The Rider of Golden Bar

"Now there," said Riley Tyler, staring at the driver of a buckboard who was tying her team in front of the Rocky Mountain store, "now there is a girl that is pretty as a li'l re...

"It's the women make half the trouble in the world," mused young Riley Tyler, who had received the mitten from his girl of the period, the restaurant waitress, and was a misogyn...

"It depends on the woman. There are women and women. If a feller is careful who he picks, he don't run a bad chance. Me, I got my eye on young Hazel Walton."

"Because I am, that's why!" was the snappish reply. Then in a pleasanter tone Craft continued, "Because, Bill, I've figured out my chances carefully. Not once in a thousand time...

Behind the corral of Guerilla Melody, at the tip end of Golden Bar, Main Street, a small spring bubbled to life amid rocks. It was the custom of Guerilla Melody to slip out to t...

The district attorney, having looked carefully to the fastenings of his windows, tucked a six shooter under his pillow and began to unlace his shoes. Came a rapping at his chamb...

"I never did like Riley," grumbled Jack Murray. "He's a friend of Bill Wingo's and that's enough. I figured by downin' Riley and skippin' out and lettin' that stage hostler know...

"We? We? Don't get me mixed up with you, Rale. I'm particular who I bracket with, sort of. Another thing, the last time you were in here you went out on your head, remember. Wel...

Nate swelled his chest with satisfaction. Some people enjoy being the bearers of evil tidings. Besides, Nate had stopped going to see Hazel. Somehow he had been made to feel tha...

Tip O'Gorman sat comfortably near the red-hot stove. The wind and the snow were blustering outdoors. It was what the people you yearn to kill call a bracing day in January. Actu...

March had come in a-roaring. Almanac-wise it was passing out a-bleating. Except in the high places the snow was going fast. The frost was coming out of the ground, making it nec...

Crack! Crack! Crack! the voices of the Winchesters drifted faintly down wind to the ears of Billy and Dawson. Billy, fearful that some one else had seen their quarry first, swor...

O'Gorman sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. "When a dog is hungry it ain't sensible to feed him a whole juicy steak. He'll gobble it down an' come pesterin' round for m...

The judge did not look at him. He had cheated Melody in a cattle deal the previous year and had since found himself unable to look Melody in the eye. Some villains are like that...

"But I rode over here especially to bring you back with me to stay a while, a long while, as long as you like and longer." Thus Sally Jane, looking injured.

"Accessory before and after the fact," slipped in the district attorney. A reptile himself, he relished the wrigglings of another reptile. "If they prove it on you, you'll be ha...

"Never mind. You make me tired, Bill. Here you've got a little claim and a little bunch of cows--the makings of a ranch if you'd only work. But instead of working like a man you...

"You see," said Dan Slike, as he topped his mount, "I ain't really been hard on you. I didn't ask you for a nickel. I only took what I needed. And if you hadn't fought me like y...

"There's a lot of this stuff I don't understand," said Guerilla Melody the day after Dawson's return from the railroad. "Why did Conley go south? Reelfoot and he were almighty f...

The time was an evening in the first week in May; the place was the Arkansas Saloon in Willow Bend, Redstone County, the man was Billy Wingo, wearing a sevenweeks' beard and an...

"You can't tell me that infernal Bill Wingo ain't at the bottom of all this business!" snarled Felix Craft. "Guerilla Melody and that Dawson friend of his didn't get Slike by th...

"Careless child," observed Bill Wingo, coming up on the porch where Sally Jane lay in the hammock. "You dropped your hat in the draw. I found it this morning. Here it is. Don't...

"And where a girl's feller is concerned, you can't believe her any of the time. Sam, can't you understand a girl will lie just for the fun of it, if she hasn't any other reason....

"You blessed child," said Sally Jane, and threw her arms around Hazel and drew her to her breast. "You blessed child. I don't know what ever came between you and Bill, but somet...

"Whatsa use of this gassing?" demanded Rafe. "I tell you, Tom, we caught this feller branding one of my calves, and I'll gamble he's the boy been doing all the rustling on your...

Dan Slike crossed his knees and stared at Rafe and Skinny Shindle. "I always take my own time," said he, in a voice as blank and expressionless as his ice-blue eyes. "Why hurry?"

It was the next day that Arthur Rale, the district attorney, called on the new sheriff. He was a heavy-jowled, heavy-handed, heavy-bodied individual, with black hair, close-set...