Steve Yeager

and breakfast. One solitary silver dollar, too lonesome even to jingle, lay in his flatulent trouser pocket. After he and Four Bits had eaten, two quarters woul

when one has a good job back in the hills. But it happened he had no more job than a rabbit. Wherefo

t to Texas a co

ted fellow you sc

s before the tide of settlement had spilled into the valley, before nesters had driven in their prairie schooners, homesteaded the water-holes, and strung barb-wire fences across the range. Line-riders and dry farmers

ll of his twenty-three years since he could hang on to a saddle-horn. He had mournfully foreseen the end when the schoolhouse was built on Pine Knob and little folks went down the road with their arms twined around the waist of teacher. After grizzled Tim Sawyer

timistic, he sang cheerfully. He wanted to forget that he had eaten neither supper

uster City and the

of cowboys you nev

omadic fashion of Arizona the trail circled around a tongue of a foothill which here jutte

ougher. Throw her on her

ng poppies. Two men rode up and swung from their saddles. They talked with her thre

" urged a short fat man with a cigar in his mouth who was

hing queer about the affair,-something not quite natural to which he could not put a name. But he did

a meal," the little fat man reminded one of his tools irri

and seventy pounds of live cowpuncher behind it. Villain Number One w

on a lady

Number Two, who backed

? We ain't hurtin'

turned with a nervous little laugh to th

illie? The rube swallowed it a

ouged and painted to the ears. Never in its palmiest days had the 'Dobe Dollar's mirrors reflected a costume more gaudy than the one she was wearing. The men too were pa

in chaps came running. Assured of their proximit

e whole scene. Say, you Rip Van Winkle

rfully and amazingly as cowpunchers, but they were painted frauds in spite of the careful ostentation of their costumes. Steve's shiny leathers and dusty hat missed the picturesque, but he

eans. Looks like I done barked up t

x behind some kind of a masked batt

bout that, Threewit. Won't go in this reel, but she'll make a humdinger in some other. Sa

stick around, Mr. Camera Man, and you'll get a chance to do another bit of re

epths, blazed from a face sinister enough to justify Steve's impression of him as a villain. The shoulders of the man were very broad and set with the gorilla hunch; he was deep

are you?" the camera man

n. A whimsical little smile of

nd anything else you like. And I sur

hat looked up at the puncher. The sitting

th you," he growled. "I'm goin' to beat your he

A man can't always most likely tell. Take a watermelon now. You can't te

f a girl was likely to be drawn in his direction a second and a third time. In spite of his youthfulness there was in his face a certain sun-and-wind-bitten maturity, a steadiness of the quiet eye tha

fore. Thirty-eleven things were in sight as I happened round that bend, but the only one I glimmed was you being mist

hwest companies of the Lunar Film Manufacturers. Her charming face was known and liked

leaning for support on his accomplice Jackson and glaring at Yeager. Impudently she tilted her chin back toward t

ttractive a young woman as this one

to an engage

had called Billie looked sharply at

working?" he d

Lone Sta

fir

too popular, what with homesteaders, forest ra

you ride

eather and ki

r a week at two-fift

ger," promptly announce