The Cowpuncher by Bradford Scott Read Free Book Online Page B

being with him—I don’t know, Dad. All I know is that I’m lonely when Huck’s not around. And so I miss him.”
    “An’ how does this here cowboy feel ‘bout yuh, daughter?”
    She laughed aloud, tossing her head. “I don’t know.”
    “See here, Sue,” he cried indignantly. “I ain’t gonna have a daughter of mine throwin’ herself into the arms of the first good-lookin’ rapscallion that sets foot in a stirrup.”
    “I’m not throwing myself at anybody, Dad,” she assured him quietly.
    “Then what are yuh aimin’ to do?”
    “I’m going to Kansas City to look for him. I think something has happened to him.”
    He was on the point of raising an objection, but one look at the determination written bright and steady in his daughter’s face, changed his mind.
    “Yuh always was a stubborn monkey!” he exclaimed. There was a hint of admiration in his voice, as well as love for this headstrong daughter of his. Then a thought struck him.
    “Why don’t yuh let me send one of the boys first, to look for him? If he’s in trouble maybe he’ll need more help than a girl can give him.” She lookedhesitant. “Ain’t no use yuh’re chasin’ after him, when I can send Lem or Jim. Is there?”
    She shook her head again.
    “No, Dad,” she said. “I’ve got to go myself. If something’s happened to Huck—I want to be there.”
    He tried one last appeal.
    “A’right, Sue,” he said. “But why not wait a couple of days more? Mebbe yore Huck Brannon will turn up by his own self.”
    “I’ll wait two days—but if Huck doesn’t return—I’m going to look for him.” And there was no hesitation at all on her face or in her voice.

VII
Salty Town
    Esmeralda! Division point for the great C. & P. railroad, whose fingers of steel were reaching through the mountains toward the far-off Pacific. As yet, the great yellow passenger trains and the rumbling freights had to use a leased line to reach the western coast; but the dream of Jaggers Dunn, ex-cowboy, miner, engineer, division-superintendent—now empire builder, guiding genius of the great trunk line—the dream of a network of steel from the gray Atlantic to the blue waters of the “Peaceful Ocean,” from the pines of Canada to the palms of the Gulf, was at last coming true.
    Here at Esmeralda was his newest outpost. Here on the grim mountain frontier, where the law of knife and gun was still the ruling law. Where blood and passions ran crimson-bright in the veins of strong-limbed, lusty men, glorious in their recklessness; gallant in their disregard for hardship and personal danger; superb in their thirst for adventure and achievement, which meant to them nothing more than the wild and heady thrill of victory over over-whelming odds; or the grim satisfaction of losing, of starting again with a laugh and a bitter joke and the uncomplaining tightening of their belts.
    When it had been just a construction camp anddivision point, Esmeralda had been uproarious enough; but when a wandering prospector had panned flakes of yellow dust in the gravel that formed the lower slopes of towering Quentin Mountain, Esmeralda took a deep breath and roared the louder.
    A genius by the name of Cale Coleman saw his opportunity and grasped it firmly. He brought in hydraulic machinery, and blasted down the gravel beds with eight-inch streams of fiercely driven water, manifolding the results obtained by the primitive methods of pan and cradle.
    Cale Coleman was hard, arrogant, confident of his powers, not bothered much by false modesty and less by the other kind. Not bothered, either, by such mewlings as other men ascribed to qualms of conscience or fear of the possible consequence of their own acts.
    “Get out of my way!” was Cale Coleman’s motto and he never hesitated to apply it.
    Neither Huck Brannon nor Lank Mason met Cale Coleman when, after seeing old Tom Gaylord comfortably settled in the big new railroad hospital, they went up to the Coleman mines in search