Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 5, 1928 — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

578 which men of their type adopt. They were a bronze-faced, level-eyed, appar- ently listless group. There were eight of them, counting Bear Paw Rawlins, the foreman. In a day and age when other in- terests were gradually crowding the open range out of existence, the Bar- Bee still ran an important number of cows. Old Jed Brewster, who had established it forty years before, still gazed from the ranch house over a lordly expanse of acres, plateau and mountain valley, where strayed his herds, cared for by his waddies in spring and summer and early autumn, culled as it were for shipment from the nearest rail head in the fall. Of course ranching was no longer what it had been. But old Jed had done well enough in days past, and he liked the life with the habit of its liv- ing. ‘There was a quiet sort of feudal- ism about it, even if instead of thirty or more men on his pay roll he now could boast of but eight. And this evening the atmosphere hovering over the ranch, his employees waiting for their evening meal, was one of utter peaceful quiet. Abruptly that quiet was shattered by a noise. Paragonah Charley, so called from the Utah hamlet of-his birth, flung up his head very much in the fashion of a startled horse. In so far as he could compare it to anything, the disturbance resembled a tin roof caught in a cy- clone. He directed his squinted gray eyes toward the road which led from the main highway to the Bar-Bee, and detected a cloud of approaching dust. Equally he marked the fact that his fellows were gazing in the same direc- tion. “ Any of you birds send for a junk man?” he inquired. “ Not any,” said Bear Paw Rawlins. “ But sounds like he’d come without any sendin’. An’ he seems ter be in a hurry ter git here.” The dust cloud supported his words. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. It advanced swiftly to a crescendo of complaining metal, disclosed a dark spot like a nucleus in its lower and forward part.e To the watchers the latter soon showed as a small car of a popular make, carrying a tail of steam above its radiator cap. Bumping, rattling, and pounding, the machine came straight toward the bunk house group and stopped with a groan of brakes. From its seat a thin-faced, dark- eyed individual met the glances of the eight men with a smiling flash of teeth. “Good evening, gentlemen. I reck- on this is the Bar-Bee ranch,” he re- marked. “Well, we won’t argue about it, stranger,’ Bear Paw Rawlins told him. ‘ Because yore reckonin’ is right.” “That being the case,” the new arrival nodded, “I presume I might as well unload.” ? He uncurled himself from behind the wheel and stepped out of the ma- chine, which still boiled and grum- bled. Paragonah Charley gasped. Thus revealed, the unknown justified the act. Standing some five feet ten inches in height and proportionately built, he showed in a somewhat remarkable garb. His head was crowned by a pal- pably new and palpably expensive hat of the tvpe now made famous by both President Coolidge and Tom Mix. His well turned torso was cased in a red flannel shirt, about the collar of which was knotted a purple necker- chief. From the hips down, his nether extremities were covered by flaring leather chaps, below which showed high-heeled boots adorned with intri- cate stitching and spurs. And as a final touch, a leather belt and holster, from which protruded the butt of a heavy revolver, sagged about his flanks. “Are you birds seein’ the same thing I do?” Charley questioned sotto (€(0) NOOLKS AMIN (E@)