Adventure Magazine, Mid-September 1917 — page 59: what you’re looking at

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

Longhorns men proceeded with their burden and de- posited it behind a clump of bushes beyond the corral. ! “Y dunno where the shovel is,” said Chuck. “T don’t need one—yet,”’ observed Bill Derr. “I gotta take his clo’es off. They’re all I’ve gotta show, an’ they’re worth five hundred dollars. I'd shore like to take him, but he’d never keep till I reached Seymour—not in this weather. So the clo’es’ll have to do.” Bill Derr sighed and knelt. Chuck did not remain to help. When he entered the kitchen the Rainbow was pushing Jane through the doorway giving into the other part of the house. “T’ll stay with your father,” the Rain- bow was saying. ‘“‘He’s asleep anyway, so it doesn’t make a mite of difference.” The Rainbow gave Jane a parting push and closed the door. Jane went straight to Chuck and unaffectedly put her arms round his neck, “Hold me tight,” she whispered, her cheek against his flannel shirt. ‘Hold me tight.” And he held her so tightly that it hurt and she found difficulty in breathing. But, oddly enough, the pain was very sweet. “Why, honey,” he said, after he had kissed the top of her head several times, ““what’s the matter? Yo’re tremblin’ all over.” ‘“‘F¥e—he said he was gug-going to take me away with him,” she breathed. ““Whoe” “Canter.” ‘‘He won’t now,” he told her. “Him an’ Rime an’ the other feller are tied feet, neck, an’ arms to the corral, an’ there they’ll stay till they’re lynched. So don’t you worry, not any. Why, I forgot to tell yuh! Yo’re in five hundred dollars. That’s the reward for the jigger you hit on the head.” ‘“‘Blood money!” she shuddered. “I don’t want it. It would never bring us any luck.”” Her mood changed swiftly. She seized him by the shoulders and looked up into his face. ‘Tell me that you love me!’’ she commanded, almost fiercely. ‘‘I want to hear!”’ Pra “I SHORE oughta guessed the rea- 1@ ea son for them wantin’ the C-Y corral = without bein’ told,” said Chuck to the Rainbow, as he washed a cut on Pep- o7 permint’s off fore. “Which she’s as plain as the W-G-R brand, an’ that takes up the whole side of a cow.” “Oh, Lord, Chuck, tellsister. Hurry up.” “T was just goin’ to say that they couldn’t rustle more’n two hundred or so head at a clatter, so they needed this corral to put each hoss-band in as they got it. They began yest’day about noon. Two bunches o’ two hundred apiece they drove in by sundown, got another in the night which stampeded when the two rustlers who was wranglin’ it come bustin’ across the creek to help Cutnose, an’ they was figurin’ on two more bunches today. Near a thousand head they’d ’a’ got if they hadn’t been dumped.”’ ‘Who told yuh all this?” ‘Rime Tolliver, the li’l snitch. Oh, there wasn’t nothin’ he didn’t tell. Told how Cutnose had planted that dead cow for throwin’ suspicion on the Dales, and how when that didn’t work he’d throwed the two 88 hosses in the corral at night an’ then passed the word to Lanpher. Rime said Cutnose would ’a’ burnt the house final only Mis’ Dale an’ Molly drove off for supplies an’ give him his chance. “TI thought Cutnose and Angora Chaps would go crazy while Rime was tellin’ me his li’l tale. They called Rime every- thing they could think of. Angora did special when Rime told how Angora’d sold the Dales that hind-quarter o’ beef. It all made Rime a heap mad an’ he told all he knowed about Cutnose an’ Angora an’ Bun Jason. ’Cordin’ to Rime the three of ’em shore need hangin’.”’ “Did Rime say anything about my uncle?” “Now look here, Rainbow, Cutnose is a-goin’ to hang. So don’ ig “Oh, I sha’n’t do anything to Cutnose now. But I want to know. Did hep” ‘“‘He did. Cutnose was the one who drilled yore uncle. Seems how he blamed yore uncle for trailin’ round an’ spoilin’ his plans. Looks like bushwhackin’ is Canter’s right an’ lef? bower. Him an’ Angora an’ the dead jigger bushwhacked me over by Injun Ridge, but couldn’t go through with it, thanks to Bill Derr. Rime says he him- self wasn’t in that deal personal, but it don’t make much differ. Rime’ll get stretched like the rest.” “Did Rime say Lanpher was in cahoots — with Cutnose?”’ COmicloo ©