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I. — HORSE LIGHTNING

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AT the table in the Winton ranch house sat three men and a woman. All the men were more or less formidable outside the house, but inside it they were all in fear of that one woman. Ned Winton feared his wife a little more than did his twenty-year-old son, Everard. Ned's brother, Clay Winton, who had been a paying guest of the ranch for four years, was so accustomed to being the target of his sister-in-law's attacks that he had developed a good deal of skill in making retreats from such battles.

A charge was about to be made now, and all three men knew it. They could tell by the fixed smile on Mrs. Winton's face that trouble was in the air.

Mrs. Winton wore a mask of pleasantness which, she felt, was a perfect disguise, but which flecked the blood of all the others in the family with cold. She might have been carved in ice, and the dim blue eyes of the three Winton men were fixed upon her.

"How was your day, Everard?" she began.

He was working every day in town, in the blacksmith shop.

"Oh, it was a good day enough," said the son. "Plenty to do. We had to weld a break in the coupling of Tom Walter's big iron wagon. It was heavy to handle, but we managed it."

"Was that the job that made you so late coming home?" asked the mother.

Uncle Clay Winton glided in swiftly and gently. He said:

"That was one of the biggest two-man jobs of welding that I have ever seen. Reminds me of a time in Dodge City when a new prairie schooner outfit was getting ready for the plains, and along come some bohunks with wagons with iron frames. One of 'em took and tumbled over the edge of the creek, where"

"Dodge City, again!" sighed Mrs. Winton.

Her glance was as bright as fire; it might have burned the very soul of a person less callous than Clay Winton.

"Well, Dodge City was Dodge City, in the old days," said Clay Winton. "Mighty few things that didn't happen there, one time or another. The days when Wild Bill Hickok was town marshal"

"Seems to me," said Mrs. Winton, "that you talk as though you were there yourself! You weren't even born when Wild Bill Hickok was murdering his poor victims!"

"Now, Martha!" said Clay Winton. "You ought to be a little kinder and milder, when you refer to a hero like Wild Bill. I've known plenty of men who were friends of his. A finer gentleman and a truer man there never was none!"

"He murdered a hundred men.Ain't that one of your boasts about him?" demanded the mother.

Uncle Clay leaned back in his chair as though overcome by despair. Then he rallied, shrugged his shoulders, and returned to the defense, saying:

"He never murdered anybody, Martha. Nobody ever dared to say that Wild Bill done murder. He was on the side of the law. That's what he was!"

"I have it out of your own mouth—and if you know anything you ought to know the history of Hickok; how he shot one of his own best friends in the street!"

"Why, Martha," said Uncle Clay, "it happened this way"

"I don't want to hear how it happened! Murder is murder," said she.

Uncle Clay looked to the ceiling and made a two-handed gesture of surrender that was almost Oriental in its expressiveness.

The mother turned upon her son.

"Everard," she said, "what would you be callin' it?"

Said the boy, "Wild Bill was incapable of a dishonorable act."

"Incapable, fiddlesticks!" said Mrs. Winton. "You got just a lot of Clay's nonsense into your mind, is what you've got.Murder! Red murder is what it was!"

"Mother," said the boy, "Bill Hickok never took an advantage"

"What else did he take?" exclaimed Mrs. Winton. "The devil that loved him taught him to be a dead shot. Ordinary men didn't have a chance against him. It was murder—not duelling! He wouldn't of had the nerve for a real stand-up fight with a man that was his equal!"

"There was no fear in him," answered her son, his face darkening, and a gleam coming in those misty eyes which were so typical of his race.

He would have said more, but Clay Winton caught his eye and made a warning gesture. Everard looked back to his plate.

"You don't need to shut up my boy at his own table, Clay," snapped Mrs. Winton. "He can speak his mind for himself, I hope—unless the only mind he's got is what you've put into his head!"

Clay looked to his brother and Ned Winton stirred uneasily and put up a hand to stroke his long mustaches. Then he said:

"The fact is, Martha, you're bearin' down pretty hard, ain't you?"

"It would make a saint bear down!" said Mrs. Winton, flushing with anger.

Uncle Clay put in, genially, smoothly, "Speaking of the old times, I saw a sight today that would have stirred the blood of Dodge City—every man and woman in it. Harry Lawson has come back from his horse hunt, and he has the horse with him!"

Mrs. Winton parted her lips to continue the flow of her harangue, but the family was familiar with her fits of temper and by long practice they had worked up perfect team-play; so now Ned Winton hastily broke in.

"You mean that red stallion—the pacer?"

"I mean the Red Pacer," said Clay. "What a horse!"

"It's not one of those pretty things that the ladies love the minute they clap eyes on it," he went on. "It's an inch over sixteen hands, and you can see the whole machine. You can see the frame of that horse and the muscles that pull on the bones, is what you can see. He could take a standing jump and sail over the moon, is what he looks like."

"Nacheral pacer, ain't he?" asked Ned Winton.

"He is," said Clay. "And a nacheral bunch of dynamite, too. I seen Buck Sanders and a Mexican puncher by name of Miraflores, and they both tried to ride him, today. There wasn't nothing to it. He just exploded 'em into the air, and then he went sailing off to the far end of the corral and looked through the bars and cocked his ears at the mountains. They've built up the corral fence to nine feet. He'll jump anything up to eight!"

"If he can't be rode how was he caught?" asked Ned Winton.

"They trapped him. A dozen of 'em snagged him," said Clay. "Harry Lawson spent about every penny that he's got in the world to land that stallion."

"A pile of use it'll be!" said Mrs. Winton. "A hoss that can't be rode!"

"There's a worth in things that can't be used," said Clay. I reckon that Harry'd give that hoss away to anybody that could ride it, fair and square, without pullin' leather. But there's a worth in things that can't be used."

"What worth?" snapped Mrs. Winton. "I'd like to know what worth!"

"Why," said Clay, "you can't eat a diamond necklace, can you? But it's good to look at, all the same. He had the fun and name of hunting the red hoss down. I reckon a thousand punchers have seen the Red Pacer on the edge of the sky, and wished their hearts out to have him. But it was like chasing lightning to chase him."

"I'd like to put a saddle on him. I'd like to try him," said Everard Winton, slowly.

He spoke so quietly that his mother barely heard him.

"What's that you say?" she snapped.

He shrugged his shoulders. "I'd like to try my luck with the Red Pacer," he answered.

"And get your neck broke?" she inquired, angrily.

"I hope not," said the boy.

Again he looked to his uncle, and received the warning sign. But Mrs. Winton also had seen the check of the shaken head, and she was more furious than ever.

"You can waste your time ridin' wild horses—you can't waste your time coming home and helping with the chores, like a right-minded boy would do," she exclaimed. "D'you say that you were kept late in the blacksmith shop, this afternoon?"

Before Everard could answer, and he was habitually slow in speech, his uncle replied:

"Well, Martha, if you'd seen your boy wrestling with that iron beam and treating it like a stove poker, you wouldn't be asking questions. Tom said he never seen a finer piece of welding done by nobody."

Mrs. Winton raised a forefinger.

"Everard!" she said.

"Yes, mother?"

"If you was down there in the shop, weldin' iron beams together, then was it the ghost of you that I seen fighting that big hulk of a Berner boy behind the barn?And your precious uncle standin' by and lookin' on—encouragin' you to a brutal waste of your time?"