The Sunset Trail

he popular esteem. The well-to-do and healthy feared her for her sarcasms, while upon the sick she descended in the guise of an

of Dodge being nephews and nieces by brevet, and it was to Cimarron Bill tha

"she's shore some frosty. But if you-all was ever to get shot up, now, for mebby holdin' four aces, or becau

g metropolis, consisting of a tavern and a store, lay far to the south of Dodge and close against the Indian Territory line. Mr. Masterson, coming

aforesaid, wore an uneasy look when Mr. Masterson avouched hi

Stumps, "all three beds is full but o

rson here?" quer

heap uncertain that a-way, an' it wouldn't surprise me none if he was to change his mind. All I know is he says as he rides away, 'Don't let no shorthorn hav

sterson with asperity, "I r

ll comes back," said Mr. Stumps, as he

r. Masterson confidently. "I wo

oor. So cat-foot had been his approach that even the trained ear of Mr. Masterson was given no creaking notice of his coming up the stair. The youthful stranger was equ

weapon, "an' I'd like to ask whatever be you-all doin' in my apartments?" Then, waiving reply, he wen

erson adopted it. The twelve-foot leap to the soft prairie grass was nothing; and since Cimarron Bill, with a fine contempt for consequences in nowise calculated to prove his prudence, pitched Mr. Masterson's belt and pistol, as well as his war-bags, after him, the latter was driven to confess that err

leaped from the same window which so lately h

f the while with evil words. Following the drink, Mr. Stumps negotiated a truce between his two guests, and Mr. Masterson came down and shook Cimarron Bill by the hand. "What I like about you,"

share and share alike. Mr. Masterson came finally to know Aunt Nettie. And because Cimarron Bill loved her, he also loved her, and suffered in humble silence

wept clean of his last dollar and his last pony. For a buffalo hunter thus to be set afoot was a serious blow; more, it smelled of disgrace. Your Western gentleman, dismounted and obliged to a painful pedestrianism, has been ever a symbol of the abject; also hi

n' the Cimarron, an' the first Cheyenne who comes teeterin' along on a proper pony ought to fit

f the Cheyennes to fall upon isolated camps of buffalo hunters and exterminate them; the broad prairies, had they spoken, would have told a hundred such red stories. By way of reprisal, the enterprising paleface wiped out what Cheyennes crossed his path. Moreover, it was the delight of the paleface, when not otherwise engaged, to raid a Cheyenne village, and drive

was Sun City itself. What was a thirty-mile ride to a Cheyenne, with nothing upon his mind but firewater? The latter refreshment abode privily to his call in Sun City, and he might purchase at the rate of a pint for

pappooses and dogs and ponies, lived and moved and had their aboriginal being. As the trail crossed Medicine Lodge Creek

of a drunken Cheyenne, reeling in his saddle with the robe-bought hospitality of Sun City fifteen miles away. The sullen Sharp's would speak, and the bibulous Cheyenne go headlong. Then the paleface who had sniped him would mount his own pony with speed

As for what dead Cheyennes went over the cliff, certain coyotes and ravens, educated of a prevailing plenty to haunt the spot, would in an hour remove the last trace of their taking off. Full two hundred Cheyennes, the flower of Bear Shield's band, were sent to the happy hunting grounds, at the base of the wooded knoll on Medicine Lodge Creek, before their wondering relatives solved the puzzle of their dis

of appearances, might pretend to preserve the Cheyenne; but Mr. Masterson knew that in reality no close season for Cheyennes existed more than it did for gray wolves. But the wooded knoll on Medicine Lodge Creek was distant; to go

ligent virtue, common with folk who have just finished a season of idleness and w

my pony, I must now win out another by froogality an' honest industry. Besides it ain't jest the pony; thar's the skelp-worth twenty-five dol

waste five days and ride seventy-five miles and back to get a thirty-dollar pony a

Bill. "I might get downed; in which event i

f difficulty; Aunt Nettie's needs were neither numerous nor expensive, and, since a gentleman of the lively accuracy of Cimarr

nt to say, "from my old eight-squar', an'

strate against remaining in Dodg

sier thinkin' you're left to look after Aunt Nettie in case of accidents. It's inside o' the possibl

rson reflected uneasily on Cimarron Bill's anxiety over Aunt Nettie, the same being out of common. Mr. Masterson thought this a portent of bad

ve bumped him off. He was that careless, Bill was, some such turn might have

hey had freighted through Sun City, indeed their route ran by the wooded knoll so fatal to Cheyennes; not one, however, had heard sound or beheld sign of the vanished Cimarron Bill. At that, Mr. Mas

imarron Bill had passed one night at his caravansary, making merr

r. Stumps, who was capable of a deduction, "an' what jag he carried would h

his was the last and all

, though a thousand were drying in the lodges of his people. No, nothing could be gathered from the Cheyennes themselves. It was less trouble, and quite as sagacious, for Mr. Masterson to believe that

