Argosy All-Story Weekly — "The Purple Limited" — page 162: what you’re looking at

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

728 Yet, once while standing so, in the mood of despair, Shag was near to death. Skinny Rawlins, th’ Ramblin’ Kid—the latter riding then, as on the day of the curse, the roan stallion—and with them Old Heck, owner of the cattle carrying the K-Bar brand, saw the steer on the slope of Capaline. They rode close, to read the mark on his wasted hip. | “ Hell,” Old Heck exclaimed in disgust, and jerked the forty-four at his side from its holster as he spoke, after one glance at the sunken flanks, the: rough hair, the dull eyes of Shag—‘ another K-Bar critter ‘ lo- coed ’"—bad! Just as well shoot him—” ‘Not that — not while I’m here — you don’t!” the young cow-puncher on the lit- tle stallion. cried angrily while his black eyes narrowed with a wicked gleam, and the bronco he rode leaped between Shag and the muzzle of Old Heck’s gun. “ Give th’ poor cuss a chance! Let him play out his hand to the end. How’d you like for somebody to send you to hell with a bullet between your eyes just because you get, drunk once in a while?” The gun was returned to its place. Spring came once more, and Shag sel- dom wandered from the slope above the basalt cliff at the foot of Capaline. Much loco grew on that side of the dead volcano, and more and more he craved the deadly drug. Sometimes he saw the Red One, trailing with the other cattle as they crossed the Llano de Gato, or came down to the Pur- gatory for water. Always he watched as long as she was in sight. Yet he made no effort to go to her. She had scorned him. It was enough. He had come to detest his own kind—all but the Red One. Stupid cowards they were that fled at his ap- proach. They shunned him, feared him, despised him—he in turn loathed them, hated them, held them in contempt. It was June, the month of his own birth —the fourth year—and Shag saw again the Red One. At her side was a calf. Then he hated even the Red One also, and the thing he knew, somehow, was the offspring of Roan Bull. Then, could he have reached them, he would have killed Red One herself and the calf. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. So came the day, a little while before the yellow sun dropped into the mist-caps that lay on the peaks of the Costejos, Shag saw the Red One the last time. With the shallow place by the little cove sheltered by the black. basalt cliff above which he stood. Soon she returned alone to the other side. Shag knew the calf was left in the cluster of willows that grows half-way between the edge of the water and the cliff at the foot of Capaline. Later he saw the Red One, with others, feeding in the broad coulee beyond the Purgatory. Then, when the shadows had covered even Sentinel Moun- tain, and the night was beginning to come, three riders dashed swiftly from the narrow gorge in the Del Christo range, and the Red One, and those with her, they drove at a run toward the south. .The “ rust- lers »—they who steal cattle—had come, and unless she escape, Red One would be taken far across the border and never again return to the Llano de Gato. After that it grew dark, and Shag, hear- ing no sound from the little cove, forgot the calf that was hidden there. | The night was far gone; the moon, in its last quarter, was but a sliver of silver that hung above the pinions on Sentinel Moun- tain, when Shag, .as in a dream, heard the ‘rustle of soft feet brushing the bunch grass, and saw the shadow of Gray Flash, the loafer wolf, hunting alone this time, slip along the trail that led from the ridge above the basalt cliff to the little cove be- low. He gave no heed. A moment later and the agonized bellow of a calf, in mortal terror, was flung up over the crumbling wall of rock. Still Shag did not seem to hear. Again the cry—now no more than a gasping moan—rang out, and yet, by some miracle, it reached the drug-burdened brain of Shag, and suddenly the great form straightened up; the thing he heard was the call of one—a weaker one—of his own kind, crying for help, and to his disordered fancy the voice that called was the voice of the Red One! Then Shag, the pariah, the outcast, the depraved and despised one of the range, rushed blindly, reeling and staggering, down the trail to the little cove. young calf she crossed the Purgatory at the | (C(O) nn) (C 6)(0)©) KS (C(O) nn