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Show WS.-?''' J HAR-OLD CHANNING WIR.E , $J$ and the way his new men had jumped instantly into the fight. Stoddard Stod-dard and the Open A hadn't expected expect-ed that. He hadn't himself. They were gone now with Joe Wheat and the others back to guard the Cross T camp. He was alone here, waiting for the doctor's verdict ver-dict before he let Joy know. Clay was face down, naked, on a cot directly in front of him, still drunk enough so the doctor had given giv-en no anesthetic before going to work. Ed Splann, covered with a blanket, was on the next cot, while beyond him another Open A hand lay thin and flat and wholly still, his face the color of gray ash. As far as he knew this was all that had come out of the battle. There may have been some wounded. wound-ed. He had tied a handkerchief around a gash on his own right arm. The doctor probed a hole and brought out something and ran in a swab like cleaning the barrel of a gun. He wiped the spot and tossed a blanket over Clay. "That's all." He went to the sink to wash his hands. Lew followed. "What's the answer, an-swer, Doc?" "You Texans are tough. He'll pull through, but he shouldn't be moved." "How long?" "Say a month." "All right." He started for the door. "I'll arrange to leave him here." Riding back across the plaza and up the two blocks of Second Avenue, he felt an unreasonable ' irritation at the way things had turned out But then all that was gone when LEW BURNET ii trail boss of the Cross T herd, which Is being driven from Texas to the Indian agent at OgaUala. The year Is 1875. TOM ARNOLD, owner, has been killed In a stampede. His will names Lew boss and owner until the cattle are sold, when STEVE and JOY are to receive their shares. After many difficulties and hardships Including an Indian raid, they bring the herd to Dodge City. Here CLAY MANNING, Joy's fiance, disappears. Lew, accompanied by his men, enters the town and begins searching. Lew hires a dozen extra hands for the remainder of the trip, as he fears trouble with a rival herd, the Open A. Joy Insists on coming to town, is she thinks Clay "needs her." CHAPTER XVII By the time Lew had run back and got into his own saddle there was only dust for him to follow. He gave no order; the others had seen and read that lookout sign. They poured behind him along the street Then on the river's open shelf he caught the drum of hoofbeats and saw the rider turn suddenly north beside the whitewashed shipping pens. He swung that way. For a moment the figure was clear against the plaza lights where this street ended. But at the railroad tracks it turned once more and was out of sight. Taking a blind guess, he aimed across the depot yard before reaching reach-ing the tracks himself and then was immediately sure which way the rider rid-er had gone. For the yard ended against the sprawling corrals of Ra-chals' Ra-chals' livery. There was only one outlet. He stepped down from his saddle with Joe Wheat, Quarternight and the others following behind him, and saw first eight or ten men afoot near the office. Then Pete Rachal was coming toward him, swaying rapidly on his stubby legs. And at the same time, even as Rachal said, "I got your crew, Burnet," and nodded nod-ded at the group, "but there's a bunch " he saw Clay and Ed Splann just inside the barn's dark maw. What he couldn't see in that moment mo-ment was how many others might be watching him from the huge blackness behind the wide doorway. Then one other edged into the band of outshining light from the office, and close to his shoulder Joe Wheat's low voice said, "That's Stoddard, the boss." He recognized Stoddard without showing that he- did, a short, squat man who, at the mouth of Crazy Woman Creek, had made the mistake mis-take of offering him a job. He brought his glance back to Clay and Ed Splann, seeing the dulled heavy drunkenness of Clay's face. Splann was not drunk but stood with his huge body poised a little forward, strangely like a man on tiptoe, his long arms loose at his sides. These things he saw in a brief survey that could have lasted only a moment with his own men and his new hands turned rigidly silent and Pete Rachal's face in front of him setting into a weary look. leave a draft for you," he said, "at Wright and Beverly's store. You'll need some things." They reached the light of the hotel windows. She took her hand from his arm. Her eyes came up to his then, shining with a moistness in that light. "I'll write to you at Ogallala. We'll come by train as soon as we can." In a little while he was riding from Dodge, leading her horse with its empty saddle, and in that saddle's sad-dle's emptiness was a symbol of the way he knew things were to be for him. Loyalty was the strongest trait she had. She would never desert Clay Manning now. Even with the guard of his extra riders he felt no safety so close to town. In camp, where they were all waiting, he said, "Some of you haven't had much fun in Dodge this trip. But you see how it is. We'd better get on." They eased the longhorns up from the bed ground and trailed them north until after midnight when the moon set and darkness brought them to a halt. But the summer's dawn came between three and four o'clock these mornings; at four they were moving again. Beyond Dodge they entered immediately imme-diately into what maps called the Great American Desert. With the dark line of the Arkansas down over the rim of the world behind them no other landmark broke the flat brown earth. Even the Little far-apart far-apart streams at which they watered wa-tered were treeless and dried to muddy pools. The grama grass was cured and short and would not last another month; yet its heads were still full of black seeds and on them the cattle grew fat. Young Jim Hope was driving Joy's mules now. But he had stopped thinking about that. He had dropped back into an old habit, focusing fo-cusing all he had on working out one thing at a time. The one thing now was to get these longhorns north. For the first days and nights out of Dodge he had kept close watch on Steve and had posted Rebel John and Joe Wheat to keep an eye on him. He had thought then that Steve might quit the herd and run back. But there had been no sign of that. Instead he felt Steve was thoroughly scared over what had happened in town or thoroughly whipped. It settled his first concern, con-cern, and yet, remembering Clay's tameness before he made his break into Dodge, he would rather have Steve in some open rebellion. Quietness Quiet-ness in his kind was never good. On this last