Oh, You Tex! | Page 4

mopped a perspiring face.
"Wow! This is your lucky day, Jack. Ain't you got better sense than to
trail rustlers with no weapon but a Sunday-School text? Well, here's
hopin'! Maybe we'll meet again in the sweet by an' by. You never can
always tell."
CHAPTER II
"I'LL BE SEVENTEEN, COMING GRASS"
The camper looked up from the antelope steak he was frying, to watch

a man cross the shallow creek. In the clear morning light of the
Southwest his eyes had picked the rider out of the surrounding
landscape nearly an hour before. For at least one fourth of the time
since this discovery he had been aware that his approaching visitor was
Pedro Menendez, of the A T O ranch.
"Better 'light, son," suggested Roberts.
The Mexican flashed a white-toothed smile at the sizzling steak, took
one whiff of the coffee and slid from the saddle. Eating was one of the
things that Pedro did best.
"The ol' man--he sen' me," the boy explained. "He wan' you at the
ranch."
Further explanation waited till the edge of Pedro's appetite was blunted.
The line-rider lighted a cigarette and casually asked a question.
"Whyfor does he want me?"
It developed that the Mexican had been sent to relieve Roberts because
the latter was needed to take charge of a trail herd. Not by the flicker of
an eyelash did the line-rider show that this news meant anything to him.
It was promotion--better pay, a better chance for advancement, an
easier life. But Jack Roberts had learned to take good and ill fortune
with the impassive face of a gambler.
"Keep an eye out for rustlers, Pedro," he advised before he left. "You
want to watch Box Cañon. Unless I'm 'way off, the Dinsmore gang are
operatin' through it. I 'most caught one red-handed the other day. Lucky
for me I didn't. You an' Jumbo would 'a' had to bury me out on the lone
prairee."
Nearly ten hours later Jack Roberts dismounted in front of the
whitewashed adobe house that was the headquarters of the A T O ranch.
On the porch an old cattleman sat slouched in a chair tilted back against
the wall, a run-down heel of his boot hitched in the rung. The wrinkled
coat he wore hung on him like a sack, and one leg of his trousers had

caught at the top of the high boot. The owner of the A T O was a
heavy-set, powerful man in the early fifties. Just now he was smoking a
corncob pipe.
The keen eyes of the cattleman watched lazily the young line-rider
come up the walk. Most cowboys walked badly; on horseback they
might be kings of the earth, but out of the saddle they rolled like sailors.
Clint Wadley noticed that the legs of this young fellow were straight
and that he trod the ground lightly as a buck in mating-season.
"He'll make a hand," was Wadley's verdict, one he had arrived at after
nearly a year of shrewd observation.
But no evidence of satisfaction in his employee showed itself in the
greeting of the "old man." He grunted what might pass for "Howdy!" if
one were an optimist.
Roberts explained his presence by saying: "You sent for me, Mr.
Wadley."
"H'm! That durned fool York done bust his laig. Think you can take a
herd up the trail to Tascosa?"
"Yes, sir."
"That's the way all you brash young colts talk. But how many of 'em
will you lose on the way? How sorry will they look when you deliver
the herd? That's what I'd like to know."
Jack Roberts was paying no attention to the grumbling of his boss--for
a young girl had come out of the house. She was a slim little thing, with
a slender throat that carried the small head like the stem of a rose. Dark,
long-lashed eyes, eager and bubbling with laughter, were fixed on
Wadley. She had slipped out on tiptoe to surprise him. Her soft fingers
covered his eyes.
"Guess who!" she ordered.

"Quit yore foolishness," growled the cattleman. "Don't you-all see I'm
talkin' business?" But the line-rider observed that his arm encircled the
waist of the girl.
With a flash of shy eyes the girl caught sight of Roberts, who had been
half hidden from her behind the honeysuckle foliage.
"Oh! I didn't know," she cried.
The owner of the A T O introduced them. "This is Jack Roberts, one of
my trail foremen. Roberts--my daughter Ramona. I reckon you can see
for yoreself she's plumb spoiled."
A soft laugh welled from the throat of the girl. She knew that for her at
least her father was all bark and no bite.
"It's you that is spoiled, Dad," she said in the slow, sweet voice of the
South.