North of 36

IT WAS morning of an autumn day on the old rancho of Laguna de Sol. Although flowers lacked, the leaves of the live oaks held their perennial course unchanged, the heavy pendant...

IN THE front room of a raw board building, on which carpenters still were laboring noisily, sat a tall man at a table, pleasantly humming a tune to himself as he bent over his t...

BLANCOCITO had dozed in the sun for a considerable interval. Hearing a sound at the front door, he turned an idle eye, and sprang back with a snort at sight of the unusual appar...

“MEN——” Taisie meant to say “Good morning, men,” as usually she did if she came to the cook house door before they had finished breakfast. But this morning she hesitated, halted.

IT WAS not the custom of the young mistress of Del Sol to ride out to meet strangers at her gate. She received callers in her own rude office or her almost ruder parlor. To meet...

THE great herd, scattered over a mile of grazing ground, by now was well quieted. Wearied by their own exertions, some of the animals were lying down, as though aware that the e...

NO blue smoke rose against the far horizon of the wild paradise through which these pioneers of a new industry were passing. Civilized, semi-civilized, even savage mankind lacke...

THE cattle, full fed and well-watered, had bedded down in their compact oblong, willing to rest after two days’ hard march. Nabours had doubled the night guard. The men in pairs...

“WE can’t do nothing more to-night.” Nabours had joined his companions at the fire. “Find a critter if you can, and kill it for supper,” he added, turning to Cinquo, who white a...

THE sun sank gently back of the grasslands encircling Abilene. The night chill came, the quavering wail of the coyotes crept closer to the outskirts of the town, the unbelievabl...

IT was high noon of the third day north of the Red River; a frank spring noon on the prairies. All the morning nothing except the countless wild game had offered life and motion...

NOW it was noon of the next day. The cattle had been pushed close to the south bank of the great mysterious river. The foreman sat with his employer on the steep crest of the ra...

FOUR days later the transient population of Abilene began to scatter. No one knew when another herd would come, if ever. The great Del Sol herd now was split up, a portion comin...

“MOVE ’em out, boys! We’ll see what’ll happen next.” Nabours spoke with a half sigh in his voice. The departure of McMasters and of the soldiers had left a strange feeling of lo...

THE reconstructed and augmented Del Sol herd passed on northward steadily, as though impelled by some cosmic force. It had required well-nigh a week to cut the two herds and ble...

“Let me bring two or three of my boys down and help you-all throw back a lot of these cows and calfs. I’ll leave couple boys to hold our stuff. Come on up again and look it over.”

FOR the last two hundred miles of the long trail up from Texas, life was less eventful for the Del Sol men. The cattle now were shaken down to the daily routine of marching and...

THE foreman of Del Sol stood, hands in pockets, for some time, looking down the trace whither the late visitor had disappeared. His head was dropped forward, as one in studious...

AN EMPIRE in embryo lay threading out vein filaments, insentient, antenatal—Texas, not having an identity, not yet born, but soon to be a world. What a world! How rich a world!

OF THE mysterious night marauders who—to their own sorrow—had invaded the Del Sol trail camp, no further trace was gained or sought. They had vanished as though into thin air, a...

As the cattle quenched their thirst the men quietly pressed them to the left of the route, urging them one side, blocking further progress. The half-wild cattle seemed to know t...

JIM NABOURS, who had known but little sleep, kicked out of his blankets before sunup and stood, grimy, haggard and moody, his hands in pockets, his hat pushed back on his head....

“I’m willing to admit there is such a place as Aberlene now,” grumbled Nabours, “but it ain’t inhabitated by no human beings. This here idea of meeting a herd of cows with a bra...

“COME right on in, you poor child.” When Taisie Lockhart first had climbed down from the lofty cart seat and approached the front door of the Drovers’ Cottage, she walked straig...

ONE delay after another, one disaster with another, the Del Sol adventurers now were far into their second month on the trail. The summer was approaching, although they had as y...

THAT night the stars, indeed, almost tallied with Cinquo’s description in their pointed brilliances. The wind was nothing now, the silence, save for a few quavering coyotes, was...

AT midnight the tired herd, after the strange fashion of cattle, rose almost as with one impulse and began slightly to straggle before lying down on the other side. The four men...

THE reports came steadily—ten, fifteen, twenty. It was easy for the trail men to locate the rifleman. They advanced rapidly in his direction. As they topped a little ridge there...

UNTIL now Jim Nabours, Texan native born and, barring his travels under General Kirby Smith, of small experience abroad, had been in the habit of regarding his own horizon as su...

“AND I’ll bet this is the sorriest herd of cows that ever was made on the soil of Texas!” There was grief in the tones of old Jim Nabours as he turned away from the dusty flat w...

The keen ear of the old Mexican again served. Afar they heard a tinkling. From behind a screening mesquite fringe showed the head of the remuda, following a gray bell mare at a...

THE sun-drenched landscape of the Southwest lay warm, indolent, full of somber fire. The home buildings rested in the arm of a great live-oak grove, opposite whose opening appea...

A party of six strangers, all armed, were engaged in argument with as many of the Del Sol men, who had ridden between them and the edge of the herd. The plunging of the horses a...

UPON even the most seasoned outdoor men the weather has undeniable influence. Came now a bright sun and gentle winds. The prairie lay like a silver sea. The surliness of the men...

DAN McMASTERS, sheriff of Gonzales and captain of state Rangers, rode into the straggling village of Austin, capital of a state so large a horseman could not cross it in a month...

LEN Hersey, one of the swing men, condescended to converse with Cinquo Centavos, the fourteen-year-old horse herder. They sat their horses in the sunshine, watching the distant...

“WE got ’em going!” called Jim Nabours, riding back to his men. “Keep ’em moving! Push ’em hard for the first day, so’s they’ll be tired and sleep good. Look at them long shanks...

LATE at night the leaders of the herd sat talking, but the start on the next day was early. The country ahead was now open and free of buffalo. Once more the great herd trailed...

THE passengers who descended from the train left the coaches nearly empty. The head of steel was to the westward and new towns were projected for thirty miles; but the greater f...

“CUSS take the law!” fumed old Jim Nabours. “I never seen nothing but trouble come out of law. Ef it wouldn’t of been for them Ranger boys we’d of killed Rudabaugh and his outfi...

DIMINISHED but undaunted, the great herd swept north once more into the wide, sweet, unknown world. The mingled grasslands and narrow timber tracts which lay between the heads o...

ONCE upon a time the immortal gods, desirous of playing their favorite game, in which mortals are used as pawns, cast down upon the surface of the earth their great chessboard....

THE morning advanced. The riders had begun to reassert the dominance of man and horse over horned kine. Band joining band, converging, controlled, the approaching dust clouds se...

THE Del Sol men with their new-found friend turned back to bid a temporary farewell to Jesse Chisholm and his wagon train, departing thereafter for the herd, which had been held...

RUDABAUGH and his band, early on the following morning, broke camp and crossed the Red River, finding no difficulty in making the ford at the old Whisky Trail. They rode a dozen...

ALL day alone, a stranger, almost a prisoner in Lou Gore’s little room, Taisie Lockhart for once in her life was now almost in a condition of hysteria. The strain and stress of...

JIM NABOURS, his shirt front bulging, approached the door of the Drovers’ Cottage, near which he found a man tinkling a steel triangle, which one day soon would boom a summons t...

THIRTY miles down the Red River, where it originally was crossed by the old Arbuckle Trail, early known as the Whisky Trail, Rudabaugh and his men lay encamped. They were and fo...