Argosy All-Story Weekly — "The Purple Limited" — page 160: what you’re looking at

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

726 That’s what I call retribution pronto an’ sudden!” and the roan stallion wheeled to cut out and drag to the fire another victim. From that time on, Shag was wary when he saw a horse and rider. | So it came a year and a half later, when the fall beef-hunt was on, the magnificent, golden-brown steer with the K-Bar brand on his plump hip, hid himself so well in the dense mesquite cover on the side of the lit- tle ravine high up on the north slope of Old Capaline, that he was overlooked and escaped the fate that waits for cattle at the end of the long journey in the crowded cars. It was that year, also, they gathered the cows that would do for beef, and Bent Horn disappeared forever from the life of Shag. The winter dragged. With the other cattle Shag huddled in the brush along the Cimmaron while the blizzards swept across the Llano de Gato and beat against the sides of -Sentinel Mountain. In the long nights the mournful howl of the loafer wolves called from crag to crag of Del Christo range. In time the chinook fanned the slopes of Del Christo range; breathed over the Llano de Gato, and the grass sprung forth again. Soon the lean ribs were padded with flesh, the hair became smooth and soft and glis- tened in the sunlight, and Shag, he with the mighty horns, the broad loins, the strong neck, was the splendid, the grand, the beautiful steer. Then life cursed him with its greatest joy and agony. It was the Red One. She came, many miles, from the Vermejo, far to the west, and on‘her side was the great mark of the | Anchor A. Her soft hair was the color, almost, of blood, or the flower of the scar- let cacti—so bright was it. Marvelous indeed was she, the young heifer, the stranger with the slender body, the trim legs, the long, graceful tail—its bush touching her hocks; and the horns so slim and round and very even, their black tips sharp and keen as the point of the stiletto; and the eyes—they were the won- der—in them was the pathos, the longing, the mystery of those of the elk or the an- telope, and they were as large and brown! - ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. Shag found her, alone, in the narrow canon through which the Purgatory comes down from among the high peaks of Del Christo. -- Their muzzles touched, and in the mere mingling of their breath there was a mad, torturing caress. From that moment, for one month— from the time when the lark-spur shoots out its purple spike until the seed-pods are on the stems—Shag lived in the shadow of the gates of Paradise and on the edge of hell. And; who shall say; may it not be that experience drove him at last to sur- render to the deadly loco—the plant di- ablo? For that month Shag and the Red One were inseparable. | Shag led her to places where the grass was greenest and most tender; he guided her to the clear spring where the water, very cold, rushes from under the Big Rock at the base of Capaline; at night he would not leave her, and watched, eager to battle in her defense, should the gray wolves, or even the great yellow panther come; and the Red One seemed confident to have it so. Yet, always, in the heart of Shag, was the fear that he would lose her—the black dread that sometimes there would come the day when she would leave him. They were crossing from Sentinel Moun- tain to the slopes of Capaline; in the dry coulee, far out on the Llano de Gato, in the warm sand, they—Shag and the Red _One—laid down to rest; there the Roan Bull, he with the thick neck, the heavy horns and the massive head, found them. Shag answered the challenging roar of the stranger with a charge that carried death on each of his mighty horns. While they fought the Red One watched. And then, desperate, because he battled for more even than life itself, Shag threw the arrogant one to the earth—he sprang back for the rush that would drive the ebony tips of his horns into the vitals of his pros- trate foe. The Red One leaped between and slashed viciously at the great brown steer. Shag swerved, to save the heifer from his own resistless rush, and her dainty horns—the keen, lancelike horns of the one he loved so well—ripped his flesh from (CCO)INN (C 6)(0)©) KS (C(O) nn