Shoe-Bar Stratton

  SHOE-BAR STRATTON

  by

  JOSEPH B. AMES

  "I can stand here till I get tired," retorted Lynch.]

  A. L. Burt CompanyPublishers New YorkPublished by arrangement with The Century Company

  Printed in U. S. A.

  Copyright, 1922, by The Century Co.

  Printed in U. S. A.

  ToBILL McBRIDE

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE I Back from the Dead 3 II Crooked Work 13 III Mistress Mary Quite Contrary 24 IV The Branding-Iron 31 V Tex Lynch 41 VI The Blood-Stained Saddle 51 VII Rustlers 60 VIII The Hoodoo Outfit 70 IX Revelations 81 X Buck Finds Out Something 91 XI Danger 106 XII Thwarted 119 XIII Counterplot 127 XIV The Lady From the Past 136 XV "Blackleg" 145 XVI The Unexpected 153 XVII The Primeval Instinct 166 XVIII A Change of Base 176 XIX The Mysterious Motor-Car 186 XX Catastrophe 197 XXI What Mary Thorne Found 208 XXII Nerve 219 XXIII Where the Wheel Tracks Led 230 XXIV The Secret of North Pasture 239 XXV The Trap 248 XXVI Sheriff Hardenberg Intervenes 256 XXVII An Hour Too Late 268 XXVIII Forebodings 276 XXIX Creeping Shadows 284 XXX Lynch Scores 291 XXXI Gone 301 XXXII Buck Rides 309 XXXIII Carried Away 319 XXXIV The Fight on the Ledge 332 XXXV The Dead Heart 339 XXXVI Two Trails Converge 345

  SHOE-BAR STRATTON

  CHAPTER I

  BACK FROM THE DEAD

  Westward the little three-car train chugged its way fussily across thebrown prairie toward distant mountains which, in that clear atmosphere,loomed so deceptively near. Standing motionless beside the weather-beatenstation shed, the solitary passenger watched it absently, brows drawn intoa single dark line above the bridge of his straight nose. Tall, lean, withlegs spread apart a bit and shoulders slightly bent, he made a strikingfigure against that background of brilliant sky and drenching, goldensunlight. For a brief space he did not stir. Then of a sudden, when thetrain had dwindled to the size of a child's toy, he turned abruptly anddrew a long, deep breath.

  It was a curious transformation. A moment before his face--lined,brooding, somber, oddly pale for that country of universal tan--lookedalmost old. At least one would have felt it the face of a man who hadrecently endured a great deal of mental or physical suffering. Now, as heturned with an unconscious straightening of broad shoulders and acharacteristic uptilt of square, cleft chin, the lines smoothed awaymiraculously, a touch of red crept into his lean cheeks, an eager, boyishgleam of expectation flashed into the clear gray eyes that restedcaressingly on the humdrum, sleepy picture before him.

  Humdrum it was, in all conscience. A single street, wide enough, almost,for a plaza, paralleled the railroad tracks, the buildings, such as theywere, all strung along the further side in an irregular line. One ofthese, ramshackle, weather-worn, labeled laconically "The Store," stooddirectly opposite the station. The architecture of the "Paloma SpringsHotel," next door, was very similar. On either side of these twostructures a dozen or more discouraged-looking adobe houses were set downat uneven intervals. To the eastward the street ended in the corrals andshipping-pens; in the other direction it merged into a narrow dusty trailthat curved northward from the twin steel rails and quickly lost itself inthe encompassing prairie.

  That was all. Paloma Springs in its entirety lay there in full view,drowsing in the torrid heat of mid-September. Not a human being was insight. Only a brindled dog slept in a small patch of shade beside thestore; and fastened to the hotel hitching-rack, two burros, motionlesssave for twitching tails and ears, were almost hidden beneath stupendousloads of firewood.

  But to Buck Stratton the charm lay deeper than mere externals. As a matterof fact he had seen Paloma Springs only twice in his life, and then verybriefly. But it was a typical little cow-town of the Southwest, and to thehomesick cattleman the sight of it was like a refreshing draft of water inthe desert. Pushing back his hat, Stratton drew another full breath, thebeginnings of a smile curving the corners of his mouth.

