Oh, You Tex!

akfast of buffalo-hump, coffee, and biscuits. He had eaten heartil

bled a cowboy ditty as he packed

on and beans

be eatin'

rinsed them in the current of the creek he annou

my outfit s

cattle for n

of youth set his feet to moving. Why should he not dance? He was one and twenty, stood five feet eleven in his socks, and weighed one hundred and seventy pounds of bon

a of seven cow-ponies grazing in a draw. Of these he roped one an

the purple, pink, and scarlet blossoms of the cacti and with the white, lilylike buds of the Spanish bayonet. The yucca and the prickly pear were abloom. He swept the panorama with trained eyes. In the di

d to do with cattle. Though cows, half hidden in the brush, melted into the color of the hillside, he picked them out uner

up these strays and drive them back to their own range. For in those days, before the barbed wire had reache

The recumbent man was a mountain of flesh; how he ever climbed to a saddle was a miracle; how a little c

," the fat

r or two before by his aggressive championship of his native State. Some

returned the

losin' flesh. Took up anothe

ils and tough as whipcord. His eyes were quick and wary. In spite of the imps of mischief that just now lighted them, one got an impres

omptly. "You don't look to me like you weigh an ounce ov

f bacon an' some lil' steaks an' a pan or two o' flapjacks an' mebbe nine or ten biscuits. Afterward I

cross the bar at the Bird Cage, co

never seen me shootin' up no towns or raisin' hell wh

t alone more than you do when it

ealin' the sugar. Say, that reminds me. I'm plumb out o' sugar. Can you loan me some till P

re. Jumbo mentioned that he had found an A T O cow dead by a water-hole. They spoke incidentally of the Dinsmore gang, a band of rustlers operating in No Man's Land. They had l

empty spaces. The land-waves swallowed him. Once more he followed draws, c

nd. Smoke meant that some human being was abroad in the land, and every man

t that somebody was branding. The present business of Roberts was to find out what brand was on

rider understood the sign language of the plains. He was being "waved around." The man was serving notice upon him to pass in a wide

fire picked up a rifle lying at his feet and droppe

volver was of no use at this distance. For a moment he hesitated.

the left and vanished into an arroyo. Then, without an instant's loss of time, he put his pony swiftly up the draw toward a "rim-rock" edging a mesa. Over to th

in a treeless country, covered with polecat brush. Through this he plunged

through the brush, crouching as he moved. With a minimum of noise and a

n on horseback driving a calf. The mount was a sorrel with white stockings and a splash of white on the nose. The distance w

to the sandy wash. He knelt down and studied intently the hoofprints written in the

the gulch and returned to the cow-pony waiti

mble along and see where o

of the gulch the man on the sorrel had turned to the left. The cowboy turn

ETE DINSM

ANO

ack. "Reckon I won't take Pete's ad

e, as lonely riders often do on the plains or in the hills, but from the

long that t

ge of it the barrel of a rifle projected. Behind it was a face mas

mayed or even surprised,

r. I reckon you're callin

of lead-poisonin' inside o' five

s would have found a canter none too fast. But Jack Roberts held to a steady road gait. Not once did he look back-but every foot of the way till he had turned a bend

ange the rider moppe

il rustlers with no weapon but a Sunday-School text? Well, here's hopin'!