XXX. THE REGISTER

XXXI. THE LAST TRICK

XXXII. THE END OF THE TRAIL




THE HEART OF THE RANGE




CHAPTER I

THE HORSE THIEF


It was a warm summer morning in the town of Farewell. Save a dozen
horses tied to the hitching-rail in front of various saloons and the
Blue Pigeon Store and Bill Lainey, the fat landlord of the hotel, who
sat snoring in a reinforced telegraph chair on the sidewalk in the
shade of his wooden awning, Main Street was a howling wilderness.

Dust overlay everything. It had not rained in weeks. In the blacksmith
shop, diagonally across the street from the hotel, Piney Jackson was
shoeing a mule. The mule was invisible, but one knew it was a mule
because Piney Jackson has just come out and taken a two-by-four from