© Alan Le May WNU Service CHAPTER 1 wr “Of course you knew,” the girl said, ‘a man has been killed, here @u the 94 range?” Billy Wheeler turned to look at the girl who perched beside him on the corral fence, and for a moment he forgot to answer. Marian Dunn hadn't been in the desert country long enough to gather a very heavy tan. Under the shadow of her Stet- son her face reflected the glow of the fresh morning sunlight upon the red hills; to Billy Wheeler it seemed a fragile face, finely drawn, sug- gesting transparency. And her eyes were blue distance boiled down. She wore belted overalls and half boots; but she could never have been mis- taken for a Westerner. Billy Wheeler, though, could never be mistaken for anything else. The dry intermountain coun- try, by its necessity of wide ranges and the perpetual mobility of the saddle, has set its mark upon its sons. Wheeler was young, but his weather-trimmed features showed the blast of sun and sweep of wind, and his gray eyes were visibly tuned to distance. The girl turned her eyes to him, reminding him he was supposed to say something. “I didn't hear much,” he said. “A gas station man told me there was a killing, as I came through Inspiration; but he didn’t know much about it.” “I guess nobody does.” “Yes, but—who was killed? And when?” “That's just it,” the girl told him. ““They don't know who was killed. It’s the strangest thing I ever heard of. They can't even find him.” “Can't find who? The man who was killed?” “That's it.” Billy Wheeler grinned slowly, boy- ishly. “Well, I'll be darned!” “I don't think it's funny. I think it’s—horrible.” ‘Well, yes; I guess it is.” He looked away, estimating again the nearness of the approaching rid- ers. John “Red Horse’ Dunn, Old Man of the 94, at whose summons Wheeler had come 300 miles. had not been on hand to receive him. having set out before daylight on an unknown mission with three of his cow hands. But they were com- ing in now; across the dry morning Wheeler could identify the individ- ual riders at the half mile as they jog-trotted in, their ponies abreast. “When did all this happen?” he asked. “Uncle John found the sign, as he calls it, yesterday morning." “Then he must have wired me right after that.” “lI guess so.” She hadn't known, then, that her uncle had sent for him. She hadn't known that he was coming-—and he hadn't known she was here. That made a difference. “Uncle John hasn't wanted to talk about this thing—to me,” the girl new said. “Perhaps he'll give you a different, clearer story, Billy.” They fell silent. Billy Wheeler let his eyes run over casual, famil- iar things—the roadster he had come in, the tall barns, the low- sprawled house, bunkhouse, and grub shack. But as Billy Wheeler's eyes drifted out over the vast roll ing “flats” of the plain, resting here and there on a broken, flat- topped mesa or far up-thrust moun- tain of gaunt red rock, ali that he saw, excepting only the far peaks, was under the dictatorship of Horse Dunn's brand—the 94. Billy Wheeler looked at these fa- miliar things, but he was not think- ing about them. He was thinking about the girl at his side, whom he hardly looked at at all. Billy Wheeler had not seen Mar- ian Dunn for two years. Had he known that she was here, he would not have come here now. Marian Dunn was Horse Dunn’s niece. Once, for a couple of months two years ago, Wheeler had seen her every day. He had used every persuasion he knew of, all he had, to make this girl love him—and had failed. Sometimes he could still hear her low, cool voice: “I'm sor- ry—truly sorry.” The sincere re- gret in that was pretty hard to take. In everything else he had suc- ceeded. He had come up from noth- ing in cows, and tripled in land, and switched back to cows to double again. He had liquidated every- thing at the peak of cattle prices, and at twenty-seven had nothing to worry about. But in this one thing he cared most about he had met only complete blank defeat. He would not have come here, to raise again the bitterness of that defeat, if he had known that she was here. And down there was a certain awk- wardness betw that, too “I think he’s going to ask a favor of you,” Marian said. “I don’t know if you know this,” Billy Wheeler said slowly; “but his wire made out as if he was offering me a job.” “Yes—I knew that.” “I-owe a lot to old Horse Dunn,” Billy Wheeler said. “He picked me up when I was fourteen years old, balf-way starved and all the way maverick. He carried me along four years. If it wasn’t for him, I'd be in the wild bunch—or in the pen. And he showed me my start in cattle.” “I suppose, then,” Marian said, ‘you won't turn him down in this thing now.” “I've got things to see to, Mar- ian,” he stalled. “I couldn't take on another job now.” He supposed she might know that this was not so. For the present he was out from under; he could afford to do anything he wanted to, to fill his time or to help a friend. But to take a job in which he would see this girl every day, while yet tight- cinched by the knowledge that she was not for him, and never would be—that was something else. “Il