The Coming of the Law

If the passengers on the west-bound train that pulled up at the little red wooden station at Dry Bottom at the close of a June day in 18--, were interested in the young man bear...

The courthouse was a low, one-story redbrick building, sitting well back from the street. It was evidently newly built, for an accumulation of débris, left by the workmen, still...

Judge Graney rose and leaned over the table, taking the young man's hand and holding it tightly. Then he sat down again and resumed smoking. Neither man said a word during the h...

In the two weeks that followed his arrival at Dry Bottom, Hollis had much time to meditate upon the great change that had come into his life. His conclusion that there was nothi...

Hollis was not frightened, though he was in a position that might have aroused fear or apprehension in any man's mind. He was alone, the man had him covered with the rifle, and...

Rumor, that mysterious disseminator of news whose tongues are legion, whispered that the Dry Bottom _Kicker_ was to come to life. Wherefore curiosity led many of Dry Bottom's ci...

It was mid-July--and hot. The sun shone continually; the nights were uncomfortable, stifling. The dust was everywhere and grew deeper and lighter as the days passed. Water grew...

On Friday evening previous to the Saturday on which the _Kicker_ was to be issued for the fifth consecutive time by Hollis, Potter did not ride out to the Circle Bar. There stil...

It was about one o'clock in the afternoon when the _Kicker_ appeared on Dry Bottom's street. At about five minutes after one, Potter left the front of the office and walked to t...

It was after seven o'clock when Hollis mounted his pony in the rear of the _Kicker_ office and rode out over the plains toward the Circle Bar. He was properly elated by the outc...

At about the time that the storm had overtaken Hollis, Potter was unsaddling his pony at the Circle Bar corral gate. A little later he was on the wide lower gallery of the ranch...

Hollis's tall figure lay pitifully slack on a bed in the Hazelton cabin. Nellie Hazelton had given him what care she could out of her limited knowledge and now nothing more coul...

The Cimarron doctor's fears for the wound on Hollis's head had proved unfounded and on the tenth day after his experience on the night of the storm, Hollis was sitting on the Ha...

Perhaps there were some persons in Union County who, acquainted with the details of the attack on Hollis, expected to read an account of it in the _Kicker_. If there were any su...

Hollis alone, of all the men whose cattle grazed on the Circle Bar side of the Rabbit-Ear, really doubted that Dunlavey would have the courage to inaugurate a war against the sm...

"Allen has been sent over here from Lazette to assist us in establishing the law. He was formerly sheriff of Colfax County, having been defeated by the Cattlemen's Association b...

The following day Hollis rode to town over the Dry Bottom trail. Had he followed a perfectly natural inclination he would have taken the Coyote, for it would have brought him to...

Dusk had fallen by the time Greasy had been brought to the bunkhouse, and Mrs. Norton had lighted the kerosene lamps when Norton and Hollis, assured of the safety of the prisone...

When Hollis got out of bed at six o'clock that same morning he heard surprising sounds outside. Slipping on his clothes he went to the window and looked out. Men were yelling at...

The next issue of the _Kicker_ contained many things of interest to its readers. Now that the drought had been broken, Union County could proceed with its business of raising ca...

During the week following Ed Hazelton's departure for Chicago Hollis did not see much of Nellie. In the few days preceding his departure she had not allowed her brother to see h...

Shortly after noon on the same day Hollis, finding work irksome, closed his desk with a bang, told Potter that he was going home, mounted his pony, and loped the animal out the...

The crash of Ten Spot's pistols aroused Nellie Hazelton, and she sat up and stared stupidly about--at Hollis, who was just rising from the floor; at Ten Spot, who still stood in...

Of course Yuma had been amply punished for his part in the attack on Nellie Hazelton, but there still remained Dunlavey--who had instigated it. Hollis was aware of the uselessne...

Norton opened the door a trifle and called "One man at a time!" There were some hoarse shouts from without--presumably from Dunlavey's friends; a chorus of derisive laughter fro...

It was Sunday afternoon and a hazy, golden, late September sun was swimming lazily in the blue arc of sky, flooding the lower gallery of the Circle Bar ranchhouse, but not reach...

"This here town,"--read a letter that Hollis received from Weary late in September--"aint fit for no man to live in which thinks anythink of hisself, in the first place theres t...

Hollis had demonstrated the fact that a majority of Dry Bottom's citizens welcomed the law. Dry Bottom had had a law, to be sure--the law of the six-shooter, with the cleverest...

The lights in Dry Bottom's saloons were flickering brightly when Hollis rode down the street and dismounted from his drooping pony in front of the court house. He ran stiffly ar...

At three o'clock in the afternoon Hollis closed his desk and announced to Potter that he was going to the Circle Bar. Potter watched him with a fond smile as he went out the doo...

From Razor-Back ridge the big basin spread away to the Blue Peak mountains. On the opposite side of the ridge began the big plain on which, snuggled behind some cottonwood trees...