  "It sure is good to get back," he murmured, picking up his bag. "Somewaythe very air tastes different. Gosh almighty. It don't seem like twoyears, though."

  Abruptly the light went out of his eyes and his face clouded. No wonderthe time seemed short when one of those years had vanished from his lifeas utterly and completely as if it had never been. Whenever Strattonthought of it, which was no oftener than he could help, he cringedmentally. There was something uncanny and even horrible in the realizationthat for the better part of a twelve-month he had been eating, sleeping,walking about, making friends, even, like any normal person, withoutretaining a single atom of recollection of the entire period.

  Frowning, Buck put up one hand and absently touched a freshly healed scarhalf-hidden by his thick hair. Even now there were moments when he feltthe whole thing must be some wild nightmare. Vividly he remembered thesudden winking out of consciousness in the midst of that panting, uphilldash through Belleau Wood. He could recall perfectly the most triflingevent leading up to it--the breaking down of his motor-cycle in a strangesector just before the charge, his sudden determination to take part in itby hook or crook, even the thrill and tingle of that advance against heavymachine-gun fire.

  The details of his awakening were equally clear. It was like closing hiseyes one minute and opening them the next. He lay on a hospital bed, hishead swathed in bandages. That seemed all right. He had been wounded inthe charge against the Boche, and they had carried him to afield-hospital. He was darned lucky to have come out of it alive.

  But little by little the conviction was forced upon him that it wasn't assimple as that. At length, when he was well on the way to recovery, helearned to his horror that the interval of mental blankness, instead ofbeing a few hours, or at the most a day or two, had lasted for over ayear!

  Without fully understanding certain technical portions of the doctor'sexplanation, Stratton gathered that the bullet which had laid him low hadproduced a bone-pressure on the portion of his brain which was the seat ofmemory. The wound healing, he had recovered perfect physical health, butwith a mind blank of anything previous to his awakening in the Frenchhospital over a year ago. The recent operation, which was pronouncedentirely successful, had been performed to relieve that pressure, andStratton was informed that all he needed was a few weeks of convalescenceto make him as good a man as he had ever been.

  It took Buck all of that time to adjust himself to the situation. He wasin America instead of France, without the slightest recollection ofgetting there. The war was over long ago. A thousand things had happenedof which he had not the remotest knowledge. And because he was a verynormal, ordinary young man with a horror of anything queer and eccentric,the thought of that mysterious year filled him with dismay and roused inhim a passionate longing to escape at once from everything which wouldremind him of his uncanny lapse of memory. If he were only back where hebelonged in the land of wide spaces, of clean, crisp air and blue, bluesky, he felt he would quickly forget this nightmare which haunted so manywaking moments.

  Unfortunately there were complications. To begin with he found himself inthe extraordinary position of a man without identity. The record sent overfrom th
e hospital in France stated that he had been brought in from thefield minus his tag and every other mark of identification. Buck was notsurprised at this, nor at the failure of anyone in the strange sector torecognize him. Only a few hours before the battle the tape of hisidentification-disk had parted and he had thrust the thing carelessly intohis pocket. He had seen too many wounded men brought into field-hospitalsnot to realize how easy it is to lose a blouse.

  Recovering from the bullet-wound and unable to tell anything abouthimself, he had apparently passed under the name of Robert Green. Strattonwondered with a touch of grim amusement whether this christening was notthe result of doughboy humor. He must have been green enough, in allconscience.

  He was not even grimly amused by the ultimate discovery that the name ofRoth Stratton had appeared months and months ago on one of the officiallists of "killed or missing." It increased his discomfort over the wholehateful business and made him thankful for the first time that he wasalone in the world. At least no mother or sister had been tortured by thisstrange prank of fate.

  But at last the miles of red tape had been untied or cut, and the momenthis discharge came Stratton took the first possible train out of New York.He did not even wire Bloss, his ranch-foreman, that he was coming. As amatter of fact he felt that doing so would only further complicate analready sufficiently difficult situation.

  The Shoe-Bar outfit, in western Arizona, had been his property barely aweek before he left it for the recruiting-office. Born and bred in theTexas Panhandle, he inherited his father's ranch when barely twenty-one.Even then many of the big outfits were being cut up into farms, publicrange-land had virtually ceased to exist, and one by one the cattlemenwere driven westward before the slowly encroaching wave of civilization.