lap of the march he held again far west of the trail, beyond be-yond sight of the dust flags of any other herds. Even if the Open A had left Dodge soon after he did his long daily drives of twenty miles would keep him in the lead. Beyond the Solomon they traveled a gently rising plateau that lifted them into a cooler air, and he rode these days feeling that nothing could stop them now. He was far enough west to avoid the trap of settlers' fences when they crossed the Republican Re-publican on the fifteenth of August. Then he moved, hearing Joe Wheat's "Lew, for God's sake!" and paying no attention to it. He walked toward Clay Manning, feeling there was no recognition in Clay's heavy-lidded heavy-lidded eyes. He reached him and took his arm. "Clay," he said, "come on." His tug brought the big shape out a little from the support of the doorway post, stumbling against him. He jerked his right hand up to brace Clay's body . . . and someone some-one must have mistaken that or an order was given that he didn't hear. A gun's flame streaked from the black interior of the barn to become be-come instantly blended into a crashing crash-ing roar. He felt Clay jolt as if pushed. He was trying to pull his own gun and hold the big man up. But the suddenly dead weight threw him off balance. Something hot stabbed his arm. They went down together and a running wave of fire passed over their heads. Rolling free and struggling up, he ' had a blurred knowledge of dust and frightened horses and a last rattle of shooting far back toward the livery's end; and all at once there was silence, a breathless hush in the way of these battles, until somewhere a man groaned and deep within the barn another called, "They got out here!" And from the office Pete Rachal's unmoved voice said, "Curly, you better get the doc." The hospital was an abandoned army barracks standing on the prairie's prai-rie's grass beyond the freight yards east of town. The doc, too, was a discard from the army, a gaunted " man with bloodshot alcoholic eyes. But watching him, Lew guessed he was capable enough even now; he must have been a top surgeon once. He saw the long hands were steady, probing the slightly puffed blue holes which were all that showed of the wounds in Clay Mannings Man-nings naked back. At such close range the bullets had entered Wasn't clear in hi. mind yet What had happened; PP? pr know But it seemed that all C Open A guns must have been the Open a b .. willing to tUrneLinClav and even Ed Splann Te ? coufcbLt through to bin. He was riding from Dodge, leading lead-ing her horse with Its empty saddle. he saw her sitting in the hotel lobby. lob-by. He knew how desperate this wait must have been. It softened him; he'd have to tell her gently. And yet, seeing him, she rose and came to the doorway quickly and took his arm. She seemed to know. "Joy," he said, "Clay's hurt. He's in the hospital." Then he tried to ease it for her. "Don't worry. He'i going to pull through." He needn't have said that. Her acceptance was strangely calm. "Take me to him," she said, and that was all. They returned to the hospital, walking, and In the crowded plaza men gave way for him, seeing the girl on his arm. Entering the hospital, he half expected ex-pected she would throw herself on Clay's cot. She released his arm, crossed to the side of it and stood there looking down. Only her dark eyes showed him any emotion, pity and tenderness and then a long grave look that he could not rea,d. Afterward he saw her glance up at the specked windows and the cobwebs cob-webs spun in the corners of the room. "Doctor," she asked, "have you a nurse?" "Why, no ma'am," he said. "No, I sleep in the building. Nurses are bard to get in Dodge." "I see." She looked at Clay, saying say-ing quietly, "He's sleeping now." She didn't know that Clay was drunk. "But if he needs anything tonight I'll be at the Wright House. Will you let me know?" "Yes ma'am," he promised. "Don't worry. He'll be all right." Outside again, walking back the way they had come, she seemed unaware un-aware of the crowd or the town or anything beyond her own silent thinking. They were almost to the hotel when she spoke. "Lew, you understand. I can't go on." He did. He had known it as she stood there looking down at Clay. He'll need a nurse," she said. He nodded. It wasn't what she meant exactly, but he understood that too. They were only using words to cover up what they both felt and knew in this moment. Ill "Boy," Quarternight grinned that day, "I guess we've got her licked!" He thought so himself. This was Nebraska. With two weeks left and Ogallala only a little more than a week away he could see no hitch. If it came to a last-minute fight, now that he was bending east toward the trail, he had plenty of men. Each night he doubled the riders on guard and during the day kept a flank of scouts out a mile from the herd. They were going through, and yet there was no exultant feeling in him, no uprush of a tremendous satisfaction sat-isfaction that a man should have. It would be the end of the trail; that was all. There would be news for him in Ogallala. Perhaps she would be there herself with Clay. And afterward? He didn't know. He could still let the future wait a little longer before he made his plans. Thirty miles south of Ogallala a high divide marked the Keith County Coun-ty line. Beyond that it would be like rolling down hill. On the same day that its straight ridge edged against the sky ahead of him he saw four mounted men come up from the southeast, circle his herd off at a distance and ride back the way they had come. And that night from his camp on a creek still south of the ridge he watched a chain of little lit-tle fires break out along its crest. "Indians," somebody said, "waiting "wait-ing for their beef." ' But it wasn't Indians. In the cool dawn next morning all of his men were having breakfast for an early start when a group of eight or ten riders trotted out of the north. The two crouched circles around the fires broke instantly and spread. Then the trotting figures swung wide of the longhorns. It wasn't an attack. at-tack. In a moment he could make out the leader's headgear, a stiff rolled brim and center-creased crown, known this country over as a peace officer's hat. He said, "It's the law, boys. All right, I guess." They took their hands from their guns. All except Steve. He saw Steve back away slowly, his gun fully out of the holster hol-ster and rising in a guarded aim as the peace officer came on. He sprang across and stood in front of him. "Get out of sight!" (TO BE CONTINUED) |