had made Lew Burnet, more than he realized, a restless and lonely man. His work had all been man's work, hard and dangerous danger-ous and single-handed; at twenty-five twenty-five he had bossed three great herds of longhorns up the trail from Texas to Dodge and Ogallala. Even the new ranch he had established in Wyoming Wy-oming this past winter had risen in his vision as a place only for him-lelf. him-lelf. There had been too little information informa-tion in Tom Arnold's letter. He wanted more, even more, perhaps, than Arnold could give. A month ago he had mailed a letter of his Dwn south from Wyoming, and late this afternoon, before coming down off the rimrock, he had stopped long Enough to kindle a pillar of white imoke into the still air. He had whipped his rawhide coat across it Iwice, breaking it. If old Willy Nickle had received the letter and lad stayed anywhere within twenty niles of the Little Comanche he would see that signal and know this meeting place. But the half-hour passed and the light's hushed silence remained un-roken. un-roken. By the simple process of pulling off his coat and boots he was beaver this old coon never did cotton cot-ton to, Clay Manning. And that Steve, young 'un of Tom Arnold's, was it him night ridin' up Crazy Woman Creek not two hours after the bank was robbed? Him and four strangers here? Seems like I was camped on Crazy Woman then." Lew stared at him. "The bank in Ox Bow?" Willy nodded. "But was a man to hunt some trouble now he'd see why so many Cross T horses go loose-herded loose-herded up Crazy Woman. That would be at nighttime, early." "Tonight?" "No, already made it. Was some gunshot late this afternoon which must have hurried 'em. If it was this nigger tomorrow going down the valley he'd keep to the east side. That's talk, though. Maybe some sort wouldn't listen." "Maybe he wouldn't," Lew agreed and smiled. "Maybe he'd like to know." "He'll find tracks then," Willy offered. of-fered. "They're plain enough. But was it me I'd have old Silverbell here ready." He stroked the slender barrel of his needle gun. Through a little silent time, while Willy Nickle's head drooped and he seemed to doze. Lew sorted out the old man's information. He felt a grimly troubled meaning mean-ing in that none of these things had been in Tom Arnold's letter. The bank in Ox Bow belonged to Arnold; its robbery, he knew, could be pretty pret-ty bad. What puzzled him, wholly unexplainable, was this business of loose horses being run up Crazy Woman to the Staked Plain. . H it was rustling, Arnold or his foreman, fore-man, Clay Manning, should be more on watch than that. The trail drive would need every saddle animal the Cross T had. And Steve . . . "Willy," he asked, "you're sure it was Steve riding that night of the robbery?" Old Willy opened one eye. "Certain," "Cer-tain," he said and closed it. There was no answer to that. Things happen in a year. Even twelve months ago, Lew remembered, remem-bered, Steve's young rebellion had turned into violent ways. He was coming back, perhaps, just in time. For he and Steve had grown up together in a close companionship, com-panionship, more confiding than between be-tween father and son. Everything Tom Arnold had built here in Texas was planned around his boy. Still there was that antagonism between them, a reckless, high-strung nature fighting the strict, unsparing one of the man. Inevitably Steve brought up his sister Joy. Lew bent forward and knocked his pipe out against his boot toe. Behind all his thinking tonight was one question. He asked it now. "Willy, when did Tom's girl marry mar-ry Clay Manning?" Willy's head lifted. His gray eyes, squinted brightly. "Never did. There's been none of that on the Cross T. Why not, this child couldn't say. But there's somebody could make a better man for her. Well, he could!" "No," Lew said. "It's the sleek bucks they run to, Willy. You know that." In a moment when the old man stood up to go he knew there was no use offering a bed here. Willy always slept alone. It might be ten miles from Dripping Spring or only off a hundred yards; he wouldn't know. Standing with the ancient needle gun cuddled again across his chest, Willy took that quick glance all around him into the shadows. He stepped back. "Raise your smoke," he said, "if you've a mind." That was his promise and Lew understood. under-stood. He'd not stray far from the Little Comanche for a while. Lew broke camp in the dark next morning, saddled while his coffee boiled, and in the cold sharp gray of daylight he was traveling south. This was the end of a month-long trail. Even the tall black beneath him stepped out with a home-coming knowledge, and the red mule with its white tarpaulin pack trotted behind, needing no leash. The Little Comanche had changed even more, he saw, in his absence of a year. Once a man could ride down this valley through a waving sea of bluestem grass knee-deep on a horse. But Tom Arnold, like every ev-ery cattleman in Texas now, had stocked his range beyond its limit in this mad race to supply the northern demand. The bluestem had vanished, van-ished, never to grow again. There was left only the short curly buffalo grass nature's last stand even that showing great dusty patches. The Little Comanche could be wholly worthless in another five years. At least, he thought, he had learned that lesson, and his own land in Wyoming came into the drifting drift-ing gaze of his eyes. That was virgin vir-gin now as this once had been, a sweet-grass country, ten thousand acres he had got control of by plastering plas-tering his homestead entries over every water hole and spring. The opportunity was there for a big ranch, as big as Arnold's Cross T. (TO BE CONTINUED) .MiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiMiiimiiiii- Lew stared at him. "The bank in Ox Bow?" Wyoming and they do say things have happened on the Little Comanche Co-manche since I've been gone." "o I guess," said Willy. "This nigger wouldn't know." He knew all right. There were no longer beaver to trap in the great South Park of Colorado, nor shaggy herds of buffalo to follow north to the headwaters of the Yellowstone, and the Mexican girls of Taos and Santa Fe could not lure old Willy any more. Lew waited, smoking and feeling the kinnikinnick already start to spin his head. It often seemed a strange thing that he had been picked out for one of Willy Nickle's few friends. But it was so, a queer, loyal, unspoken friendship, which he knew he was going to need now more than ever. "Wyoming," Willy mused across the fire. "No place for a man now. but didn't me and Bill Evans find beaver a heap there that winter? I can tell you! A pretty smart lot of boys was camped on the Sweetwater and the way whisky flowed that time was some." "Still a good place, Wyoming," Lew said and then brought Willy's wandering mind back to the Little Comanche. "They do tell me that Tom Arnold "is moving his Cross T up there. Taking four thousand longhorns long-horns up the trail this month, all the way to the north. And I've a letter to trail boss for him. That's the proposition. But there's Clay Manning Man-ning Tom's foreman now, who's been north once or twice himself and could lead this herd maybe. Then what am I here for? I don t know. Things happen in a country when a man's been gone a year." "Well they do!" said Willy. He smoked' thoughtfully for a moment, his thin cheeks making deep hollows hol-lows Then he said, "That's one |