Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 136: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

\. to oe oe s4 ay } rf oy va be’ y Bhi eLt | : Tt A pie aoe ve pea OA 0.4) vf > arent hy Vere wee OP es tesa oe) a) ee? Pt be —- " tans 4 - . oe ie, Fetch uikoty y ea a ‘ ee 4 1) oud . i. ye AT eae bee ih 4) tes As I aT RATS TA. Sige v4 134 tree. On the trunk of the pine a notice was tacked. Which notice set forth briefly that two hundred dollars reward was of- fered for the person or persons of the un- known miscreant or miscreants who were depleting the herds of the Bar-S and the Cross-in-a-box outfits. It was signed by Sheriff Block. Who the miscreants were no one knew with certainty. But strange tales were told of the 88 punchers. It was whispered that they carried running-irons on their saddles. Certainly they displayed, when riding the range, a marked aversion to the company of men from the other ranches. The remains of small fires had been found time and again in draws bordering the 88 range, and once a fire-marked cinch-ring had been picked up. As the jimmy and bunch of skeleton keys in a man’s pocket so are the running-iron and the extra cinch- ring under a puncher’s saddle-skirts. They indicate a criminal tendency; specifically, in the latter case, a whole-hearted willing- ness to brand the cattle of one’s neighbor. Loudon read the notice of reward, slow contempt curling his lips. “Signs,” he said gently. “Signs, ——! What they need is Vigilantes—Vigilantes an’ a bale o’ rope!” He turned in his saddle and looked back over the way he had come. Fifty miles to the south the Frying-Pan mountains lay in a cool, blue, tumbling line. From where Loudon sat on his horse to _ the Frying-Pans stretched the rolling range, cut by a thin, kinked strip of cotton woods marking the course of a wandering river, pock-marked with draws and shallow ba- sins, blotched with clumps of pine and tamarack, and humped with knolls and sprawling hills. The .meandering stream was the Lazy, and all the land in sight, and beyond for that matter, was the famous Lazy River country held by three great ranches, the Cross-in-a-box, the Bar-S, and the 88. Of these the 88 was the largest and the farthest west of the three, its eastern line running along the highbluffed banks of the Falling Horse, into which the Lazy emptied some ten miles from the 88 ranch- house. East of the 88 lay the Bar-S, and east of the Bar-S was the Cross-in-a-box. The two latter ranches owned the better grazing, the more broken country lying within the borders of the 88 ranch. Adventure Beyond the 88 range, across the Falling Horse, were the Three Sisters Mountains, a wild and jumbled tangle of peaks and narrow valleys where the hunter and the bear and the mountain-lion lived and had their beings. East of the Lazy River country lay the Double’ Diamond A and the Hog-pen outfits; north and south stretched other ranches, but all the ranges ended where the Three Sisters began. Loudon swung his gaze westward, then slowly his eyes slid ’round and fastened on the little brown dots that were the ranch buildings of the Bar-S. He shook his head gently and sighedhelplessly. He was thinking partly of Kate and partly of her father, the gray old man who owned the Bar-S and would believe noth- ing evil of his neighbors, the hard-riding 88 boys. Loudon was morally certain that forty cows within the last three months had transferred their allegiance from Bar-S to 88, and he had hinted as much to Mr. Saltoun. But the latter had laughed him to scorn and insisted that only a few cows had been taken and that the lifting was the work of independent rustlers, or perhaps of one of the other ranches. Nevertheless, in response to the repeated urging of his foreman, Bill Rainey, Mr. Saltoun had joined with the Cross-in-a-box in offering a reward for the rustlers. Loudon was well aware of the reason for Mr. Saltoun’s fatuous blindness. That reason was Sam Blakely, the 88 manager, who came often to the Bar-S ranch and spent many hours in the company of Kate. Mr. Saltoun did not believe that a dog would bite the hand that fed him. But it all depends on the breed of dog. And Blake- ly was the wrong bréed. “He sure is a pup,” Loudon said softly, “an’ yellow at that. He’d steal the mocca- sins off a dead Injun. An’ Block would help him, the cow-thief.”’ Then, being young, Loudon practised the road-agent’s spin on the notice of re- ward tacked on the pine-tree, and planted three accurate bullets in the same spot. “Here, you! What ye doin’?” rasped a grating voice in Loudon’s immediate rear. Loudon turned an unhurried head. Ten yards distant a tall man, black-bearded, of a disagreeable cast of countenance, was lean- ing forward across an outcrop. “T asked ye what ye were doin’?”’ repeated the peevish individual, glaring at Loudon. Gomichbooks (EO) im _