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Title: The Heart of the Range

Author: William Patterson White

Release Date: December 16, 2003 [EBook #10473]

Language: English

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Produced by Kevin Handy, Dave Maddock, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

[Illustration: "They picked up our trail somehow … they're about three miles back on the flat just a-burnin' the ground"]

THE HEART OF THE RANGE

BY WILLIAM PATTERSON WHITE

AUTHOR OF

"The Rider of Golden Bar," "Hidden Trails," "Lynch Lawyers," "The Owner of the Lazy D," "Paradise Bend," etc.

1921

TO RANGER

A GOOD HORSE AND A BETTER FRIEND

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE HORSE THIEF

II. THE YELLOW DOG

III. THE TALL STRANGER

IV. THE OLD LADY

V. McFLUKE's

VI. CHANGE OF PLAN

VII. THE RIDDLE

VIII. THE STARLIGHT

IX. THROWING SAND

X. THE BACK PORCH

XI. THE LOOKOUT

XII. THE DISCOVERY

XIII. A BOLD BAD MAN

XIV. THE SURPRISE

XV. FIRE! FIRE!

XVI. THE BAR S

XVII. SIGNED PAPER

XVIII. THE SHOWDOWN

XIX. THE SHOOTING

XX. DRAWING THE COVER

XXI. GONE AWAY

XXII. A CHECK

XXIII. TAKING FENCES

XXIV. DIPLOMACY

XXV. STRATEGY

XXVI. THE QUARREL

XXVII. BURGLARY

XXVIII. THE LETTERS

XXIX. HUE AND CRY

XXX. THE REGISTER

XXXI. THE LAST TRICK

XXXII. THE END OF THE TRAIL

THE HEART OF THE RANGE

CHAPTER I

THE HORSE THIEF

It was a warm summer morning in the town of Farewell. Save a dozen horses tied to the hitching-rail in front of various saloons and the Blue Pigeon Store and Bill Lainey, the fat landlord of the hotel, who sat snoring in a reinforced telegraph chair on the sidewalk in the shade of his wooden awning, Main Street was a howling wilderness.

Dust overlay everything. It had not rained in weeks. In the blacksmith shop, diagonally across the street from the hotel, Piney Jackson was shoeing a mule. The mule was invisible, but one knew it was a mule because Piney Jackson has just come out and taken a two-by-four from the woodpile behind the shop. And it was a well-known fact that Piney never used a two-by-four on any animal other than a mule. But this by the way.

In the barroom of the Happy Heart Saloon there were only two customers and the bartender. One of the former, a brown-haired, sunburnt young man with ingenuous blue eyes, was singing:

  "Jog on, jog on, the footpath way,
  An' merrily jump the stile O!
  Yore cheerful heart goes all the day,
  Yore sad tires in a mile O!"

Mr. Racey Dawson, having successfully sung the first verse, rested both elbows on the bar and grinned at the bartender. That worthy grinned back, and, knowing Mr. Dawson, slid the bottle along the bar.

"Have one yoreself, Bill," Mr. Dawson nodded to the bartender.
"Whu—where's Swing? Oh, yeah."

Mr. Dawson, head up, chest out, stepping high, and walking very stiffly as befitted a gentleman somewhat over-served with liquor, crossed the barroom to where bristle-haired Swing Tunstall sat on a chair and slumbered, his head on his arms and his arms on a table.

Mr. Dawson stooped and blew into Mr. Tunstall's right ear. Mr. Tunstall began to snore gently. Growing irritated by this continued indifference on the part of Mr. Tunstall, Mr. Dawson seized the chair by rung and back and incontinently dumped Mr. Tunstall all abroad on the saloon floor.

Mr. Tunstall promptly hitched himself into a corner and drifted deeper into slumber.

Mr. Dawson turned a perplexed face on the bartender.

"Now what you gonna do with a feller like that?" Mr. Dawson asked, plaintively.

Mr. Jack Richie, manager of the Cross-in-a-box ranch, entering at the moment, temporarily diverted Mr. Dawson's attention. For Mr. Dawson had once ridden for the Cross-in-a-box outfit. Hence he was moved literally to fall upon the neck of Mr. Richie.

"Lean on yore own breakfast," urged Mr. Richie, studiously dissembling his joy at sight of his old friend, and carefully steering Mr. Dawson against the bar. "Here, I know what you need. Drink hearty, Racey."

"'S'on me," declared Mr. Dawson. "Everythin's on me. I gug-got money, I have, and I aim to spend it free an' plenty, 'cause there's more where I'm goin'. An' I ain't gonna earn it punchin' cows, neither."

"Don't do anything rash," Mr. Richie advised, and took advantage of a friend's privilege to be insulting. "I helped lynch a road-agent only last month."

"Which the huh-holdup business is too easy for a live man," opined Mr. Dawson. "We want somethin' mum-more diff-diff-diff'cult, me an' Swing do, so we're goin' to Arizona where the gold grows. No more wrastlin' cows. No more hard work for us. We're gonna get rich quick, we are. What you laughin' at?"

"I never laugh," denied Mr. Richie. "When yo're stakin' out claims don't forget me."

"We won't," averred Mr. Dawson, solemnly. "Le's have another."

They had another—several others.

The upshot was that when Mr. Richie (who was the lucky possessor of a head that liquor did not easily affect) departed homeward at four P.M., he left behind him a sadly plastered Mr. Dawson.

Mr. Tunstall, of course, was still sleeping deeply and noisily. But Mr. Dawson had long since lost interest in Mr. Tunstall. It is doubtful whether he remembered that Mr. Tunstall existed. The two had begun their party immediately after breakfast. Mr. Tunstall had succumbed early, but Mr. Dawson had not once halted his efforts to make the celebration a huge success. So it is not a subject for surprise that Mr. Dawson, some thirty minutes after bidding Mr. Richie an affectionate farewell, should stagger out into the street and ride away on the horse of someone else.

The ensuing hours of the evening and the night were a merciful blank to Mr. Dawson. His first conscious thought was when he awoke at dawn on a side-hill, a sharp rock prodding him in the small of the back and the bridle-reins of his dozing horse wound round one arm. Only it was not his horse. His horse was a