LITMIR.BIZ

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      The barn's shadow engulfed her and Jill, fearful that Stubbins might now be discovering her absence, moved faster. She brushed a post, lost her balance in the sharp turn and unexpectedly kicked over a bucket, waking what seemed to her every echo on the ranch. To the right, the bunkhouse door suddenly opened and a figure stood silhouetted in a gush of yellow light. Someone drawled, "That you, Bill?" Hard on this, she heard Stubbins' mealy accent bark across the yard. "Ashbey, where the devil have you been? She's given me the slip! Roust out!"

      At that she ran faster, circling the barn, seeing the man spring from the bunkhouse in hot pursuit. She collided against the sharp bars of a corral and said "darn!" in an aggravated, rising tone. She could not turn back, so she started to climb over; but that, too, was fatal. Boots thudded near by and an ungentle hand hauled her down from her perch. "Honey," said a soft, southern voice, "you got spunk, but yore buckin' the wrong brand."

      She marched meekly back to the house and into the light of the big room. Stubbins stared at her with a hard, glowering gaze. "Get to your room! Don't try that again, hear! I have men on guard around this house and they're ordered to shoot."

      Jill said, malice in her voice, "I told you, Mr. Stubbins, you'd have trouble keeping me. I'll scratch your eyes out yet." She went quickly to her room, this time hearing the key turn. There was another sound, too. Hoofs drummed on the hard ground outside and a man challenged, evoking a rumbling, familiar reply. "Oh, put up yore damn gun. Yuh'd think this was an army. It's me—Trono."

      The interview between Trono and Stubbins was very brief, as usual. The two men seemed to find little comfort in each other's company; for all their common crookedness. Trono strode across the room in long, aggressive steps, stopping directly in front of Stubbins.

      "Well, you got the girl. Now what you goin' to do with her?"

      "That's something you should have considered before you brought her to me," answered Stubbins. "It was a foolish thing to do. Supposing this gets out? Why, I'll have a fight on my hands. You should have left her at the JIB and seen to it she stayed right in the house until she was ready to pack up and leave the country."

      "Yeh? Yuh always got a better idea, ain't yuh?" grumbled Trono. "I brought her here because the sher'ff was roamin' around the Valley. Then that damn Red was causin' trouble. We pinned his ears back an' led him to the calaboose fin'lly. But yore the boss, so you tell me what yore goin' to do."

      "Mean to say the fellow is in jail? Oh, the devil! Now he'll spread the story and stir the county. My Godfrey, why didn't you put him out of the way?"

      Trono took the rebuke with ill grace. "Say, do yuh think I'm Jesse James? I been havin' plenty o' trouble the last thirty-six hours. Now I'm sharin' some o' it with you. It's yore job, anyhow. You jes' mix in an' do a few licks yoreself. As fer the red-head, the sher'ff got him booked fer kidnappin'. I think he'll have a hard time."

      "Kidnappin'? Hm. That sounds interestin'" Stubbins studied his ally. "He ought to be put out of the way, my lad. He's a dangerous critter."

      "How about this?" said Trono, leaning forward. "We'll jes' hide the girl some place an' then take a bunch o' the boys down to Powder an' lynch him fer doin' the deed. Then he won't give us no bother."

      Stubbins nodded. "Now you're thinking what you should have thought some time ago. But I can't have her here. Somebody's liable to drop in and see her. Got to put her in some other cache."

      "Thought you had a way with wimmen." Trono grinned.

      Stubbins pressed his lips together and looked angry. "You take her, Trono. Now. Over the mountains to the last line rider's cabin. Grub there. Then in a couple days I'll see to it a lynchin' party starts for Powder."

      "So I'm to pull the coals outa the fire again?" Trono was sullenly intractable. "Why don't you do it yoreself? Supposin' I get caught?"

      "Afraid?"

      "Hell! I'll go. But what you goin' to do with her after that?"

      Stubbins hadn't decided that. Truly, Jill was becoming a burden to him. But he didn't say as much to Trono; the burly foreman was given to spells of ridicule that Stubbins disliked. So he dropped his head significantly and said, "That will take care of itself. This newcomer must be fixed first. I'll get the lady."

      He roused Jill and escorted her into the hall. Trono grinned sourly at her and winked portentously at Stubbins. "Jill, we got to go fer a little ride. Don't you be afeerd, though. It's all right."

      The girl lifted her shoulders. She knew, in a half certain way, what they were about, though she didn't understand that it implicated Tom Lilly. Resistance was utterly useless. Mustering her courage she lifted her clear, oval face to Stubbins. "I'm already becoming a burden to you, am I not? All right, Mr. Stubbins. You'll find that a woman has a thousand ways of fighting back you never heard of. And, remember, I'll scratch your eyes out before you are finished with me."

      Trono led her into the yard. In a few minutes a Cross man led around a second horse and presently the girl was traveling again. This time southward. She had managed to smile somewhat at Stubbins and assumed an air of triumph. Here in the utter darkness, bound for an unknown destination, this triumph deserted her.

      "Oh, Red, where are you! I wish you'd come!"

      IN POWDER'S BASTILLE

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       "I'm a peaceful man. Fightin' I don't like. But here I am, now who do I shoot?"—Joe Breedlove.

      Powder sweltered under the baking, midday heat; Powder shivered with the midnight cold. It was a town of violent extremes, living in a state of suspended animation for long periods of time until the cowboy and his money rode furiously in to spill the red paint. Life here was indolent and easy until the slumbering passions flared up; then it became cruel, raw, unjust. Such was Powder as it appeared to Tom as he surveyed it from the second floor of the sheriff's office during the two days of his confinement.

      There was nothing much to divert him, save his own thoughts and these were not of a kind to guarantee peace. He was never the man to play possum; he had no easy-going philosophy to console him when things went wrong. Rather his quick temper fed upon his injuries and the injuries done to others, growing greater, more volcanic. So it flickered and flared under pressure, ready to burst forth at the first opportunity, making of him an extremely dangerous character. The sheriff, visiting now and then, saw this and in an easy-going way tried to humor him.

      "Now it don't ever help a man to hold his breath until his lungs cave in," he warned. "That's what yore doin'. You'll bust yore G string and be plumb out of harmony if you don't just float with the tide a while. Sing yoreself a sweet little ditty an' pretend yore takin' the rest cure."

      "That," muttered Tom Lilly, "is what Joe Breedlove would say. Yeh, 'Take it easy' is his fav'rite motto."

      "Yore friend has got plenty of sense," said the sheriff. "An oiled wheel lasts longer than a dry one."

      "Hell! I'm not built that way. Yore a fine fellow to come round here talkin' like Santy Claus. It ain't no skin off yore nose that they's a bunch of wild men up in the hills pickin' the JIB to pieces."

      He couldn't quite understand the sheriff. The man draped himself against the door, smiling down his pipestem. There was apparent honesty in his eyes and a certain stubborn fearlessness in the cut of the grizzled, middle-aged face. "Seems to me you didn't have any friendly notions to'rds the JIB when you went into Pilgrim Valley," said he. "Why all the concern now?"

      "I hate a double crosser," said Tom. "It natcherlly makes me riled."

      "Well, you're buckin' some powerful gents, my son. Take the advice of an old campaigner. Slick does it in this country. Don't go around announcin' your intentions. Just sing low until you're ready to slam in with the artillery."

      "Fine to say," grunted Tom. "But do you realize they's a girl bein' held somewhere in those hills? By the

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