Oh, You Tex!

Day was breaking in the Panhandle. The line-rider finished his breakfast of buffalo-hump, coffee, and biscuits. He had eaten heartily, for it would be long after sunset before h...

The camper looked up from the antelope steak he was frying, to watch a man cross the shallow creek. In the clear morning light of the Southwest his eyes had picked the rider out...

Jack Roberts was in two minds whether to stop at the Longhorn saloon. He needed a cook in his trail outfit, and the most likely employment agency in Texas during that decade was...

Clint Wadley, massive and powerful, slouched back in his chair with one leg thrown over an arm of it. He puffed at a corncob pipe, and through the smoke watched narrowly with ke...

Captain Ellison was preparing for the Adjutant-General a report of a little affair during which one of his men had been obliged to snuff out the lives of a couple of Mexican hor...

Outside the door of the commandant's office Arthur Ridley stood for a moment and glanced nervously up and down the dirt road. In a hog-leather belt around his waist was six thou...

Long since the sun had slid behind the horizon edge and given place to a desert night of shimmering moonlight and far stars. From the enchanted mesa Rutherford Wadley descended...

Rutherford Wadley struck across country toward the rim-rock. Anger burned high in him, and like the bully he was he took it out of his good horse by roweling its sides savagely....

To Jack Roberts, engaged at the Delmonico restaurant in the serious business of demolishing a steak smothered in onions, came Pedro Menendez with a strange story of a man lying...

The big cattleman from New Mexico who was talking with the owner of the A T O threw his leg across the arm of the chair. "The grass is good on the Pecos this year. Up in Mexico[...

Through the great gray desert with its freakish effects of erosion a rider had moved steadily in the hours of star-strewn darkness. He had crossed the boundary of that No Man's...

The Tascosa stage was full. Its passengers were "packed like Yanks at Libby Prison," according to one of them, an ex-Confederate who had drifted West after the war. They were of...

The deputy sheriff broke out in excited annoyance. "All right! I wash my hands of it. They can lynch the Mexican soon as they've a mind to. Let 'em go to it. Here I send for a c...

Jack Roberts liked to get his information first hand. On his way to the jail he deflected, passed up the wide, dusty main street, and stopped at a log "hogan" made of _bois d'ar...

"Better p'int for the hills, Mr. Ranger." ... "A whole passel of sheriffs can't save the greaser." ... "Don't you-all try an' stop us if you know what's good for you." ... "Sked...

Clint Wadley took his daughter to the end of the street where his sister lived, blowing her up like a Dutch uncle every foot of the way. The thing she had done had violated his...

As soon as Captain Ellison heard of what had happened at Tascosa, he went over on the stage from Mobeetie to look at the situation himself. He dropped in at once to see his old...

Ramona sat on the porch in the gathering darkness. She had been reading aloud to her father, but he had fallen asleep beside her in his big armchair. During these convalescent d...

The territory which Captain Ellison had to cover to find the Dinsmore gang was as large as Maine. Over this country the buffalo-hunter had come and gone; the cattleman was comin...

Jack Roberts did not leave town inconspicuously with his prisoner in the middle of the night. He made instead a public exit, for Captain Ellison wanted to show the Panhandle tha...

Except for desultory firing the Kiowas left the islanders alone for the rest of the day. The fever of the wounded man mounted. Most of the time he was out of his head, and in to...

When Ridley heard the faint _plop_ of the Ranger's body as it dropped into the water, his heart died under the fifth rib. He was alone--alone with a wounded man in his care, and...

"Everybody's praising you because you stayed with that Dinsmore man and saved his life at the risk of your own--after he had treated you so mean too. I'm so proud of you."

"Skedaddle, you damn jayhawker," was his cavalier farewell. "But listen. If ever I get the deadwood on you an' yore outfit, I'll sure put you through. You know me, Dinsmore. I w...

Jumbo Wilkins came wheezing into the Sunset Trail corral, where Jack Roberts was mending a broken bridle. "'Lo, Tex. Looks like you're gittin' popular, son. Folks a-comin' in fi...

Mr. Peter Dinsmore was of both an impulsive and obstinate disposition. He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. Somewhere he had heard that if a man desired his business well...

"Is he? Girl, he could talk a hind leg off'n a buckskin mule, Jumbo could." He stopped to chuckle. "Oncet, when we were drivin' a bunch of yearlin's on the Brazos, one of the bo...

"Dog it, Jack, we got to go after the Dinsmores," said Ellison, pounding the table with his fist. "I've just had a letter from the old man wantin' to know why we don't get resul...

"I've found what we're lookin' for, Art. I drifted across a ridge an' looked down into a draw this evenin'. A fellow was ridin' herd on a bunch of cows. They looked to me like a...

With a heart that pounded queerly Arthur watched his friend cross the valley and work his way to the ridge beyond. Even after Jack had disappeared, he waited, nerves jumpy, for...

Pete Dinsmore dropped a coffee-pot and took three strides to his rifle. His brother Homer and Steve Gurley garnished themselves promptly with weapons. They joined the lookout, a...

When Wadley made to Jack Roberts the offer he had spoken of to his daughter, the face of that young man lighted up at once. But without hesitation he refused the chance to manag...

Night fell on both a dry and fireless camp for the outlaws who had tried to rob the Clarendon-Tascosa stage. They had covered a scant twenty miles instead of the eighty they sho...

They had been back at the ranch several weeks, and 'Mona was tired of practicing on the piano and reading Scott's novels after her work about the house was done. She was restles...

It was only recently that Clint Wadley had become a man of wealth, and life in the Panhandle was even yet very primitive according to present-day standards. There was no railroa...

He led her back to the camp-fire and on the way picked up the bird he had shot. 'Mona saw that he noticed her limp, though he said nothing about it.

Roberts picked up from the fort a Mescalero Apache famous as a trailer. He reckoned to be rather expert in that line himself, but few white men could boast of such skill as old...

If 'Mona lives to be eighty the high-lights of that wild ride will never fade from her memory. The mesas rolled in long swells as far as the eye could see. Through the chaparral...

Night fell before the rescue party reached Palo Duro. The cañon was at that time a _terra incognita_ to these cattlemen of the Panhandle. To attempt to explore it in the darknes...

The boulder cave to which the Apaches had driven Dinsmore and Ramona had long since been picked out by the outlaws as a defensible position in case of need. The ledge that ran u...

Jack crept closer, very carefully. He was morally certain that the defenders held the ledge, but it would not do to make a mistake. Lives were at stake--one life much more preci...

Rescued and rescuers rode out of the cañon as soon as the Apaches had been driven away. Nobody suggested that the Indians who had been killed in the surprise attack be buried. T...

Ellison looked up, leaned back in his chair, and tugged at his goatee. "Well, Tex, you sure were thorough. Four men in the Dinsmore outfit, an' inside o' two days three of 'em d...

For a moment Dinsmore did not move. Then he slouched forward. He noticed that the Ranger was not armed. Another surprise met him when he stepped into the outer room. The jailer...

Arthur Ridley, seated on the porch between Clint Wadley and Ramona, was annoying one and making himself popular with the other. For he was maintaining, very quietly but very ste...

The Governor had been himself a cattleman. Before that he had known Ellison and Wadley during the war. Therefore he lent a friendly ear to the tale told him by his old-time frie...