The Killer

Killer, The

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Title: The Killer
Author: Stewart Edward White
Release Date: August 24, 2005 [EBook #16589]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: In many older texts, the character
combination "oe" was tied together with a ligature. Such instances are
represented in this ASCII text by enclosing them in brackets. Hence in
words such as Oedipus, for example, when the 'O' and the 'e' are
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[Illustration: He had been shot through the body and was dead. His rifle
lay across a rock trained carefully on the trail.]

THE KILLER
BY
STEWART EDWARD WHITE
AUTHOR OF THE BLAZED TRAIL, THE RIVERMAN, ARIZONA
NIGHTS, ETC.

GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1920, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING
THE SCANDINAVIAN

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE
PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
COPYRIGHT 1919, 1920, BY THE RED BOOK CORPORATION

CONTENTS
PAGE

THE KILLER 3
THE ROAD AGENT 135
THE TIDE 157
CLIMBING FOR GOATS 189
MOISTURE, A TRACE 211
THE RANCH 229

THE KILLER
CHAPTER I
I want to state right at the start that I am writing this story twenty years
after it happened solely because my wife and Señor Buck Johnson
insist on it. Myself, I don't think it a good yarn. It hasn't any love story
in it; and there isn't any plot. Things just happened, one thing after the
other. There ought to be a yarn in it somehow, and I suppose if a fellow
wanted to lie a little he could make a tail-twister out of it. Anyway,
here goes; and if you don't like it, you know you can quit at any stage
of the game.
It happened when I was a kid and didn't know any better than to do
such things. They dared me to go up to Hooper's ranch and stay all
night; and as I had no information on either the ranch or its owner, I
saddled up and went. It was only twelve miles from our Box Springs
ranch--a nice easy ride. I should explain that heretofore I had ridden the
Gila end of our range, which is so far away that only vague rumours of
Hooper had ever reached me at all. He was reputed a tough old devil
with horrid habits; but that meant little to me. The tougher and horrider
they came, the better they suited me--so I thought. Just to make
everything entirely clear I will add that this was in the year of 1897 and
the Soda Springs valley in Arizona.

By these two facts you old timers will gather the setting of my tale.
Indian days over; "nester" days with frame houses and vegetable
patches not yet here. Still a few guns packed for business purposes;
Mexican border handy; no railroad in to Tombstone yet; cattle rustlers
lingering in the Galiuros; train hold-ups and homicide yet prevalent but
frowned upon; favourite tipple whiskey toddy with sugar; but the old
fortified ranches all gone; longhorns crowded out by shorthorn
blaze-head Herefords or near-Herefords; some indignation against
Alfred Henry Lewis's Wolfville as a base libel; and, also but, no
gasoline wagons or pumps, no white collars, no tourists pervading the
desert, and the Injins still wearing blankets and overalls at their
reservations instead of bead work on the railway platforms when the
Overland goes through. In other words, we were wild and wooly, but
sincerely didn't know it.
While I was saddling up to go take my dare, old Jed Parker came and
leaned himself up against the snubbing post of the corral. He watched
me for a while, and I kept quiet, knowing well enough that he had
something to say.
"Know Hooper?" he asked.
"I've seen him driving by," said I.
I had: a little humped, insignificant figure with close-cropped white
hair beneath a huge hat. He drove all hunched up. His buckboard was a
rattletrap, old, insulting challenge to every little stone in the road; but
there was nothing the matter with the horses or their harness.