"I know why you're going. It's to see that club-footed
cowboy Moore!... Don't let me
catch you with him" ........................... _Facing p._ 98

"I'm beginnin' to feel that I couldn't let her marry
that Buster Jack," soliloquized Wade, as he
rode along the grassy trail ......................... " 164

"Jack Belllounds!" she cried. "You put the
sheriff on that trail!" ............................. " 280




THE MYSTERIOUS RIDER



CHAPTER I

A September sun, losing some of its heat if not its brilliance, was
dropping low in the west over the black Colorado range. Purple haze
began to thicken in the timbered notches. Gray foothills, round and
billowy, rolled down from the higher country. They were smooth,
sweeping, with long velvety slopes and isolated patches of aspens that
blazed in autumn gold. Splotches of red vine colored the soft gray of
sage. Old White Slides, a mountain scarred by avalanche, towered with
bleak rocky peak above the valley, sheltering it from the north.