Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 28, 1928 — page 43: what you’re looking at

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

ROPE NECKTIES. A few miles of rough going, and we comes out on more level ground; the rocky hills still bear away to the west, but north and east is soft rolling meadow country. This county was played out for my purpose, and I aimed to keep away from the ranches on this range. During the county round-up I had done my darnedest, circ’lating around like a detective with the hives, and speaking to this one and that as a par- rot with one line to repeat. { had learned absolutely nothing. My total intake was zero. I know Gorge City is my finish point, and it appears I had to get nearer there before I could flash any results. Foolish like, in the heat of youthful rage, when I puts up that thirty-five hundred dollars it was, practical speak- ing, all the gold I had. I posted and sent the notice over four States, and left the money on deposit at the Jackson- town National Bank, never realizing until it was too late that cash would be mighty helpful in moving about as an am’teur range detective. Just young and unthinking. You can’t expect a colt to have the wisdom of a full-grown horse. I has wasted two months working for Roswell; he was full handed when I drifted in, and only by giving him a hint of looking for rustlers had I made him take me on as a top hand. Course, as you know, Slim Quarters had recognized me from the Panhandle country, though he never said a word to show it. He had a rep as a bad actor there, I disliked him personal, and was afraid he might be in touch with the leaders I was after. By a fluke Shorty had listed him among the forever missing; if not, it would have been me. I was just playing in luck, as in my encounter with Sleepy Kennedy; counting him out like a broken chip in a poker game. We cantered on for an hour or so, saying nothing. My hoss Blackie was fresh and frisky, after a good rest in 473 the corral at Roswell’s, and now could go on indefinite, with attention to water, and find his own feed. It is all the way a hoss is brung up; I hears in the effete East the equines has special food and blankets and rub-downs every morning and night, and stalls in the stable with their names over ’em. If Blackie got that kind of treatment he’d wonder the reason why, and whether he might be asked to kill some one the following morning. The stagecoach trail is not, you un- derstand, like a wagon road. ‘There is just an impression, now and agin, where a wheel has pressed down in rainy weather, dried, and left a mark, nothing to speak of for a space, and then you can pick up the lead once more. Not hard for a plainsman, nat- urally, and as to an Injun, it would be A B C to him. An Apache or Cheyenne could foller marks like that in the dark. Only course they don’t. Injuns never trail or fight at night, which is fortunate for settlers and covered wagons on the move; they is afeared of the bad spirits abroad with the dark. And a good thing, too, it proved, a little later in our pers’nal travels. Mebbe this long silence that goes along with us becomes monotonous to Shorty. “Every time I opens my mind I ex- poses an empty space, i know,” he says, “ and I bow to you as the leader of this yere expedition. But may I ask questions?” { grinned. Shorty was what they calls odd. A bad man to trifle with, and gun restless if provoked, he is ex- treme bashful with a bunkie. You wouldn’t think two such opposite na- tures could live in the same man, but you has mv word/for it. “Shoot, kid,” I said. “I’m wide open. There ain’t no secrets between us that can’t be pried apart.” “Lissen, Harry, I’ve been wonderin’ © Eo DOOKS AUUG (E@)