don't know how much he needs you,” Marian said: “nor who else he could get, instead. But I know this—he has more enemies than friends, by three to one.” Billy Wheeler stirred restlessly, and began to build a cigarette. He knew it was true that the 94 had many enemies, few friends. Here in —— “I'll—Get Out of Here If You Want Me To.” this dusty, mesa-broken land Horse Dunn had set out to build a cow kingdom—a kingdom on the grand scale of the old days. But you can’t build a cow king- dom, buying up the range rights of little brand after little brand, with- out annoying and disturbing the brands that are left: and the bought-out brands are forever try- ing to edge back. Here and there in the world were perhaps half a dozen graves com- memorating the drawn-out, inevita- ble conflict. There had never been a general open war. But more than one lone-riding cowboy of the 94 had come to his end by the gunfire of persons unknown, and one or two others had left on the range an en- emy who would force the issue no more. And at Ace Springs had died two men of four—hired gun- fighters all—who had jumped Horse Dunn from ambush. The 94 could have started its own Boot Hill More effectual than those brief, unofficial bursts of action was the enmity of certain cooler, more wisely watchful men, like Link Bender, Pinto Halliday, Sam Cald- well—the defeated contestants for the Red Hills ranges. Nowadays the expanding 84 found itself en- circled by a veritable wolf ring of enemies—a wolf ring biding its time with a malevolent optimism. “I don’t even know what the situ- ation is,” the girl went on. “But it's worrying him deeply; he can't hide that, not from me. And his first move was to turn to you.” “Oh, shucks now, Marian . . .” “I shouldn't like to think,” the girl said oddly, as if with difficulty, ‘‘that you turned him down because I'm here.” For an instant he sat perfectly still, silent. He hadn't expected her to come out with it, direct and straight like that. She put both hands on the rail between them and leaned toward him. “I'd never forgive myself if I thought you let Horse Dunn down on account of me. I'll—get out of here, if you want me to.” He looked straight at her—and lied. ‘Nothing farther from my mind,” he assured her. ‘No call to even think of such a thing.” He paused, listening to the stam- pede of hoofs beyond a big barn which obscured the riders as they swung into the layout. And now rescue came, as Horse Dunn thundered around the corner of the barn and slid his pony to a stop before them in a great up- jump of dust. old-timers John Dunn was known as ‘“‘Red Horse Jack”—or more commonly, just “Horse Dunn-—partly because he was big as a horse, and partly because of the coarse sorrel mane he had had in his youth. Nobody knew how old Horse Dunn was: they thought he must be sixty-eight at least, and | his mustache and curly beard were | at last roaned with gray. But he seemed to have an Indian medicine on him which cheated time, for he powerful and barrel-chested and straight as a lodgepole To Half return leaning an hour after his was to be seen Said he, “We all | Any of you | floor, but none of them answered Breakfast had been set out by a little withered old woman known as Tia Cara. She had fed them prompt- ly—and they ate the same way. “Look here,” Dunn went on. “Look here! I'm going to ask you once more—and this is the last | time. If any of you is a good enough man to have blasted a cow thief, say so now! I'll back any boy of mine that shot in defense of the | brand. You know that!" He paused, and waited. Val Doug- las, Dunn's thirty-year-old range boss, let mild eyes dream on a dis- | tant peak, and Tulare Callahan spat | over his shoulder through his teeth. | “All right,” the Old Man said. “1 ain't doubting you, any of you. Now I'm telling you what I want you to do. You've seen the killer's trail at Short Crick—the trail of a cup-hoofed pony, long in the toe: been shod, and the shoes pulled off, We've missed out on locating that trail where it left Short Crick. Now I want you to start in and comb this range. Somewhere, somehow, we got to cut that trail. And especially we've got to find the man that's dead.” “Anybody checking back on the dead man’s horse?” “Don’t you worry about the dead man's horse. There'll be plenty checking done on that horse! Tu- lare, you take the flat country to the south.” “Okay.” “Gil, you sweep northwest be- tween Short Crick and the Spotted Range,” Dunn went on. ‘Val, you take a wider swing than Gil, and to the east. Scout the edge of the bare rock below Red Sleep Ridge.” The cowboys waited. ‘Is there any guess yet,” Tulare asked after a moment, “as to who it is we're looking for?" Unexpectedly the Old Man flared up. “How the hell do I know!” he roared. “And what do you care? You'll know him when you find him because he's dead! Ain't that you? What you waiting for now? Get on with it!" They moved off. Horse Dunn turned to Wheeler. “Get your war bag. You got to get into horse pants and boots. You and I got some riding of our own to do, no later than now!" Billy Wheeler jerked suitcase and saddle from