Bill nor the Cheyenne who had taken his hair. Such events were as the certain incidents of existence, and might be counted on in their coming. Yesterday it had been the fate of Cim

d the final urgency of Cimarron Bill's exhortati

en he said that, Bill must have felt, even if he

Cimarron Bill; at the terror of such a mission he shook in his saddle. Slowl

, "Miss Dawson, I'm afraid Bill's dead." Mr. Masterson faltered as he spoke these words. "If I knew how," he went on, "to break the information sof

tongue most witheringly-"B'ar Shield's outfit has downed my Billy! Well then let me tell you this, Bat Masterson; thar ain't no Cheyenne ever painted his face who could corral my Billy. Thar, vamos; I ain't got no time to waste

urged Mr. Masterso

ment Billy's gone, what be you doin' in Dodge, I'd like to ask? Why ain't you back on the Cimarron gatherin' ha'r an' ponies, an' get

money, or try to hang up a hindquarter of buffalo in her kitchen, she'll chunk me up with stove-wood, or anything else that's loose and little, an

on the Cimarron, harvesting a vengeance, had stirred him deeply. To have it intimated that his courage was slow, and his friendship cool, wore sorely on the soul of Mr. Masterson. It was the harder to bear when flung from the tongue of a woman; for his hands were tied,

d, the bare earth without frost, while on the slow wind creeping in from the north there rode the moist odour of snow. The moon, old and on the

hort yelp of a dog, made melancholy by the hour's lonesomeness. Now and then an ember of some dying fire burned for a fierce moment, and then blinked out. Mr. Masterson, riding slowly down the opposit

r, he had crept nearer, keeping ever the location of the ponies which, in a rambling, ragged herd, were grazing up the wind. Mr. Masterson, on the south bank of the Cimarron

sual size and thickness to blanket the blurred radiance of the dwindling moon. Such a cloud was on its way; from wh

Mr. Masterson's strategy to play the Cheyenne for this raid. It was among the chances that he would run across an Indian herder or meet with some belated savage coming into camp. The latter was

ng of branches, and the profound flapping of great wings overhead, mark how some wild turkey-a heavy old gobbler, probably-had broken down a bough with she

epping as though walking on a world of eggs, headed for the river. The place had been well

ose in petulant chuckles of protest about the pony's legs; but, since its deepes

itor remembered his days of burden, and the thing to please him least was the sight or sound or scent of a palefa

ng off at his signal. As Mr. Masterson and his pony scrambled up the bank a flaw in the wind befell, and a horrifying whiff of the stealthy invader reached the old bellsharp. Th

At the warning call of the old bellsharp, the herd members came rushing towards him. Placing himself at their h

Masterson lying low along his pony's neck and letting his blanket flap in the wind bravely, for purposes of deception. After the ponies,

ear aside the lodge-flap, protrude his outraged head, and curse the ponies aboriginally. Observing the blanketed Mr. Masterson, the savage would go back to b

aking a more modest pace, and Mr. Masterson began turning in the corners, and closing up the flanks, of the retreating band. He made no effort to crowd or press, but gave them every encouragement to regain their confidence,

a figure, blanketed, mounted, riding like the wind, and busy with the stragglers as they pointed out of the herd. Like a flash, Mr. Masterson whipped h

. The expiring moon threw a last parallel ray along the surface of the plains, and Mr. Masterson saw that the stranger's pony was a chestnut. Also it

uld he, by some miracle of heaven, be Cimarron Bill? Mr. Masterson gave a curlew's whistle, wh

erson was a prudent man. The stranger, sitting fearlessly straight in his stirrups, bore down upon him with speed. Mr. Masterson

, as he came up with a great rus

beneath his saddle-flap, and taking the stranger in a bear-hug, fairly tore him from th

en these weeks?" c

tter clot up these ponies an' begin the drive, or they'

ch of wool! The snow storm was both good and bad; it made it difficult to handle

ter dogs quartering for birds, drove on throughout a hard four hours. They broke eastward to avoid Sun City; for it

sented in the shape of ponies. While Mr. Masterson held the herd, Cimarron Bill commenced cutting out the spent and worthless ones. When the weeding was over, there remained one hundred and thirty head, and the worst among them worth thirty dollars i

for the north, "what have you been doing? Aunt Nettie was scared

im of a dance to be given three nights away, in the new camp-house of the B-in-a-Box outfit. "No common fandango," explained Cimarron Bill, "but the real thing, with

is to say four hours prior to the fiddlers, which, as he expressed it, gave him space wherein "to liquor up" and get in proper key

y policeman that a-way, for thirty dollars a month an' furnish his own hoss. One word leads to another an' the last one to the guns, an' the next news is I get plu

before Mr. Masterson encountered him, he had deemed it expedient to make a driving raid on Bear Shield's village on his journey h

, "I was still shy a hoss, the sa

sterson, severely, "you ought t

have been down on me like a fallin' star! Shore! she'd have deescended on that B-in-a-Box o

e received a boom, the like of which had not before been known in the trade annals of Dodge. In proof whereof, not alone Mr. Short at the Long Branch but Mr. Kelly at the Alhambra declared that never since either of them last saw the Missouri, had so much money been changed in at roulette and farobank in any similar space of tim

how feeble-witted you be. Yere you comes ghost-dancin' 'round with a yarn about my Billy bein' killed an' skelped! I told you then, what you now