  Two years later Stratton decided to give up the fight and follow them.During the winter before the war he sold out for a handsome figure, spentseveral months looking over new ground, and finally located and bought theShoe-Bar outfit.

  The deal was hurried through because of his determination to enlist.Indeed, he would probably not have purchased at all had not the newoutfit, even to his hasty inspection, seemed to be so unusual a bargainand so exactly what he wanted. But buy he did, placed Joe Bloss, areliable and experienced cattleman who had been with him for years, incharge, and departed.

  From that moment he had never once set eyes on the Shoe-Bar. Bloss wrotefrequent and painstaking reports which seemed to indicate that everythingwas going well. But all through the long and tedious journey ending at thelittle Arizona way-station, Stratton fumed and fretted and wondered. Evenif Joe had failed to see his name amongst the missing, what must he havethought of his interminable silence? All through Buck's brief training andthe longer interval overseas, the foreman's letters had come with fairregularity and been answered promptly and in detail. What had Bloss donewhen the break came? What had he been doing ever since?

  A fresh wave of troubled curiosity sent Stratton swinging briskly acrossthe street. Keeping inside the long hitching-rack, he crossed the saggingporch and stepped through the open door into the store. For a moment hethought it empty. Then a chair scraped, and over in one corner a short,stout, grizzled man dropped his feet from the window-sill and shuffledforward, yawning.

  "Wal! Wal!" he mumbled, his faded, sleep-dazed eyes taking in Buck's bag."Train come in? Reckon I must of been dozin' a mite."

  "Looks to me like the whole place was taking an afternoon nap," smiledStratton. "Not much doing this time of day, I expect."

  "You said it," yawned the stout man, supporting himself against the roughpine counter. "Things is liable to brisk up in a hour or two, though, whenthe boys begin to drift in. Stranger around these parts, ain't yuh?" headded curiously.

  For a tiny space Buck hesitated. Then, moved by an involuntary impulse hedid not even pause to analyze, he shrugged his shoulders slightly.

  "I was out at the Shoe-Bar a couple of times about two years ago," heanswered. "Haven't been around here since."

  "The Shoe-Bar? Huh?" Pop Daggett looked interested. "You don't say so!Funny I don't recollect yore face."

  "Not so very. I only passed through here to take the train."

  "That was it, eh? Two years ago must of been about the time the outfit wasbought by that Stratton feller from Texas. Yuh know him well?"

  "Joe Bloss, the foreman, was a friend of mine," evaded Stratton. "He's theone I stopped off now to see."

  Pop Daggett's jaw sagged, betraying a cavernous expanse ofsparsely-toothed gums. "Joe Bloss!" he ejaculated. "My land! I hope youain't traveled far fur that. If so, yuh sure got yore trouble for yorepains. Why, man alive! Joe Bloss ain't been nigh the Shoe-Bar for close onto a year."

  Stratton's eyes narrowed. "A year?" he repeated curtly. "Where's hegone?"

  "You got me. I did hear he'd signed up with the Flying-V's over to NewMexico, but that might have been jest talk." He sniffed disapprovingly."There ain't no doubt about it; the old Shoe-Bar's changed powerful thesetwo years. I dunno what we're comin' to with wimmin buttin' into thecattle business."

  Buck stared at him in frank amazement. "Women?" he repeated. "What thedickens are you talking about, anyway?"

  "I sh'd think I was plain enough," retorted Pop Daggett with someasperity. "Mebbe female ranchers ain't no novelty to yuh, but this is thefirst time I ever run up ag'in one m'self, an' I ain't much in love withthe idear."

  Stratton's teeth dug into his under lip, and one hand gripped the edge ofthe counter with a force that brought out a row of white dots across theknuckles.

  "You mean to tell me there's a--a--woman at the Shoe-Bar?" he askedincredulously.

  "At it?" snorted the old man. "Why, by cripes, she _owns_ it! Not onlythat, but folks say she's goin' to run the outfit herself like as if shewas a man." He paused to spit accurately and with volume into the emptystove. "Her name's Thorne," he added curtly. "Mary Thorne."