his roadster and fol lowed Horse Dunn to a room in the rambling weathered house—the only room the Old Man used when he was alone Here, while Wheeler changed to cow - country work clothes, Horse Dunn stood looking out across the range. He turned to Billy Wheeler, his big crinkly-bearded face unread- able. “Look out the window, at Lost Whiskey Buttes. signal there?” Wheeler obeyed. Billy Look over You see a Four miles off, “That's Steve Hurley's smoke," Horse Dunn told him. “Last night checking This morning—he's been on “What's the smoke Horse?" (TO BE CONTINUED) mean, Beavers are the original flood-con- trol engineers, and they are among the shrewdest and thriftiest and most valuable as well. Beaver dams near river sources, and forests, are stronger and surer and safer than the best of man-made levees. Un- happily, both beavers and forests are diminishing, and we are trying desperately and not to successfully, to substitute steel and concrete for their services, asserts a writer in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Nine times out of ten, the site chosen for a beaver dam is the most feasible spot along any particular stretch of river. The tenth time the dam may fall, in which case the beavers abandon it and diligent. ly hasten to make good their mis- take by building another. For bea- vers, as the old adage will remind you, are workers, especially the old beavers for whom the cutting of a tree 4 or 5 inches in diameter is a simple matter, generally to be ac- complished at a single sitting with- out stopping. The actual work of cutting the logs is generally done by one beaver to a tree. Just before the tree falls, thumping his tail. into convenient sizes for rolling. Then with the help of strong webbed feet, and a flat tail which serves admirably as a rudder, the his dam, making good use of big stones and sandbars, and choosing material. water from rushing downstream suddenly after a heavy rainfall. And herein lies the great value of the beaver dam to man. It regu- lates the flow of river water, which might be overmuch at certain sea- sons and uselessly little at other times, so that the river bed is neither dry nor flooded, but there is an even stream-flow in fair weather and foul. Brooks that have been dammed by beavers are leaky res- flow of flood times, but keep con- tinuously supplying the river. READ will live in your — I — memory for years to come. * is different—it’s more than Rr [CT TS TITS T10e bo RAL Aled FV TEST WASHINGT Washington. — Some years ago, when New England's sharp-tongued : George H. Moses Like sat in the presid- Old Times ing officer's chair as president pro tempore of the senate, I used to got rid of legislation. The Repub- licans were in control of the senate, Kansas was the Republican leader. Between the astute Curtis and the nimble-witted Moses, the senate many times really ran in high gear. | To me, it was reminiscent of the { old days, therefore, when I watched | Vice President “Jack” Garner op- | erate in the senate the other day to get the judiciary reform bill through performed on that occasion with | even greater finesse than did Sena- tor Moses because Mr. Garner did not wait for cues from the floor of | the senate: he simply took charge | and, knowing what the job was, saw | to it that things were accomplished in record time. But the significance of this inci- dent should not be overlooked. It was noteworthy, of course, that the senate should pass the court bill and send it to the house in a total of six hours. It the Vice Pre precedent by senators to include in sional Record speeches they would | have made if the debate had been | prolonged. And yet it was the im. plication of the senate action that seems to me to be the most impor- | tant phase of that situation. The way I see the picture is this: The ease with which that bill was put through demonstrates that those | who opposed the original bill to add | Six new justices to the Supreme court were objecting only to the | court packing and not to the re. forms in procedure. The bill as vides for a n court prog judication of c« ssion to » Congres- it becomes law ¢ ges in the end that ad. ntroversy can be ac- | complished much more quic kly than | has been ase in the past. It does not include any addition to the | membership of the Supreme court and it does not lude sion for sending hand-; into the wvario ircuits dis- | tricts as the White House and the | Department of Justice may decide In other words, the new law leaves the judiciary system independent and again es it as a co- ordinate branch of the government, equal in all respects to the legisla- tive, which is congress. and the ex- ecutive, which is the President and the executive departments. There can be no doubt that this piece of Pro- i edu the any provi icked judges ana establis the layman the benefits may not immediately appear. It must be re- garded, however, simply as a piece of legislation that cuts much legal those who must avail themselves of the courts or those who are forced under jurisdiction of courts will come more nearly obtaining justice than heretofore. I