All-Story Weekly, Vol. 112, No. 1 — page 107: what you’re looking at

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

BY HOOF AND TIRE. Loop Brown was seated on the running- board, Dummy Norris was leaning on the hood and Gary Burney was examining a front tire. None of the cowboys seemed particularly happy over Tige’s precipitate appearance, but Tige was too tickled to notice any little thing like that. He leaped from his saddle and strode over to Loop: - “Talk about your luck, old hoss! Trimmed that Gray“Dog bunch to the last strand of a busted cinch! My three hun- dred bucks is rounded up for fair. that great? Who brung the car up? They musta knowed I was ready to pungle up.” * Loop said nothing; neither did ‘Dummy, and Gary Burney passed on to the rear tire without glancing at Tige. “What ails you birds?” demanded Tige, beginning to get suspicious. ‘“‘ Aw, you’re just thirty minutes late, Tige. Me and Dummy got tired o’ wait- ing—you’d promised to show up with the coin too many times and fooled us. They was another party after the car, so we had to grab it to-day or lose out on the best little old bargain ever.” Loop was talking against time and a climax and Tige failed to get his drift. ‘* Well—to-day suits me. The dance is to-night, you know.” Tige. rattled the loose coin in his pocket and produced a roll of bills suggestively. “Now ain’t that too bad, Tige—you oughtn’t to have rung up so many false alarms.. Gary, here, he kicked through with three hundred, which was mighty white of him, seein’ as how that other party woulda grabbed the car if we’d waited another day.” Dummy’s eyes fell before the blaze of wrath in Tige’s expression. Tige turned to Gary: ‘“ You’re gonna turn over your interest to me—wait’ll I go get the balance of my money.” ‘Nothin’ stirring; I ain’t a buying for you, Tige—not yet,” snarled Gary Burney. Tige ignored Gafy. Once more he faced Dummy and Loop. ‘“ You mean to say you’ve double-crossed me? And you've let that fuzz-tail in on this deal of ours?” ‘““No double-crossin’, Tige. We was plum forced to do it, seeing as how you disappointed us a heap,” explained Loop. Tige’s rage choked him. He wanted Ain’t. 97 more than anything else to jump upon Gary Burney and grind him into the dust; but ‘he forced a laugh instead. It was not a mirthful laugh and the look he fastened upon Gary caused that individual to shrink from sight on the far side of the car. Tige swung on his boot heels and, with- out another word, mounted his cowpony and headed down the lane. He knew that Loop and Dummy had it in for him on account of the last bet he had won from them—giving him the privilege of ordering them about for a week—and he had issued some pretty strenuous commands! But this was a mean advantage to take—to let that yellow dog of Gary Burney in on this little plan they had talked about for the past month. A jointly-owned car, roomy enough for six, and a jolly sextette it was; they were to have surprised the girls this very night by calling for them in their own machine and whisking them away to the dance at Grasshopper, thirty miles up the valley. He could picture the pleased smile on Nora Willis’s face; the surprised delight of Belle Ramage and the noisy enthusiasm of Jen- nie, her sister. Well, he’d put a crimp in their old party —he’d ride over and ask Nora to go—he’d get her there some way—and since Nora was the life of the sextette to say nothing of his own mirth-provoking qualities, they would soon be sorry that they had played such a low-down trick. Tige opened the gate into the fields—he would take a short cut to the Willis’s Ranch. He rode along, too thoroughly mad to be dejected, but formulating plan after plan to wreak his vengeance upon his erstwhile pals. The hum of a motor aroused him from his scheming. He looked down the road and saw a car whizzing past the fence posts. He recognized it—and something warned him that more deviltry was in the air. “The dogs! That yellow-livered vul- ture!”” Tige touched spurs to Peanut’s flanks. The pinto sprang forward and ‘broke into a clipping gate, but the race went to the occupants of the rakish-looking automobile. When Tige thundered up to the Willis’s Ranch, the automobile was cCoOmiclbooks C©