The Heart of the Range

The Heart of the Range

Project Gutenberg's The Heart of the Range, by William Patterson White This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Heart of the Range
Author: William Patterson White
Release Date: December 16, 2003 [EBook #10473]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[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.