Gunsight Pass How Oil Came To The Cattle Country And Brought A

It was a surprise to Dave to discover that the horse Steve had got for him was his own old favorite Chiquito. The pinto knew him. He tested this by putting him through some of h...

"Every once in a while he takes an interest. I prod him up to go out and look things over occasionally. He's president of the company, and I tell him he ought to know what's goi...

Jackpot Number Three hooked its tools the second day after Sanders's visit to that location. A few hours later its engine was thumping merrily and the cable rising and falling m...

The pursuit took the riders across a wide, undulating plain above which danced the dry heat of the desert. Lizards sunned themselves on flat rocks. A rattlesnake slid toward the...

Crawford and Dave, with their prisoner, lay out in the chaparral for an hour, then made their way back to Malapi by a wide circuit. They did not want to meet Shorty and Doble, f...

"I tell you, honey, the boy's a wonder," he insisted. "Knows what he wants and goes right after it. Don't waste any words. Don't beat around the bush. Don't let any one bluff hi...

Dave stood on the fence of one of the shipping pens at the Albuquerque stockyards and used a prod-pole to guide the bawling cattle below. The Fifty-Four Quarter Circle was loadi...

The change in the wind had cost three lives, but it had saved the Jackpot property and the feed on the range. After the fire in San Jacinto Cañon had broken through Hart's defen...

In the early morning Dave turned to rest his cramped limbs. He was in a day coach, and his sleep through the night had been broken. The light coming from the window woke him. He...

A man stood in the doorway, big, fat, swaggering. In his younger days his deep chest and broad shoulders had accompanied great strength. But fat had accumulated in layers. He wa...

Hart came up to his friend grinning. "Well, you old horn-toad, we got no kick comin'. Chiquito run a mighty pretty race. Only trouble was his laigs wasn't long enough."

"Oh, I'm so glad you've come!" she cried, tears in her voice. She caught her hands together in a convulsive little gesture. "Isn't it dreadful? I've been afraid all the time tha...

"I'll take off my hat to Dave," said Hart warmly. "He's chain lightnin'. I never did see anything like the way he took that street in two jumps. And game? Did you ever hear tell...

The responsibility Joyce had put upon him uplifted Dave. He had followed the horse-race gamblers to town on a purely selfish undertaking. But he had been caught in a cross-curre...

"Thought he'd run it over me, so I'd roost here on the roof, did he? Well, I'm after the ol' horn-toad full jump," the puncher murmured, a gay grin on his good-looking face.

To Sanders, working on afternoon tower at Jackpot Number Three, the lean, tanned driller in charge of operations was wise with an uncanny knowledge the newcomer could not fathom...

"Your future lies before you to be made or marred by yourself, Sanders. You owe it to the Governor who has granted this parole and to the good friends who have worked so hard fo...

The women of Malapi responded generously to the call Joyce made upon them to back their men in the fight against the fire in the chaparral. They were simple folk of a generation...

Brad Steelman sat hunched before a fire of piñon knots, head drooped low between his high, narrow shoulders. The restless black eyes in the dark hatchet face were sunk deeper no...

It was a land of splintered peaks, of deep, dry gorges, of barren mesas burnt by the suns of a million torrid summers. The normal condition of it was warfare. Life here had to p...

When she recovered consciousness Doble was splashing water in her face. She was lying on the bunk from which she had fled a few minutes earlier. The girl made a motion to rise a...

Dave knew no rest that night. He patrolled his line from San Jacinto to Cattle and back again, stopping always to lend a hand where the attack was most furious. The men of his c...

The girl writhed and twisted regardless of the pain, exerting every muscle of the strong young arm and shoulder. As well she might have tried to beat down an iron door with her...

On more careful consideration Crawford and Sanders decided against trying to float the Jackpot with local money except by the sale of enough stock to keep going until the compan...

When Shorty separated from Doble in Frio Cañon he rode inconspicuously to a tendejon where he could be snugly hidden from the public gaze and yet meet a few "pals" whom he could...

The two D Bar Lazy R punchers ate supper at Delmonico's. The restaurant was owned by Wong Chung. A Cantonese celestial did the cooking and another waited on table. The price of...

Juan Otero carried the news back to Malapi. He had been waiting on the crest of the hill to see the issue of the adventure and had come forward when Dave gave him a signal.

Sanders was on the next train. He was still much needed at Malapi to look after getting supplies and machinery and to arrange for a wagon train of oil teams, but he dropped or d...

Joyce came flying to her father's arms. The white lace of a nightgown showed beneath the dressing-robe she had hurriedly donned. A plait of dark hair hung across her shoulder fa...

The stars were out long before Dave's train drew into the suburbs of Denver. It crawled interminably through squalid residence sections, warehouses, and small manufactories, com...

The coyotes were barking when the cook's triangle brought Dave from his blankets. The objects about him were still mysterious in the pre-dawn darkness. The shouting of the wrang...

Dave knew he was stubborn. Not many men would have come on such a wild-goose chase to Denver in the hope of getting back a favorite horse worth so little in actual cash. But he...

Wakened by the gong, Dave lay luxuriously in the warmth of his blankets. It was not for several moments that he remembered the fight or the circumstances leading to it. The grin...

"I have decided not to accept your proposition to cooperate with you in financing the Jackpot Company, Mr. Sanders." Horace Graham pressed an electric button and a clerk appeare...

Crawford and Sanders rode rapidly toward Malapi. They stopped several times to examine places where they thought it possible Otero might have left the road, but they looked with...

Dave whistled. The pony pricked up its ears, looked round, and came straight to him. The young man laid his face against the soft, silky nose, fondled it, whispered endearments...

Jackpot number three had come in with a roar that shook the earth for half a mile. Deep below the surface there was a hiss and a crackle, the shock of rending strata giving way...

He had with him no field-glasses, but his eyes were trained to long-distance work. Years in the saddle on the range had made him an expert at reading such news as the landscape...

The booming of the guns died down. The acrid smoke that filled the room lifted to shredded strata. A man's deep breathing was the only sound in the heavy darkness.

"Don't seem to me we've hardly got any reamers to spare, Dug," drawled the young man sitting on the porch floor. "What's the trouble? Got a kink in yore casin'?"

The conspirators modified their plans to meet a new strategic situation. West was still of opinion that he had better use his card of entry to get his friends into the railroad...

Up in the hills back of Bear Cañon two men were camping. They breakfasted on slow elk, coffee, and flour-and-water biscuits. When they had finished, they washed their tin dishes...

The day lasted twenty-four hours in Malapi. As Sanders walked along Junipero Street, on his way to the downtown corral from Crawford's house, saloons and gambling-houses adverti...

If some one had made Emerson Crawford a present of a carload of Herefords he could not have been more pleased than he was at the result of the Jackpot crew's night adventure wit...

All the way back to Denver, while the train ran down through the narrow, crooked cañon, Dave's mind dwelt in a penumbra of horror. It was impossible he could have killed Doble,...