Crooked Trails and Straight

The listener lost what followed. Once he thought he heard the name Tin Cup, but he could not be sure. Presently another fragment drifted to him. "...make our getaway and cache t...

A slight accident occurred at the jail, one so unimportant that Scanlan the jailer did not think it worth reporting to his chief. Blackwell, while eating, knocked a glass from t...

Curly's wooden face told nothing of what he was thinking. The first article of the creed of the frontier is to be game. Good or bad, the last test of a man is the way he takes h...

Kate galloped into the ranch plaza around which the buildings were set, slipped from her pony, and ran at once to the telephone. Bob was on a side porch mending a bridle.

It was perhaps on account of this good nature that Blackwell made a mistake. He picked on the young man to be the butt of his coarse pleasantries. Day after day he pointed his j...

Fendrick had told the exact truth. After leaving him Kate had ridden forward to the canyon and entered it. She did not mean to go much farther, but she took her time. More than...

Bolt belonged to the political party opposed to Cullison. He had been backed by Cass Fendrick, a sheepman in feud with the cattle interests and in particular with the Circle C o...

Across Dry Valley a dust cloud had been moving for hours. It rolled into Saguache at the brisk heels of a bunch of horses just about the time the town was settling itself to sup...

Sheriff Bolt, though a politician, was an honest man. It troubled him that Cullison's friends believed him to be a partisan in a matter of this sort. For which reason he met mor...

Kate was in her rose garden superintending the stable boy as he loosened the dirt around the roots of some of the bushes. She had returned to the Circle C for a day or two to gi...

Two men sat in a log cabin on opposite sides of a cheap table. One of them was immersed in a newspaper. His body was relaxed, his mind apparently at ease. The other watched him...

Cullison was not the man to acknowledge himself beaten so long as there was a stone unturned. In the matter of the Del Oro homestead claim he moved at once. All of the county co...

Shrilly Bob retorted. He was excited enough to be dangerous. "Don't you get the wrong idea. I'm going to make this stick. You'll turn and go back with me to the Circle C."

The old Arizona fashion of settling a difference of opinion with the six-gun had long fallen into disuse, but Saguache was still close enough to the stark primeval emotions to w...

Mackenzie was reading the _Sentinel_ while he ate a late breakfast. He had it propped against the water bottle, so that it need not interfere with the transportation of sausages...

After half a week in the saddle Lieutenant Bucky O'Connor of the Arizona Rangers and Curly Flandrau reached Saguache tired and travel-stained. They had combed the Rincons withou...

So he was, comparatively speaking. The pain in his arm had subsided. He had had a good sleep. And he was lying comfortably in a clean bed instead of hanging by the neck from the...

The house at the horse ranch was a long, low L-shaped adobe structure. The first impression Curly received was that of negligence. In places the roof sagged. A door in the rear...

The sun was shining in his face when Curly wakened. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Mac was nowhere in sight. Probably he had gone to get the horses.

The winding trail led up to the scrub pines and from there north into the hills. Curly had not traveled far when he heard the sound of a gun fired three times in quick successio...

She was in a khaki riding skirt, and she pulled herself to the saddle of her own horse. From this position she gave him final instructions before leaving. "Stay around the house...

Luck lay stretched full length on a bunk, his face, to the roof, a wreath of smoke from his cigar traveling slowly toward the ceiling into a filmy blue cloud which hung above hi...

A big game had been in progress all night at the Round Up Club. Now the garish light of day streamed through the windows, but the electric cluster still flung down its yellow gl...

"Do you mean that she is going to let my father be killed rather than tell what she knows?" Her voice was sharply incredulous, touched with a horror scarcely realized.

Her father scouted this as absurd. "Lost nothing. You couldn't lose her within forty miles of the ranch. She knows this country like a cow does the range. And say she was lost--...

Cullison and his friends proceeded down Papago street to the old plaza where their hotel was located. Their transit was an interrupted one, for these four cattlemen were among t...

One casual remark of Mackenzie had given Kate a clew. Even before she had explained it, Curly caught the point and began to dig for the truth. For though he was almost a boy, th...

Bucky O'Connor and his prisoner swung down the street side by side and turned in at the headquarters of the rangers. The officer switched on the light, shut the door, and indica...

They found the prodigal son with his sister and Laura London at the Del Mar. Repentance was writ large all over his face and manner. From Davis and from the girls he had heard t...

Curly was right when he said that those who knew about Sam's share in the planning of the Tin Cup hold-up would keep their mouths closed. All of the men implicated in the robber...

I. At the Round Up Club 143 II. Luck Meets an Old Acquaintance 151 III. An Initialed Hat 157 IV. Kate Uses Her Quirt 169 V. "Ain't She the Gamest Little Thoroughbred?" 178 VI. T...

CHAPTER PAGE I. Following a Crooked Trail 9 II. Camping with Old Man Trouble 23 III. At the End of the Road 33 IV. The Cullisons 49 V. Laura London 60 VI. A Bear Trap 74 VII. Ba...