[Illustration: "They picked up our trail somehow ... they're about
three miles back on the flat just a-burnin' the ground"]
THE HEART OF THE RANGE
BY WILLIAM PATTERSON WHITE
AUTHOR OF
"_The Rider of Golden Bar_," "_Hidden Trails_," "_Lynch Lawyers_,"
"_The Owner of the Lazy D_," "_Paradise Bend_," _etc_.
1921
TO RANGER
A GOOD HORSE AND A BETTER FRIEND
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE HORSE THIEF
II. THE YELLOW DOG
III. THE TALL STRANGER
IV. THE OLD LADY
V. McFLUKE's
VI. CHANGE OF PLAN
VII. THE RIDDLE
VIII. THE STARLIGHT
IX. THROWING SAND
X. THE BACK PORCH
XI. THE LOOKOUT
XII. THE DISCOVERY
XIII. A BOLD BAD MAN
XIV. THE SURPRISE
XV. FIRE! FIRE!
XVI. THE BAR S
XVII. SIGNED PAPER
XVIII. THE SHOWDOWN
XIX. THE SHOOTING
XX. DRAWING THE COVER
XXI. GONE AWAY
XXII. A CHECK
XXIII. TAKING FENCES
XXIV. DIPLOMACY
XXV. STRATEGY
XXVI. THE QUARREL
XXVII. BURGLARY
XXVIII. THE LETTERS
XXIX. HUE AND CRY
XXX. THE REGISTER
XXXI. THE LAST TRICK
XXXII. THE END OF THE TRAIL
THE HEART OF THE RANGE
CHAPTER I
THE HORSE THIEF
It was a warm summer morning in the town of Farewell. Save a dozen
horses tied to the hitching-rail in front of various saloons and the
Blue Pigeon Store and Bill Lainey, the fat landlord of the hotel, who
sat snoring in a reinforced telegraph chair on the sidewalk in the
shade of his wooden awning, Main Street was a howling wilderness.
Dust overlay everything. It had not rained in weeks. In the blacksmith
shop, diagonally across the street from the hotel, Piney Jackson was
shoeing a mule. The mule was invisible, but one knew it was a mule
because Piney Jackson has just come out and taken a two-by-four from
the woodpile behind the shop. And it was a well-known fact that Piney
never used a two-by-four on any animal other than a mule. But this by
the way.
In the barroom of the Happy Heart Saloon there were only two customers
and the bartender. One of the former, a brown-haired, sunburnt young
man with ingenuous blue eyes, was singing:
"_Jog on, jog on, the footpath way,
An' merrily jump the stile O!
Yore cheerful heart goes all the day,
Yore sad tires in a mile O_!"
Mr. Racey Dawson, having successfully sung the first verse, rested
both elbows on the bar and grinned at the bartender. That worthy
grinned back, and, knowing Mr. Dawson, slid the bottle along the bar.
"Have one yoreself, Bill," Mr. Dawson nodded to the bartender.
"Whu--where's Swing? Oh, yeah."
Mr. Dawson, head up, chest out, stepping high, and walking very
stiffly as befitted a gentleman somewhat over-served with liquor,
crossed the barroom to where bristle-haired Swing Tunstall sat on a
chair and slumbered, his head on his arms and his arms on a table.
Mr. Dawson stooped and blew into Mr. Tunstall's right ear. Mr.
Tunstall began to snore gently. Growing irritated by this continued
indifference on the part of Mr. Tunstall, Mr. Dawson seized the chair
by rung and back and incontinently dumped Mr. Tunstall all abroad on
the saloon floor.
Mr. Tunstall promptly hitched himself into a corner and drifted deeper
into slumber.
Mr. Dawson turned a perplexed face on the bartender.
"Now what you gonna do with a feller like that?" Mr. Dawson asked,
plaintively.
Mr. Jack Richie, manager of the Cross-in-a-box ranch, entering at the
moment, temporarily diverted Mr. Dawson's attention. For Mr. Dawson
had once ridden for the Cross-in-a-box outfit. Hence he was moved
literally to fall upon the neck of Mr. Richie.
"Lean on yore own breakfast," urged Mr. Richie, studiously dissembling
his joy at sight of his old friend, and carefully steering Mr. Dawson
against the bar. "Here, I know what you need. Drink hearty, Racey."
