The Rustler Detective

# "The Bounding Buck from Buffalo Wallow" by Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

This Western serial opens on San Jacinto Day in Texas, where Colonel Hugh Falconer delivers a lengthy commemoration speech before a crowd of ranchers, cowboys, and Mexican laborers. His daughter Nadine, a tall half-Spanish woman armed with revolvers and dagger, signals him to conclude. Tensions surface when the rancher Nash Whildon and David Browning quarrel over Nadine's beauty; Whildon's cold intervention nearly provokes gunplay.

Nadine dismisses Whildon's romantic advances, expressing preference for Pink Archer, the foreman of Falcon Ranch. Whildon, shown to be a skilled gunfighter with a mysterious past, seethes at the rebuff, resolving to "tame" her. Meanwhile, Archer innocently courts little Nellie Angell, daughter of "Angel Sam," unaware of Nadine's developing feelings for him.