Part 1 (1/2)

The Rider of Golden Bar.

by William Patterson White.

CHAPTER ONE

BILLY WINGO

”But why don't you _do_ something, Bill?” demanded Sam Prescott's pretty daughter.

Bill Wingo looked at Miss Prescott in injured astonishment. ”Do something?” he repeated. ”What do you want me to do?”

”I don't want you to do anything,” she denied with unnecessary emphasis. ”Haven't you any ambition?”

”Plenty.”

”Then use it, for Heaven's sake!”

”I do. Don't I ask you to marry me every time I get a chance?”

”That's not using your ambition. That's playing the fool.”

”Nice opinion of yourself you've got,” he grinned.

”Never mind. You make me tired, Bill. Here you've got a little claim and a little bunch of cows--the makings of a ranch if you'd only work.

But instead of working like a man you loaf like a--like a----”

”Like a loafer,” he prompted.

”Exactly. You'd rather hunt and fish and ride the range for monthly wages when you're broke than scratch gravel and make something of yourself. You let your cows run with the T-Up-And-Down, and I'll bet when Tuckleton had his spring round-up you weren't even on the job.

Were you?”

”Well, I--uh--I was busy,” shamefacedly.

”Fis.h.i.+ng over on Jack's Creek. That's how busy you were, when you should have been looking after your property.”

”Oh, Tuckleton's boys are square. Any calves they found running with my brand, they'd run the iron on 'em all right.”

”They'd run the iron on 'em all right,” she repeated. ”But what iron?”

”Why--mine. Whose do you suppose?”

”I don't know,” she said candidly. ”I'm asking you.”

”Shucks, Sally Jane, those boys wouldn't do anything crooked.

Tuckleton wouldn't allow it.”

”Bill, don't you ever distrust anybody?”

”Not until I'm certain they're crooked.”