align="right" valign="top">XXVI  

THE RIDER OF GOLDEN BAR

CHAPTER ONE

BILLY WINGO

"But why don't you do something, Bill?" demanded Sam Prescott's pretty daughter.

Bill Wingo looked at Miss Prescott in injured astonishment. "Do something?" he repeated. "What do you want me to do?"

"I don't want you to do anything," she denied with unnecessary emphasis. "Haven't you any ambition?"

"Plenty."

"Then use it, for Heaven's sake!"

"I do. Don't I ask you to marry me every time I get a chance?"

"That's not using your ambition. That's playing the fool."

"Nice opinion of yourself you've got," he grinned.

"Never mind. You make me tired, Bill. Here you've got a little claim and a little bunch of cows—the makings of a ranch if you'd only work. But instead of working like a man you loaf like a—like a——"

"Like a loafer," he prompted.

"Exactly. You'd rather hunt and fish and ride the range for monthly wages when you're broke than scratch gravel and make something of yourself. You let your cows run with the T-Up-And-Down, and I'll bet when Tuckleton had his spring round-up you weren't even on the job. Were you?"

"Well, I—uh—I was busy," shamefacedly.

"Fishing over on Jack's Creek. That's how busy you were, when you should have been looking after your property."

"Oh, Tuckleton's boys are square. Any calves they found running with my brand, they'd run the iron on 'em all right."

"They'd run the iron on 'em all right," she repeated. "But what iron?"

"Why—mine. Whose do you suppose?"

"I don't know," she said candidly. "I'm asking you."

"Shucks, Sally Jane, those boys wouldn't do anything crooked. Tuckleton wouldn't allow it."

"Bill, don't you ever distrust anybody?"

"Not until I'm certain they're crooked."

"I see," said the lady disgustedly. "After you wake up and find your hide, together with the rest of your worldly possessions, hanging on the fence, then and not till then do you come alive to the fact that perhaps all was not right."

"Well——" began Bill.

"Don't you see by that time it's too late?" interrupted the lady.

"Aw, I dunno. I—I suppose so."

"You suppose so, do you? You suppose so. Don't you know, my innocent William, that there are a sight more criminals outside of jail than there are in?"

"Why, Sally Jane!" said the innocent William, scraping a fie-fie forefinger at her. "Shame on you, shame on you, you wicked girl. I am surprised. Such thoughts in a young maid's mind. No, I ain't either. I always said if your pa sent you away to school you'd lose your faith in human nature. He did; and you did. And now look at you, talking just like a district attorney. And suspicious—I'd tell a man!"

"Oh, darn!" wailed Sally Jane. "I hate a fool!"

"So do I," concurred Bill warmly. "Tell a feller who's the fool you hate and I'll hate him, too. One pair of haters working together might do said fool a lot of good."

"Sometimes, Bill, my fingers simply ache to smack your long and silly ears."

He nodded soberly. "I know. I often have the same feeling about people. But don't let it worry you. It don't mean anything."

"Bill, can't you understand that I like you, and——"

"Easily," he grinned. "Of course you like me. So do lots of other people. It comes natural. And that is another thing you mustn't let worry you, Sally Jane. Just you take that liking for me and tend it real careful. Put it on the window-sill between the pink geraniums and water it morning, noon and night, and by and by that li'l liking will wax strong and great and all that sort of thing, and you won't be able to do without me. You'll have to marry me, I'm afraid, Sally Jane."

"I will, will I? And you're afraid, are you? You big, overgrown, lazy lummox! I wouldn't marry you ever."

"I'm not so sure, but you needn't stamp your foot at me anyway. It ain't being done this season. People slam doors instead. I'm sorry there isn't a door near at hand. It must have been overlooked when Linny's Hill was made."

"Bill, don't fool. This is not any joking matter. This come-day-go-day attitude of yours is bad business. It's ruining you, really it is."

"Drink and the devil, huh?"

"Oh, you're decent enough far as that goes. You never have been beastly."

"I thank you, madam, for this good opinion of your humble servant."

"Shut up! I mean to say— What I'm trying to beat into your thick head, you simple thing, is that in this world you don't stand still. You can't. You either go ahead or you slip back. And—you aren't going ahead."

"If not, why not, huh? I know you mean well, Sally Jane, and——"

"And it's none of my business? Oh, I know you weren't going to say that but you think it. You're quite right, Bill—but can't you see I'm talking for your own good?"

"Sure, yes. My pa used to talk just like that before he'd go out behind the corral with a breeching-strap in one hand and my ear in the other. I've heard him many's the time. I used to hurt most unpleasant for two-three days after, special if he'd forget which end of the strap carried the buckle. Old times, old times. Now, I take it you were never licked, Sally Jane. That was a mistake. You should have been— What? You don't mean to say you're going home? And we were getting along so nicely too. Well, if willful must, she must. I'll hold your horse for you. Again let me offer my apologies for the lack of a door."

He sagged down on his heel and watched her ride away along the side of Linny's Hill.

"I've often heard a woman's 'no' doesn't mean what it says," he muttered, fishing out the makings from a vest pocket. "But Sally Jane is so persistent with it, I dunno. I wonder if I really love her, or do I only think I do because I can't have her? I suppose I'd feel worse'n I do every time she turns me down if I did. Lord! she said, I said, he said, and may Gawd have mercy on your soul!"

When his cigarette was going well he lazed over on his side, supporting his head on a crooked arm, and gazed abroad between half-shut lids.

The view from Linny's Hill was all that could be desired. At the base of the hill the Golden Bar-Hillsville trail, a yellow-gray ribbon across the green, led the eye across flats and gentle rises through shady groves of pine and cedar westward to where Golden Bar, a collection of toy houses, each one startlingly clear and distinct in that rarefied atmosphere, sprawled along the farther bank of Wagonjack River.

The stream itself, a roaring river in the spring of the year, was now but a poor thing. Shrunk to quarter-size, and fordable almost anywhere, it flowed in sedate and midsummer fashion between its cut-banks and miniature bluffs. Bordered throughout its length by willows and cottonwoods, Wagonjack River meandered and wound its way southward from the blue and hazy tumble of peaks that was the main range of the Medicine Mountains to where the wide and pleasant reaches of the Peace Pipe watered the southern section of the territory.

From Golden Bar to the Medicine Mountains was a long two hundred miles. From Golden Bar to the Peace Pipe was twice that distance.

Crocker County, four hundred miles long by three hundred miles wide, bounded on the east by the Wagonjack, ran well up into the Medicine Mountains before giving way to Storey