have said in these columns be- fore that when the senate refused to accept the President's orders and pass legislation that would permit appoint six new justices to the Supreme court at one time, the President suffered one of the worst political defeats he has ever en- countered. He probably will never meet with another such disastrous setback. It was obvious to the vast major- ity of senators and representatives and to observers here within six weeks after Mr. Roosevelt submit. ted the court packing bill that he He re. fused nevertheless to admit defeat. In consequence, it took nearly six months of bitter and futile wran- as far as public So, congress has wasted nearly on a proposi- gible. It may be said that congress should remain in session under those circumstances and give all of necessary to delib- eration of measures before it. Yet, facts must be faced. One of these facts is that through all of the months prior to adjournment scores of members were wearing them- selves down fighting against a prop- osition with which they could not In the meantime, ton’s summer settled down. ington’s summer is a 2 : : Hak i i g § minimum of effort. In consequence, there has been some very bad legis- lation and congress is now wholly to blame for it, . * * A friend of mine, a well-known doctor, who is not a politician, knows nothing New York's about politics—a Fight man, in short, who minds his and tries to do the best job of which he is capable, that precipitated this discussion. He asked me why the newspapers throughout the country were giving 80 much space, front page space at that, to the political fight over the Democratic nomination for mayor in New York. My doctor friend observed that which is true, namely, that the may- or of New York is only mayor of that city and has no jurisdiction or power anywhere else; he observed as well that New York City is sim- ply a subdivis state of " f 43 nm of the in our nation. Further, he sug- gested that he, and he believed mil- lions of others, could not possibly have any interest in whether Tammany or the New Deal faction York City nm and their New should win the nominatic m 1 candidate. Superficially, the doctor was right. His thoughts, however, do not touch the root of that situation. Fundamentally, the battle between Tammany and the Democrats in New York is a battle between the line, conservative Democrats throughout the nation and the New WWaily headed by President Roosevelt. It is vitally important also to the Re- publicans for the reason that the Presidential election of 1940 is al- we will find conservatives rom whatever party aligned on one hand and radicals whatever To that extent, the New York primary and mayoralty election is the begin- of the pPailign. The bitterness that is gc ing to pre- vail from here has been given something of a preview by the charge by Senator Copeland, the Tammany candidate, that President Roosevelt was interfering in a pure- ly local fight. Senator Copeland's activities in the senate have been almost wholly antagonistic to the President and the New Deal gener- ally. Where the President has been sound, as the conservatives recog- nize sound policies, Senator Cope- land has fought alongside of the New Dealers. Otherwise, he has not concealed his opposition to rad- ical New Deal proposals. Thus, when Senator Copeland broke openly and accused the Pres- ident of stooping to local politics, he opened the way for conserva- tives everywhere to strike back at the political machine managed by Postmaster General Jim Farley in Mr. Roosevelt's behalf. As one house member suggested: ‘“‘Senator Copeland has put fire into the fight.” The selection of Senator Copeland by the famous Tammany organiza- tion in New York City was the sig- nal for the New Deal faction of the great city to take off their coats. They promptly announced selection of New York Supreme Court Justice Mahoney as their candidate against Copeland. There are four burrough organizations behind Mahoney, There is only the Tammany group behind Copeland. On the face of it, it would seem that the senator cannot win. The fact seems to be, however, that there will be a rather close race for the reason that some of the four organizations behind Ma- honey may not be able to control the Democratic votes in their baili- wicks as entirely as Tammany Hall will control Democrats so long af- filiated with that organization. Cer- tainly, according to the best advices I can get, the Copeland charge against Mr. Roosevelt is likely to swing a good many Democrats to the Copeland ticket. This will be so because New York City always has resented outside influences in its political battles. Senator Copeland can be counted upon as well to broaden the charge so that Mr. Far- ley's tentacles in New York City politics where he has long been ac- tive will be made to appear like the strangling, crushing arms of an oc- topus. In other words, the conserv- atives who are supporting Copeland will not let the charge of interfer- ence by the President become of £ - irom 1940 on 1 As eid
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers