Rustlers of Beacon Creek E-Book

Max Brand

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Another great tale by Frederick Schiller Faust who was an American author known primarily for his thoughtful and literary westerns under the pen name Max Brand! The Kid was a lawman’s worst nightmare. A fearsome gun-for-hire, he was a legend written in blood and carved in the tombstones of the men he killed. But this time he was facing an old enemy from his twisted past – a man who had survived his bullet and lived for vengeance. This story filled with excitement, suspense, good guys and bad, and plot twists aplenty! Brand is a masterful story teller, slowly revealing his main characters’ unique idiosyncrasies, strengths and weaknesses that make them both human and admirable.

Leseprobe

Contents

I. MEDIUM

II. TWO MEN IN THE DARK

III. A GOOD DEAL

IV. MULDOON

V. "COME AND GET IT"

VI. THE FIGHT

VII. IN BEACON CREEK

VIII. PETE TELLS ONE

IX. A CRUEL RECEPTION

X. DAN BURNS

XI. LOUISE AND SAMMY

XII. DOWN STAIRS AND UP

XIII. HOTFOOT

XIV. THE WINGED HORSE

XV. MILLIGAN, THE NEW MAN

XVI. FOUR THOUSAND DOWN

XVII. AN AGREEMENT

XVIII. THE NIGHT TRAIL

XIX. DELIVERED TO THE MONTAGUES

XX. BAD MEN, OLD AND YOUNG

XXI. HANDS OFF THE BLACK!

XXII. IN THE ENEMY'S FORTRESS

XXIII. AN EMERALD

XXIV. LEFTY FARGO IS HEARD FROM

XXV. AND LEFTY APPEARS

XXVI. THE CONTEST

XXVII. THE LAMB BURNS HIS BRIDGES

XXVIII. THE YOUNG MEN TALK

XXIX. ON THE HILLSIDE

XXX. JACK McGUIRE

XXXI. ONE WATCH MISSING

XXXII. A HALF-BREED TRAILER

XXXIII. TIME REGAINED

XXXIV. ON THE TRAILER'S TRAIL

XXXV. THE LAMB AND THE COOK

XXXVI. THE LAMB, THE LADY AND HIS LORDSHIP

XXXVII. "WHAT WAS HE TO YOU?"

XXXVIII. WHAT HE WAS TO SOMEONE

XXXIX. ALIKE AS TWO PEAS

XL. A QUESTION OF TIME

XLI. HAND OVER HAND

XLII. BIG JIM'S FALL

EPILOGUE

I. MEDIUM

HE was an inch over six feet, and yet he looked light enough to ride a small horse and strong enough to break a big one. He was not a pretty man, because his eye was cold and his jaw was grim. Since he was without a coat and one sleeve had been torn out of his shirt, an arm was visible. It showed a white dazzlingly pure, contrasted with the sun-blackened skin of hands and face. A student of anatomy would have been entranced by that arm. It was not bulky, but it was not sleeked over with a layer of fat. On the contrary, every muscle was a separate string which could have been picked out between thumb and forefinger. The sheriff had been regarding him.

“I’m gunna soak you into the hoosegow, stranger,” said he.

“All right,” said the stranger. “I need a rest, anyway.”

“You’re gunna get one,” said the sheriff. “A good long one!”

“That depends on the way you feed,” said the stranger. “What kind of chuck you throw to the boys in the hoosegow?”

“Frijoles,” said the sheriff.

“Well, they’ll hold me for a day or two,” said the stranger.

“We’ll hold you the rest of the time,” said the sheriff.

The other smiled. The hardness vanished from his face and the sheriff found himself looking into the twinkling eyes of a boy.

“Aw, I dunno,” said the stranger.

This was a challenge, and the sheriff sneered with anger. He jerked a piece of paper toward him and stabbed his pen into the inkwell.

“What name or names have you got?” said he.

“That depends,” answered the other.

“Depends on what?”

“On where I am.”

“You’re here, now.”

“I dunno what this place is,” said the prisoner. “It ain’t on the map, is it?”

“Stow your jaw,” answered the sheriff, growing very hot of face. “On the map!” he echoed fiercely.

“Maybe I’ll put it on,” said the prisoner cheerfully. “But I dunno how it is–some places are pretty hard!”

“You’ll find this place hard enough,” the sheriff assured him with satisfaction.

“I mean, hard to wake up,” said the other.

“You heard me talk. What’s your name or names?”

“In Montana they call me ‘The Kid.’”

“They do, do they? Is that all they think of you up there?”

“They spell it with capitals like a headline,” said The Kid.

“It’s kind of terrible the way you despise yourself,” sneered the sheriff.

“They found me pretty young,” said The Kid. “I growed up in a week.”

“Tall enough to see, eh?”

“You couldn’t miss me,” the boy assured him.

“What else name have you got besides The Kid?”

“Over in Wyoming, they call me ‘Slippery Elm.’”

“Why?”

“Because I was sort of hard to hold.”

“I’ll hold you,” said the bitter sheriff.

“You’ll hold trouble then,” said the prisoner, and yawned in the face of the officer. “And maybe I’ll give you trouble to hold,” he added blandly.

“What other name, or names?” asked the sheriff, breathing hard.

“Once in Nevada I was traveling pretty light and pretty fast. It was winter, kind of bleak and miserable. I hit a cow camp. I hadn’t no hoss and only but one shoe on. They call me ‘Lonesome,’ over Nevada way, right up to now.”

“That don’t mean nothing.”

“Yonder around Denver way, they call me ‘The Doctor.’”

“Because of the way you could handle a sick hoss, maybe?” glowered the sheriff.

“Because I was pretty handy with a knife,” said the prisoner. “That was all.”

“What other kind of names might you have, Kid?”

“Why, down in Texas, they call me ‘Montana,’ and up in Idaho they call me ‘Texas.’”

“They call you pretty near anything, it looks like,” suggested the sheriff. “Do you always come?”

“Sure,” said the prisoner. “I come anywhere. Even into a joint like this town!”

“You’ll stay a while, too,” said the sheriff.

The prisoner yawned again.

“What’s your real name?” asked the sheriff.

“Alfred.”

“You?”

“Sure. My mother liked the name.”

“What else?”

“Percy.”

“What!”

“She thought that I looked that way.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Lamb.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Sheriff, don’t say that again!”

“Alfred Percy Lamb–that’s a moniker to be hung onto a bird like you.”

“It rests pretty light,” said the prisoner, “and don’t bother me none at all.”

“There’s some mules,” said the sheriff, “that dunno when they’re carrying a load or not.”

“I hanker for that rest to start,” said the prisoner. “Lead me to that hay pile, sheriff, will you?”

“Lemme fill out this record. You never been arrested before, I s’pose?”

“Me? Oh, never. I never been this tired before.”

The sheriff snorted like a seal.

“I bet you been in every hoosegow betwixt here and Frisco!” cried he.

“You got a kind face,” said the prisoner, “but you left school young.”

“What kind of a face have you got for describing?” asked the sheriff. “Start with the hair, what color is it?”

“I never stopped to think,” said Alfred Percy Lamb.

He ran his hand through it; the links of the handcuffs jangled with a delicate sound like silver bells. It was ordinary blond-brown hair, but faded by the sun at the edges, and with a broad streak of gray that ran back above one eye; so that at times it gave oddly the effect of a single horn.

“How would you say?” appealed the sheriff.

It was dusk, and the lamp was lighted, but at this moment, there was not enough lamplight to replace the day, and not enough day to withstand the night. The sheriff, by raising the lamp, merely dazzled his own eyes. He put the lamp down hastily, for the prisoner had leaned quietly and quickly forward and his eyes became like the eyes of a cat. The sheriff shrugged his shoulders. A chill ran up and down his spine, and his blood was only warmed again by the honest touch of the handles of his revolver.

“I’d say average brown, or medium brown, maybe?”

“Medium brown,” said the sheriff, and forced his hand through the labored writing, his head cocked over to one side, his eyes looking blankly at the prisoner, as though he were composing a poem that far exceeded the subject matter. “Now your eyes. What say?”

“I dunno; gray, or green, or blue, or something.”

“That’s a help. Don’t you know what color your own eyes are?”

“I dunno. Look for yourself.”

The sheriff impatiently snatched up the lamp and rose to approach his man; but suddenly he seemed to remember something, and halted far short of his mark. He merely leaned over, holding the lamp high, and squinting.

“Why, they’re hazel!” said he.

“Put down hazel, then,” said the prisoner.

“No, they’re gray.”

“Make it gray, old-timer.”

“Or blue, is it? Say, I never seen such changeable eyes! Medium, I might say.”

“Yes, you might.”

“Eyes, medium,” wrote down the sheriff with somewhat less care. “Lemme see–the nose?”

“I dunno.”

“Turn your head, will you? It ain’t very long. It ain’t snubbed, though. It ain’t got a hook onto it, either. It ain’t big and it ain’t small. How would you describe that nose of yours, Lamb?”

“I dunno that I ever thought about my nose.”

“Medium, I might put.”

“Sure you might.”

“Medium,” wrote down the sheriff, toiling over his pen work. “Now take your whole face like a map, what might I say about it?”

“Pretty,” suggested Alfred Lamb.

“Huh!” said the sheriff, puffing like a seal again. “Pretty! Pretty? Huh! Face–lemme see!–Western-looking for a face, I’d call it. Face–er–medium, say. Any kind of distinguishing marks?”

“Not that I know about.”

“Where you get that streak of gray in your hair?”

“There was a greaser come up Tucson way that thought that he had a grudge agin’ me. He was pretty near right about it, too. But he was just a fraction high; afterward the hair all growed in white, the way that you see.”

“That’s a mark. Now, I got something definite on you! This is better; and how did you lose that bite out of your left ear?”

“There was a little argument in Denver, one night, over some cards. He had his gun slung under his armpit. He tried over the table at me, while I tried under the table at him. He removed part of this here ear.”

“And you removed a part of him, I suppose?”

“He began to scream something terrible,” said the prisoner. His eyes grew soft with reminiscence. “There was a fine sunset, all gold, outside the window. Says one of the boys to him: ‘Joe, you couldn’t’ve picked a better time for snuffing out.’ Funny how little things like that sticks in your mind, ain’t it?”

“Sure it’s funny,” answered the sheriff.

He tipped back his head. He, also, had apparently grown absent-minded, so fixedly did he regard the prisoner.

“What’s that mark down the left side of your face?” he asked presently.

“Pal of mine got to arguing. It was up in Alaska. The point was what share we each was gunna have. He’d done more work than me. I didn’t have the same kind of a liking for the handle of a pick what he had. But I’d stood off a couple of tough nuts that wanted to clean us out, when my friend could think of nothing but running all of the way to Dawson for help! However, when it come to standing up for his rights, he wasn’t no four-flusher. He waited till my back was turned, and then he come for me. I turned my head and got the edge of the ax here.”

He sighed.

“It hurt like fury,” said he. “You just got no idea how that edge of an ax can hurt. It’s kind of broader and more raggeder than the edge of a knife.”

“It is,” said the sheriff sympathetically. “Did he change his mind after he’d laid you out?”

“I had a lot of luck that time, and just as he heaved up the ax for another swipe at me, I shot him through the heart while I was falling. That was a pretty close one,” said the prisoner, and shook his head pleasantly, as though reproaching fate–or luxuriating in it, perhaps.

“Ain’t that another scar that dips down into the inside of your collar, there?”

