Troubled Waters

THE young man drew up his horse at the side of the dusty road and looked across the barbed-wire fence into the orchard beyond. Far distant against the horizon could be seen the...

AFTER dinner at the Elkhorn Lodge Ruth Trovillion left her aunt reading an installment of a magazine serial and drifted across to the large log cabin which was used as a recreat...

THE road meandered over and through brown Wyoming in the line of least resistance. It would no doubt reach the Fryingpan some time and ultimately Wagon Wheel, but the original s...

McCOY followed a road that led from Bovier’s Camp into the hills. He was annoyed at the altercation with Tait that had flared up in the store. Between the sheep and cattle inter...

STILL at the age when she was frankly the centre of her own universe, Ruth Trovillion had an abundant sense of romance. There was no intention in her decided young mind of tread...

A girl in one of the front boxes of the grand stand saw a young cow-puncher move with jingling spurs across the wide race track toward the corral beyond. He looked up, easy and...

ROWAN McCOY drove his new car—it was a flivver, though they did not call it that in those days—with the meticulous care of one who still distrusts the intentions of the brute an...

Rowan stopped at the section where Norma Tait sat. “I’m going forward to the day coach,” he explained. “If there’s anything I can do for you, Norma, now or at any time, I want y...

At the Circle Diamond, Ruth queened it with a naïve childishness from which her youth had not yet escaped. Eagerly she played at housekeeping for a fortnight under the amused ey...

ACROSS the breakfast table next morning Rowan faced a hostile young stranger. The gay comrade who was so dear to him, the eager, impulsive girl all fire and flame and dewy softn...

RUTH and Mrs. Flanders sat on the porch at Elkhorn Lodge and watched a rider descend a hill trail toward the ranch. It was late in the season. Except a hunting party, only a few...

NOWHERE outside of Cattleland would such a scene have been possible. The air was filled with the fine dust of milling cattle, with the sound of bawling cows and blatting calves....

THE moon was just going under a cloud when Rowan and his two companions rode away from the Circle Diamond. They had plenty of time before the appointed hour at the Three Pines....

ROWAN closed the door of his bedroom with a sick heart. It was characteristic of him that he did not debate his responsibility for the death of the two sheepmen. It did not matt...

IT happened that Sheriff Matson was in the hills on official business and slept at Bovier’s Camp the night of the sheep raid. He was by custom an early riser. The sky was faintl...

LIKE wildfire the news spread through western Wyoming that Tait and Gilroy had been shot down in their sheep wagon by night raiders. Soon there was no ranch so deep-hidden in th...

YET though the public was in a measure prepared there was a gasp of surprise when the word spread that Sheriff Matson had arrested and brought to Wagon Wheel six cattlemen from...

Matson looked out of the barred window at the warm sunshine flooding the yard. From where he sat he could not see the blue, unclouded sky, but he knew just how it looked. When h...

LATER in the day the sheriff tried out another of his prisoners. He had told McCoy the truth. One of the six was weakening. Matson had his own favourites and wanted to give them...

NOT for years had Shoshone County been so interested in any public event as it was in the trial of Rowan McCoy for the murder of Dan Gilroy. Scores of ranchmen had driven in fro...

Not a muscle of the prisoner’s face moved as the clerk of the court read the verdict. He gave no sign whatever of emotion. Since Silcott’s testimony he had expected nothing less...

WITH the news that Rowan would not have to pay with his life, Ruth’s anxiety took on another phase. Their happiness had come to grief. It was likely that the tentative separatio...

“We’re going to start on the eleven-thirty, Mac. Your wife is down at the house with Mrs. Matson. She wants to say good-bye there instead of at the depot. I’ve got considerable...

But she told herself she could learn. Her interest was very greatly engaged in saving the Circle Diamond for Rowan. Other women had done well homesteading. She knew one widow wh...

RUTH lay snuggled up on the lounge in her sewing room, one foot tucked comfortably under her, half a dozen soft pillows piled at her back. She was looking rather indolently over...

AS Tim Flanders had predicted, the establishment of government forest reserves changed the equation that faced the cattleman. The open range was doomed, but federal supervision...

THE long white fingers of winter reached down through the mountain gulches to the Circle Diamond. Ruth looked out of her windows upon a land grown chill and drear. She saw her l...

GOVERNOR McDOWELL was a cattleman himself. His sympathies were much engaged in behalf of the Bald Knob raiders. All the evidence at the trial tended to show that Tait had forced...

DURING the second winter Ruth left the ranch only twice, except for runs down to Wagon Wheel. Late in January she went to Cheyenne with her boy to make another appeal to the gov...

AGAIN spring bloomed into summer and summer yellowed into autumn. A mellow, golden glow lay over the valleys, and in the foothills purple asters and pink thistles lent patches o...

RUTH, weak and shaken from her struggle with the storm, stood in bewildered amazement near the door. A man was facing her, in his hands a rifle. He stood crouched and wary, like...

Ruth wrapped up the baby warmly and handed him to Falkner. The man broke trail to the point where the draw struck the road. He looked to the right, then to the left. Safety lay...

RUTH telephoned a message down to Wagon Wheel to be wired to Governor McDowell that night. It was impossible for her to sleep, and after she had packed she lay awake for hours p...

SAM YERBY strolled up and down the station platform. His wife clung to him on one side and on the other trotted Boy, hand in hand with his new-found father. Outwardly Rogers and...