Suddenly a rope ... yanked him from the saddle Page 342]
The Coming of Cassidy-- And the Others
BY CLARENCE E. MULFORD
Author of Hopalong Cassidy, Bar-20 Days, etc.
Illustrations by Maynard Dixon
CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1913
Copyright 1908 by The Red Book Corporation Copyright 1911 by Field and Stream Publishing Co. Copyright 1912 by The Pearson Publishing Co. Copyright 1913 by The Pearson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1913
Published, October, 1913
Copyrighted in Great Britain
PRESS OF THE VAIL-BALLOU Co. BINGHAMTON, N. Y.
PREFACE
It was on one of my annual visits to the ranch that Red, whose welcomealways seemed a little warmer than that of the others, finally took meback to the beginning. My friendship with the outfit did not beginuntil some years after the fight at Buckskin, and, while I was familiarwith that affair and with the history of the outfit from that time on, Ihad never seemed to make much headway back of that encounter. And Imust confess that if I had depended upon the rest of the outfit forenlightenment I should have learned very little of its earlier exploits.A more secretive and bashful crowd, when it came to their ownachievements, would be hard to find. But Red, the big, smiling,under-foreman, at last completely thawed and during the last few weeksof my stay, told me story after story about the earlier days of theranch and the parts played by each member of the outfit. Names that Ihad heard mentioned casually now meant something to me; the charactersstepped out of the obscurity of the past to act their parts again. Tomy mind's eye came Jimmy Price, even more mischievous than JohnnyNelson; "Butch" Lynch and Charley James, who erred in judgment; thecoming and going of Sammy Porter, and why "You-Bet" Somes never arrived;and others who did their best, or worst, and went their way. The taleswill follow, as closely as possible, in chronological order. Betweensome of them the interval is short; between others, long; the lessinteresting stories that should fill those gaps may well be omitted.
It was in the '70s, when the buffalo were fast disappearing from thestate, and the hunters were beginning to turn to other ways of earning aliving, that Buck Peters stopped his wagon on the banks of Snake Creekand built himself a sod dugout in the heart of a country forbidding andfull of perils. It was said that he was only the agent for an easternsyndicate that, carried away by the prospects of the cattle industry,bought a "ranch," which later was found to be entirely strange tocattle. As a matter of fact there were no cows within three hundredmiles of it, and there never had been. Somehow the syndicate got intouch with Buck and sent him out to look things over and make a reportto them. This he did, and in his report he stated that the "ranch" wassplit in two parts by about forty square miles of public land, which herecommended that he be allowed to buy according to his judgment. Wheneverything was settled the syndicate found that they owned the west, andbest, bank of an unfailing river and both banks of an unfailing creekfor a distance of about thirty miles. The strip was not very wide then,but it did not need to be, for it cut off the back-lying range fromwater and rendered it useless to anyone but his employers. Westwardthere was no water to amount to anything for one hundred miles. Whenthis had been digested thoroughly by the syndicate it caused Buck's nextpay check to be twice the size of the first.
He managed to live through the winter, and the following spring a herdof about two thousand or more poor cattle was delivered to him, and henoticed at once that fully half of them were unbranded; but maverickswere cows, and in those days it was not questionable to brand them.Persuading two members of the drive outfit to work for him he settleddown to face the work and perils of ranching in a wild country. One ofthese two men, George Travis, did not work long; the other was the manwho told me these tales. Red went back with the drive outfit, but inBuck's wagon, to return in four weeks with it heaped full ofnecessities, and to find that troubles already had begun. Buck's trustwas not misplaced. It was during Red's absence that Bill Cassidy, laterto be known by a more descriptive name, appeared upon the scene andplayed his cards.
C. E. M.
CONTENTS
I The Coming of CassidyII The WeaselIII Jimmy PriceIV Jimmy Visits SharpsvilleV The Luck of FoolsVI Hopalong's HopVII "Dealing the Odd"VIII The NortherIX The DriveX The Hold-UpXI Sammy Finds a FriendXII Sammy Knows the GameXIII His CodeXIV Sammy Hunts a JobXV When Johnny Sloped
ILLUSTRATIONS
Suddenly a rope ... yanked him from the saddle . . . Frontispiece
There was a sharp report
"It's Injuns, close after us"
Crawford's Colt tore loose from his fingers and dropped near the wheelof the wagon
"Yo're a liar!" rang out the vibrant voice of the cowman