"TEX"

At sight of a rattler his gun leaped into crashing life (Page 314)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I The Trail Calls
II Refreshed Memories
III Tempted Anew
IV A Crowded Day
V A Trimmer Trimmed
VI Friendly Interest
VII Weights and Measures
VIII After Dark
IX A Pleasant Excursion
X Speed and Guile
XI Empty Honors
XII Closer Friendships
XIII Outcheating Cheaters
XIV Tact and Courage
XV A Good Samaritan
XVI Buffalo Creek in the Spotlight
XVII The Rush
XVIII "Here Lies the Road to Rome!"
XIX A Lecture Wasted
XX Plans Awry
XXI An Equal Guilt
XXII The False Trail and the True

"TEX"

CHAPTER I

THE TRAIL CALLS

Memory's curtain rises and shows a scene softened by time and blurred by forgetfulness, yet the details slowly emerge like the stars at twilight. There appears a rain-washed, wind-swept range in Montana, a great pasture level in the center, but rising on its sides like a vast, shallow saucer, with here and there a crack of more somber hue where a ravine, or sluggish stream, lead toward the distant river. Green underfoot, deep blue overhead, with a lavender and purple rim under a horizon made ragged and sharp by the not too distant mountains and foothills. An occasional deep blue gash in the rim's darker tones marks where some pass or canyon cuts through the encircling barriers. A closer inspection would reveal a half-dozen earthy hollows, the rutting holes of the once numerous buffalo which paused here on their periodic migrations. In the foreground a white ranchhouse and its flanking red buildings, framed by the gray of corral walls, nestles on the southern slope of a rise and basks in the sunlight. From it three faint trails grow more and more divergent, leading off to Everywhere. Scattered over the vast, green pastures are the grazing units of a great