“Sure! This was down in Mexico City. They sure love a knife, down there. And a family, it all sticks together. I met up with three brothers. They was all high class, and they liked poker too well to play it straight. We had a little argument, and while I was getting two of ‘em, the third one got me here and pretty near croaked me.”

“But you got away?”

“Sure. There was a gendarme handy that seen a chance to get the stakes from the table. He took them, and beat us all up, and turned us loose, and there you are!”

II. TWO MEN IN THE DARK

SAID the sheriff, finishing his record, “Alfred Percy Lamb, alias what shall I call you for short?”

“Why, I dunno.”

“Lemme see. Oh, darn these ‘mediums,’ because they make hash out of this here report. Why not ‘Medium’? ‘Kid Medium’!”

“It ain’t much of a name,” said the prisoner, “but I might stretch it and make it do.”

He was taken to his cell.

“I want to see those beans,” said he. “I want to see those real frijoles that you was talking about to me.”

“Sure,” said the sheriff. “It’s supper time, now. We got a pretty full house to-night.”

“What a lot of mangy bums,” said the newly-named Kid Medium.

The sheriff nodded at this uncharitable statement.

“Here’s a corner cell for you,” he said almost respectfully. “You see, you ain’t got no neighbors here. There’s a pretty good couch in there, too.”

“Now, that’s mighty kind of you,” said the prisoner. “Dog-gone hospitable, and everything. Only, I’d like to say that the chuck is what makes the big difference to me, partner. It don’t make much of a change to me, no matter what the company and the sleeping is like. But I lived long enough in Mexico to want a pretty good dish of frijoles.”

The door closed behind him with a gentle but an ominous clang.

And the sheriff went home to his supper, through the quiet streets with the scent of frying bacon issuing from every house. He was silent at his table, scowling at the hot corn-bread which his wife placed before him, and forgetting his coffee while he pulled at his long, saber-shaped mustaches. Those mustaches had elected him four times to the sheriff’s office; without them, his face looked too thoughtful and gentle, and his stomach had been pounds overweight for years.

A hand knocked at the front door and the sheriff sang out.

“It’s me,” said an answering voice.

“Who’s me?” grumbled the sheriff, uncertain.

“How you talk!” exclaimed his wife. “Don’t you know Colonel Pete Loring’s voice?”

“Hey, come in, colonel!” called the sheriff.

The front screen banged and jangled. The colonel strode into the dining room and sat down, leaving a stir of acrid alkali dust in the air.

“How’s little things?” said the colonel.

“Why, kind of fairly stirred up.”

“I heard there was a racket last night.”

“There was a pretty good racket.”

“Punchers off the range on a party?”

“A puncher,” said the sheriff, “if he is a puncher.”

“A puncher?” said the colonel, mildly surprised. “And did one man work up a ruction here?”

“By keeping on moving,” said the sheriff. “He didn’t stop to let them hit back. His idea was to keep reaching out; and most of the things that he reached, dropped on the spot.”

“What name?”

“By name of The Medium Kid, or Kid Medium, or something like that. Are you gunna feed with us, colonel?” he said.

“I ain’t going to feed. I sat down in the hotel and got outside of some chuck, there. Now, regarding this wandering puncher, what you done with him?”

“Slammed him in the hoosegow, of course.”

“Did he fight?”

The sheriff smiled.

“Did he fight? He did fight, colonel. He fought like a wildcat! But we got a rope over his neck and choked him down like a wild hoss. Then we toted him to the jail.”

“How does he look?”

“Like a mustang.”

“Where’d he get that name?”

“Because it’s pretty hard to fasten onto him and say why he looks so wild. Y’understand? Everything’s just medium about him till he gets into action.”

“Would you be needing him long in that jail?”

“He says that I won’t.”

“He says so?”

“That’s the kind he is! He says that it depends upon how things size up in the jail–the chuck is what interests him, and if the chuck’s good enough, he says he’ll stay and rest for a while.”

“Look here, Bud–did you search him?”

“To the skin.”

“Then what’s he got that’ll bust his way out for him? Friends here in town?”

“It ain’t likely. It looks like his first visit to the place, it seems to me.”

The colonel was silent, biting his lips in the profoundest thought. He was a fat and smiling man, with a dark skin and a very large mouth. His thick hair was worn away in front, leaving his forehead vastly high. After much thought he said: “You want that fellow pretty bad, sheriff?”

“Why, I dunno. I wouldn’t, except that he told me first that I wouldn’t want him for very long.”

“What you intend to do about that?”

“Why, it’s pretty simple. I’ll go up to my office, after a while, and sit there in the dark.”

“You think that he’d come on through the office?”

“Why, I dunno. I think that he would.”

“Why for? To find trouble?”

“He seen me hang up his guns on the wall.”

“What’s the difference? Ain’t there other guns in the world?”

“Not with such pretty notches on ’em.”

“Ah,” said the colonel, and his yellowish eyes opened and gleamed with light. He asked bluntly: “How many?”

“Just five on one and six on the other.”

“Eleven!” exclaimed the colonel.

“Exactly that.”

The colonel sighed.

“I’d like to see that young feller, sheriff, if you got no objections.”

“I got no objections at all–as long as you want to see him in the jail.”

“I’ll go up there and sit in the dark with you.”

So they went back to the jail, and there they lighted two lanterns, which could be closely shuttered.

“Put yours on the floor at your feet, and keep one foot on the catch. If anything stirs, open up wide with that light. I’ll open up with mine, too, and here’s a sawed-off shotgun that we can use on him. One for you and one for me.”

“You don’t want to blow him right to glory!” said the colonel, pleadingly.

“Not nacherally, I won’t, if he’ll play fair and square with me.”

“Give him a chance, give him a chance.”

“Is he a friend of yours, colonel?”

“No, but I got hopes that he will be! Look here, Bud. You know that I need good men. If you could see your way to turning that gent loose, there’s five hundred in my wallet that ain’t working very hard, just now!”

The sheriff smiled, and his saberlike mustaches fanned stiffly out to the side. He had the look of a walrus, suddenly.

“Look here, Colonel Pete,” said he, “I like you fine. You’re my friend. But I never took coin, and I never will.”

“No harm meant,” said the colonel hastily.

“Sure not,” answered the good-natured sheriff. “I don’t mind you getting this gent if he busts loose, and if I don’t have to kill him. Only–I won’t have money for him.”

They closed their lanterns, and they sat for a long hour in utter darkness, their shotguns across their knees. The window was closed. It was very hot and breathless. But the sheriff remained fixed in his place. There was no noise in the jail; from the town they heard merely high-pitched notes, now and again–a shrill cry of anger, or a pulse of laughter, foolishly thin and high.

Then the door opened from the cell room. It could not be seen. It could only be sensed, by the soft, quiet wave of air; then, by the movement of another wave of air, the sheriff knew that it had been shut again.

III. A GOOD DEAL

HE still waited for a moment; then from across the room came a flash of light. He snapped on his own torrent at the same instant and he saw his prisoner, Alfred Percy Lamb, as active as a Punch-and-Judy show. Without a sound, with wonderful surety and swiftness, the man had crossed the floor in that utter darkness and reached his guns. He whirled with them in his hands, and fell toward the floor, with a double click of the weapons.

The sheriff leveled the shotgun and the shaft of light at the fallen man.

“It’s no good, Kid,” said he. “It’s no good at all, Medium. You can’t ride dummy horses, even with the longest spurs in the range.”

“You pulled the teeth of these dogs,” said The Medium Kid, rising alertly to his feet, “and nobody can bite without guns. Am I talking straight?”

“Why, straighter than a string, by a whole lot! Set down and rest your feet, Kid.”

The Kid sat down.

“You might introduce me,” said the colonel. “When I saw those guns wing, I pretty near introduced myself with both barrels.”

“Colonel Pete Loring,” said the sheriff. “And this here is Alfred Percy Lamb–”

“I didn’t quite foller that recitation,” said the colonel.

“You ain’t been to church for a long time,” said the sheriff dryly. “Which your mind is out of practice on texts, and suchlike things. But you might know him as ‘The Kid,’ or ‘The Lonesome Kid,’ or ‘The Doctor,’ or ‘Montana,’ or ‘The Medium Kid,’ or ‘Kid Medium,’ if any of those names sort of sounded to you, colonel!”

The colonel smiled his capacious smile and showed a wide range of broad, white teeth. He seemed full of the content of good living.

“Glad to know you,” said he.

“Glad to know you,” said Kid Medium, alias Alfred Lamb.

He turned to the sheriff: “It was the way that cook done the frijoles,” said he, “that got me all restless. You know how it is when beans is cooked with only one kind of pepper?”

“I know,” said the sheriff.

“They ain’t satisfying.”

“No,” said the sheriff, “they sure ain’t.”

“But I’ll try ’em again,” said the youngster, “and see if I can get used to ’em.”

“Do you think you can?”

“I’m kind of afraid not. Frijoles I’m special particular about, having spent some time in Mexico.”

“I don’t want to be pryin’,” said the sheriff. “But I’d like to know who you talked into opening the door for you and unlocking your irons.”

“I talked to the irons first,” said the prisoner, “and then I talked to the lock on the door.”

“What kind of talk?”

“Sign language.”

“How old are you?” asked the colonel suddenly.

“Twenty-two.”

“Like fun you are!”

“Sorry you don’t think so.”

“Ain’t you on the far side of twenty-seven or eight, maybe?”

“Thanks,” said he. “But I grew up fast.”

“Now,” said the colonel, “I want to talk business with you.”

“Sure,” answered the boy. “I love to talk business. The sheriff will tell you that.”

“I’m serious. The sheriff, here, is a pretty dog-gone good-hearted gent.”

“He is,” said the boy, “or otherwise he would have plastered me a minute back, just as I was about to plaster him.”

He added gravely: “I was shooting for your legs, sheriff. Y’understand?”

“Sure,” said the sheriff with the utmost cheerfulness. “You just wanted me out of the way. I never had a better thought in my life than taking the salt and pepper out of those lunch boxes. But listen to what the colonel has to say.”

“You ever hear of me, son?”

“I don’t know. Lemme think. Colonel Pete Loring? Are you him that has a Montague every Sunday for breakfast?”

“Perhaps I might have run into the Montagues, now and then. But it was them that first run into me.”

“I’ve heard something about it,” said the boy. “I don’t know what.”

“Trouble!” exclaimed the colonel. “There’s been nothing but trouble since I ran into the Montagues. You take my record. Clean as a whistle. But when I come onto this range, where there was room for everybody, the Montagues started to make trouble. Dogs in the manger. They couldn’t use all the range; but they didn’t want anybody else to use it. You’d despise to know how mean those gents can be, those Montagues.”

The boy nodded, watchful and intent.

He glanced aside at the sheriff.

“Yes, ask the sheriff!” said Colonel Pete Loring.

The sheriff shook his head, however, and grinned, his mustaches furring out in the peculiar way they had, which always made him look like a walrus.

“I don’t take no sides,” said he. “Colonel Pete has been a pretty good friend to me, and so he has to most of the boys in this here town. But I don’t take no sides. There’s some that say that the Montagues are all right, and I don’t take no sides. Thank Heaven that the fighting ain’t been in my county, or I’d’ve tried to round up the whole gang, all around!”

“If it had been in your county,” said the colonel, “the trouble would never have got fairly started, but being where it is, with the sheriff bought up by the Montagues–”

“They say that he’s bought up by you!”

“Sure they do! Why, it’d made a man tired, the way those low-down skunks will lie about a man! Bought up by me! Bribery! Why, rather than bribe–”

The colonel caught himself; the sheriff was looking straight at him, with a quizzical but not unfriendly smile.

Then he said: “But I’ll get right down to business. You guess what I want with you?”

“I dunno. I could guess.”

“Well, then, I want you to help me to protect the range to which I’ve got a good right.”

“That sounds reasonable. You got a pretty good outfit?”

“The best gents in the world. Some of ’em kind of rough, but a mighty good set, take ’em all the way through.”

“Some of ’em get pretty sick, all of a sudden?”

“Why–some do, and no mistake.”

“Too quick for the doctor to get to them?”

“There ain’t any denying of that, either.”

“What sort of a price?”

“Sixty bucks, and a bonus for trouble.”

“Why, I dunno. I might think it over.”

“In jail?”

“This jail is kind to me,” said the boy. “It wouldn’t ever hold me, to tell you the truth.”

“Talk up,” said the sheriff. “Do you want this job?”

The youngster hesitated. “No,” he said. “Not at sixty.”

“Well, what’s your figger?”

“I’m worth a hundred. I’ll take ninety. That’s only three dollars a day.”

“It’s a lot,” growled the colonel. “If I paid you that, you’d have to keep your face shut about the money that you get.”

“Talkin’ after hours,” said the boy, “is what I chiefly hate, colonel.”

“Done, then,” said the rancher. “What about it, sheriff?”

“It’s kind of a funny business,” said the sheriff, “that a gent that gets jailed for a street fight in my town, should be promoted to a good fat job over on your side of the fence, colonel. But I got nothing agin’ him. He didn’t punch my nose; and he couldn’t get loose from my jail. So I call it an even break. Take him away if you want him.”

“Pronto!” said the colonel. “Are you ready, Kid?”

“Ready now to step.”

“Have you got a hoss in town? If you ain’t, I brought in an extra one. They’s no sense in going fishing if you don’t take a basket!”

“I’ve got a hoss already, but I’ll take a look at yours.”

“This’ll make you some trouble, likely?” said the boy to the sheriff as they parted.

“No, it won’t. The judge don’t mind me settling cases outside of court. He knows that I never make a penny out of these here deliveries, and so long as I keep turning the right kind out and keeping the wrong kind in, what’s to complain of?”

This free and somewhat extra-legal viewpoint was heartily applauded by the colonel, and he took his protégé down the front steps of the jail, a free man.

They crossed to a side street to the stable attached to the jail from which, at a message from the sheriff, the horse of Alfred Lamb already was being led. The colonel walked about it with a keenly critical eye.

“This hoss set you back something,” he said at last.

“It did.”

“Money or trouble?”

“Both,” said the youngster noncommittally.

“Has she got enough under the cinches?”

“She won’t say no if you ride her all day.”

“She’ll do, then. I’ve got a good thing for you, but it’s five hundred dollars cheaper than that nag.”

They passed up the street, leading the mare behind them, and as they turned a corner, the colonel laid a sudden hand upon the shoulder of his protégé.

“Young fellow,” he said, “I want to put the cards on the table. If you’re what I want, I’ll make you rich enough to buy a whole stable of hosses better than that one behind you!”

“Try me first,” said the boy, “an’ see if I can take any tricks.”

IV. MULDOON

ON the colonel’s place they were rounding up weanlings; and they were in the last camp before they made the ranch house; therefore, good cheer should have been strong among the cowboys, but good cheer hardly fitted in with such weather as they were having. The fall was ending and winter was beginning to show its teeth. The wind came straight across the mountains, well chilled from the upper snows, and at all things it struck with a fierce lunge, and drove its spear point of cold far home. Many days of riding in wet clothes, on wet saddles, with water squelching in their boots, had worn out the punchers, and their tempers had gone before their strength. But above all they were tired of the wind; its weight leaned continually against them, cutting their faces red and raw and, making balloons of their mouths when they attempted to speak.

It was good food that the cook gave them. The Dutch ovens were filled with excellent beef, with roasted potatoes, richly browned and covered with juicy gravy; and there was a sort of stew in which tomatoes were the chief ingredient. All these delicacies steamed and gave forth their fragrance when the cook shouted: “Come and get it,” and the hungry punchers swarmed in and lifted the lids. But with all this, and the supreme charm of the perfume of the coffee streaming through the air, still the punchers went stolidly, grimly, about their supper. The cook himself scowled; he was disheartened by such lack of appreciation and swore silently to himself that he would make these cowboys rue their glumness the following morning at breakfast time.

The attack upon the food had barely started when through the wet and the wind a horseman rode in and dismounted on the verge of the firelight, where it gleamed vaguely on him, and more brightly on his horse.

“This is the colonel’s outfit, is it?” he asked.

Heads turned toward him. They nodded.

“Where’s the cavy?”

They pointed to the rope corral which made its location known, at the instant, by a sudden outbreak of squeals and whinnies. In that direction the stranger disappeared and returned with considerable speed, carrying his saddle and a small pack. He went through the circle of feeding men, produced his own plate, cup, knife and fork, and helped himself generously to everything. This was not at all unusual, of course, upon the range. But there was something about the assured air of this youth and the size of the portions to which he helped himself that irritated the wagon boss.

Said he: “Who might you be, stranger?”

“I’m a new hand,” said the other hurriedly.

“What’s your best hand?” asked the boss.

“A left hook,” said the stranger, as he settled himself in a strategic position where the wind snarled and snapped a little less than in other places.

The wagon boss felt that he was set back; also, he saw the men lifting their heads a little. They looked upon the stranger with anger because, though strange, he was not abashed; and yet they smiled a little–faint, semi-secret smiles, for it soothed their very souls to have the wagon boss put down even with words.

For the wagon boss was a bold, bad man, and though every one of these hand-picked warriors of the range would have qualified in the same category, yet they acknowledged him as their master. He was made of iron; there were two hundred and twenty pounds of that metal in him; and he had been heated with liquor and hammered with bullets and, tempered in gore, so to speak. He rarely had occasion to lift his voice or his hand, once he was known.

Now he raised his head stiffly and stared at the newcomer.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“What’s yours?” asked the stranger.

“I’m Muldoon.”

“Muldoon what? Or, what Muldoon?” asked the cheerful stranger.

At this, a deep, grim chuckle passed around the crew. They knew that destruction was rushing down upon this glib youth, but they could not help enjoying the badgering which he was giving to their man of might.

“Muldoon,” rumbled the wagon boss, “of the street of Muldoon, in the town of Muldoon, in the county of Muldoon, in the State of the same name, and Muldoon is the name of the country, too. Have you heard of it?”

He had suspended his eating operations–which were conducted upon a vast scale–and he let his eyes wander a little over the group. He was proud of his speech. It was not the first time he had made it, as a matter of fact, but it was pronounced for the first time here.

“I’ve heard of it,” said the stranger, continuing to eat with an unabated appetite. “I’ve heard a lot about the country of Muldoon.”

“You read about it in your geography, maybe?” said Muldoon. “Then maybe you know that the kids are born with teeth, in that part of the world, and suckers starve to death, and four-flushers has their heads beat off.”

This last he said with a good deal of scowling point, for he was working himself into a rage. He enjoyed being in a rage. He reveled in the deeps and darknesses of fury. He began to pant, and to make his chest heave, and to clench his hands, and to roll his eyes like the eyes of a maddened bull, for he knew that if he went through all the appropriate gestures it would not be long before he was actually in the state which he simulated.

The wind, at this point, took control. It leaped off the nearest mountain and flattened the flames of the fire to flickering, blue-rimmed tatters; the light was nearly extinguished, so that every man became for an instant a stranger to his nearest neighbor, and the pencilings of rain were visible, and the face of the night and the storm pressed down and breathed upon that little human company.