"'S'on me," declared Mr. Dawson. "Everythin's on me. I gug-got money,
I have, and I aim to spend it free an' plenty, 'cause there's more
where I'm goin'. An' I ain't gonna earn it punchin' cows, neither."
"Don't do anything rash," Mr. Richie advised, and took advantage of a
friend's privilege to be insulting. "I helped lynch a road-agent only
last month."
"Which the huh-holdup business is too easy for a live man," opined Mr.
Dawson. "We want somethin' mum-more diff-diff-diff'cult, me an' Swing
do, so we're goin' to Arizona where the gold grows. No more wrastlin'
cows. No more hard work for us. _We're_ gonna get rich quick, we are.
What you laughin' at?"
"I never laugh," denied Mr. Richie. "When yo're stakin' out claims
don't forget me."
"We won't," averred Mr. Dawson, solemnly. "Le's have another."
They had another--several others.
The upshot was that when Mr. Richie (who was the lucky possessor of
a head that liquor did not easily affect) departed homeward at four
P.M., he left behind him a sadly plastered Mr. Dawson.
Mr. Tunstall, of course, was still sleeping deeply and noisily.
But Mr. Dawson had long since lost interest in Mr. Tunstall. It is
doubtful whether he remembered that Mr. Tunstall existed. The two
had begun their party immediately after breakfast. Mr. Tunstall had
succumbed early, but Mr. Dawson had not once halted his efforts to
make the celebration a huge success. So it is not a subject for
surprise that Mr. Dawson, some thirty minutes after bidding Mr. Richie
an affectionate farewell, should stagger out into the street and ride
away on the horse of someone else.
The ensuing hours of the evening and the night were a merciful blank
to Mr. Dawson. His first conscious thought was when he awoke at dawn
on a side-hill, a sharp rock prodding him in the small of the back and
the bridle-reins of his dozing horse wound round one arm. Only it was
not his horse. His horse was a red roan. This horse was a bay. It
wasn't his saddle, either.
"Where's my hoss?" he demanded of the world at large and sat up
suddenly.
The sharp movement wrung a groan from the depths of his being. The
loss of his horse was drowned in the pains of his aching head. Never
was such all-pervading ache. He knew the top was coming off. He knew
it. He could feel it, and then did--with his fingers. He groaned
again.
His tongue was dry as cotton, and it hurt him to swallow. He stood up,
but as promptly sat down. In a whisper--for speech was torture--he
began to revile himself for a fool.
"I might have known it," was his plaint. "I had a feelin' when I took
that last glass it was one too many. I never did know when to stop.
I'd like to know how I got here, and where my hoss is, and who belongs
to this one?"
He eyed the mount with disfavour. He had never cared for bays.
"An' that ain't much of a saddle, either," he went on with his
soliloquy. "Cheap saddle--looks like a boy's saddle--an' a old
saddle--bet Noah used one just like it--try to rope with that saddle
an' you'd pull the horn to hellen gone. Wonder what's in that
saddle-pocket."
He pulled himself erect slowly and tenderly. His knees were very
shaky. His head throbbed like a squeezed boil, but--he wanted to learn
what was in that saddle-pocket. Possibly he might obtain therein a
clue to the horse's owner.
He slipped the strap of the pocket-flap, flipped it open, inserted his
fingers, and drew forth a small package wrapped in newspaper and tied
with the blue string affected by the Blue Pigeon Store in Farewell.
Mr. Dawson balanced the package on two fingers for a reflective
instant, then he snapped the string and opened the package.
"Socks an' a undershirt," he said, disgustedly, and started to say
more, but paused, for there was something queer about that undershirt.
His head was still spinning, and his eyes were sandy, but he perceived
quite plainly that there were narrow blue ribbons running round the
neck of that undershirt. He unrolled the socks and found them much
longer in the leg than the kind habitually worn by men. Mr. Dawson
agitatedly dived his hand once more into the saddle-pocket. And this
time he pulled out a tortoise-shell shuttle round which was wrapped
several inches of lingerie edging. But Mr. Dawson did not call it
lingerie edging. He called it tatting and swore again.
"That settles it," he said, cheerlessly. "I've stole some woman's
cayuse."