The Quirt

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The Quirt, by B.M. Bower

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Title: The Quirt
Author: B.M. Bower
Illustrator: Anton Otto Fischer
Release Date: September 3, 2006 [EBook #19166]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: Cover]

THE QUIRT

=By B.M. Bower=
GOOD INDIAN
LONESOME LAND
THE UPHILL CLIMB
THE GRINGOS
THE RANCH AT THE WOLVERINE
THE FLYING U'S LAST STAND
JEAN OF THE LAZY A
THE PHANTOM HERD
THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX
STARR, OF THE DESERT
THE LOOKOUT MAN
CABIN FEVER
SKYRIDER
THE THUNDER BIRD
RIM O' THE WORLD
THE QUIRT

[Illustration: Al's gun spoke, and Warfield sagged at the knees and the shoulders, and slumped to the ground. FRONTISPIECE. See page 294.]

THE QUIRT
BY B.M. BOWER

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY ANTON OTTO FISCHER

[Illustration]

BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1920

Copyright, 1920,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
* * * *
All rights reserved
Published May, 1920 Reprinted, May, 1920 Reprinted, July, 1920 Reprinted, October, 1920

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. LITTLE FISH 1
II. THE ENCHANTMENT OF LONG DISTANCE 12
III. REALITY IS WEIGHED AND FOUND WANTING 22
IV. "SHE'S A GOOD GIRL WHEN SHE AIN'T CRAZY" 38
V. A DEATH "BY ACCIDENT" 54
VI. LONE ADVISES SILENCE 68
VII. THE MAN AT WHISPER 85
VIII. "IT TAKES NERVE JUST TO HANG ON" 100
IX. THE EVIL EYE OF THE SAWTOOTH 115
X. ANOTHER SAWTOOTH "ACCIDENT" 126
XI. SWAN TALKS WITH HIS THOUGHTS 144
XII. THE QUIRT PARRIES THE FIRST BLOW 158
XIII. LONE TAKES HIS STAND 168
XIV. "FRANK'S DEAD" 178
XV. SWAN TRAILS A COYOTE 192
XVI. THE SAWTOOTH SHOWS ITS HAND 200
XVII. YACK DON'T LIE 216
XVIII. "I THINK AL WOODRUFF'S GOT HER" 233
XIX. SWAN CALLS FOR HELP 245
XX. KIDNAPPED 255
XXI. "OH, I COULD KILL YOU!" 264
XXII. "YACK, I LICK YOU GOOD IF YOU BARK" 277
XXIII. "I COULDA LOVED THIS LITTLE GIRL" 284
XXIV. ANOTHER STORY BEGINS 296

THE QUIRT
CHAPTER ONE
LITTLE FISH
Quirt Creek flowed sluggishly between willows which sagged none too gracefully across its deeper pools, or languished beside the rocky stretches that were bone dry from July to October, with a narrow channel in the center where what water there was hurried along to the pools below. For a mile or more, where the land lay fairly level in a platter-like valley set in the lower hills, the mud that rimmed the pools was scored deep with the tracks of the "TJ up-and-down" cattle, as the double monogram of Hunter and Johnson was called.
A hard brand to work, a cattleman would tell you. Yet the TJ up-and-down herd never seemed to increase beyond a niggardly three hundred or so, though the Quirt ranch was older than its lordly neighbors, the Sawtooth Cattle Company, who numbered their cattle by tens of thousands and whose riders must have strings of fifteen horses apiece to keep them going; older too than many a modest ranch that had flourished awhile and had finished as line-camps of the Sawtooth when the Sawtooth bought ranch and brand for a lump sum that looked big to the rancher, who immediately departed to make himself a new home elsewhere: older than others which had somehow gone to pieces when the rancher died or went to the penitentiary under the stigma of a long sentence as a cattle thief. There were many such, for the Sawtooth, powerful and stern against outlawry, tolerated no pilfering from their thousands.
The less you have, the more careful you are of your possessions. Hunter and Johnson owned exactly a section and a half of land, and for a mile and a half Quirt Creek was fenced upon either side. They hired two men, cut what hay they could from a field which they irrigated, fed their cattle through the cold weather, watched them zealously through the summer, and managed to ship enough beef each fall to pay their grocery bill and their men's wages and have a balance sufficient to buy what clothes they needed, and perhaps pay a doctor if one of them fell ill. Which frequently happened, since Brit was becoming a prey to rheumatism that sometimes kept him in bed, and Frank occasionally indulged himself in a gallon or so of bad whisky and suffered afterwards from a badly deranged digestion.
Their house was a two-room log cabin, built when logs were easier to get than lumber. That the cabin contained two rooms was the result of circumstances rather than design. Brit had hauled from the mountain-side logs long and logs short, and it had seemed a shame to cut the long ones any shorter. Later, when the outside world had crept a little closer to their wilderness--as, go where you will, the outside world has a way of doing--he had built a