William Hopson - Cowpoke Justice

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Phocion Publishing 2019, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

COWPOKE JUSTICE

By

WILLIAM L. HOPSON

Dud Hardin was coming home to the Montana range country with thirty thousand dollars and a thousand head of cattle acquired along the Rio Grande. And the bitterness of fifteen years rolled away from the salty rannihan as he thought of seeing his father once more.

But his grimness returned threefold when he discovered that both his father and his fathers partner had been murdered, and that the human vultures who had done it were preparing to take over his ranch. Moreover, an outlaw had been hired to impersonate the long-lost Dud, and accused the real son of dry-gulching his own father.

Cowpoke Justice was originally published in 1941 by Phoenix Press, New York.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER

DEDICATION

To

Mrs. E. W. Albert at Oro Grande, this

book is dedicated with affection, in

fulfillment of a promise made

nine years ago.

W. L. H.

CHAPTER I

A MID-DAY Montana sun beat down upon the bobbing, swaying backs of some two thousand half-wild, part Mexican steers winding in a long sinuous line up the middle of the grassy, mile wide swale. Dust rose in sluggish brown clouds beneath the tramping of more than eight thousand plodding hoofs and hung motionless in the still air, as though in angry frustration at the herds passing; and to the ears of the sullen masculine population rostering the tiny hamlet called Trail City there floated a rumbling lowing.

Eight months had passed since the herd had left the Texas country, winding its way northward across state after state, fighting wind and storm and drought, while its trail-hardened crew fought them across mountain and plain and stream. Eight months of chuckwagon food and a bed under the stars. Eight months during which the stony-faced man riding at point always kept his eyes northward toward the distant home that he had run away from thirteen years before.

Now, as Trail Citys sprawling shacks came closer into view down across the flats a half mile to the east, Dudley Hardin turned in the saddle and looked back. And for just a moment the stony cast of his lean, sun-bronzed face broke into a half mocking smile as he viewed the herd. He was thinking of the night thirteen years before, when his father, harsh, iron-willed Buck Hardin, had slashed his back to ribbons with a quirt for roping a yearling and breaking its foreleg; Buck Hardin, the father he had told himself for thirteen years that he hated.

Dud turned in the saddle again, the brief, sardonical flicker in his bleak gray eyes sinking from sight almost as quickly as it had come to the surface. His was not a handsome face. The cleft chin jutted out just a trifle too far, the nose a little too hawk-like. And there was something about the lines of his mouth that gave the impression that he was sardonical and hard-bitten toward all the world and at himself too, as indeed he was.

A dusty red bandana sagged at the muscular column of his throat above a faded flannel shirt that fitted snugly at the wrists as though the wearer had been most careful about such little things in selecting it from the counter. The vest covering his wiry shoulders and from which the tagged string of his tobacco sack dangled had seen much wear. Instead of the usual brown leather chaps, he wore bat-wings of leather that was solid black, though scarred and scuffed from much contact with mesquite, cactus and chaparral. His boots, too, weighted by thick shanked spurs with big dull rowels that made little tracks in the dust when he walked, showed much evidence of hard wear. Two lead-studded cartridge belts encircled his lean waist, suspending a pair of open-topped gun sheaths which were tied down with rawhide thongs to slits in the chaps.

And with every movement of his hardened body, one of his ungloved hands always seemed to have a way of falling close to the butt of one of the heavy guns.

Dud pushed back the red Mexican sombrero and wiped at his strangely white forehead, turning again as Miguel Gonzales, his majordomo, loped up and chopped his horse over beside that of his boss.

Shes a pretty sight, eh, Dud? grinned the Mexican.

Dud nodded, letting his gray eyes flick over the handsome face of one of the most unusual men he had ever met. Son of an Irish mother and a Castilian father, Miguel was twenty-four years old. He wore a blue, high-crowned sombrero with gold lace on the roll brim, a short Spanish jacket with more gold lace, short chaparajas of the kind worn in Mexico, and spurs with the biggest rowels Dud had ever seen. There was an ivory-butted .45 that gleamed like a wolf fang at his right hip, and nestling in flat scabbards between his shoulder blades were two wicked throwing knives. Miguel had once mentioned, with a shrug of his slim shoulders, that he had killed a man with a knife thrown across the dusty street of a Sonora town.

Just what had brought him north, along with Spotted Tail, the Apache Indian night wrangler who had been with him when he joined the outfit, Dud did not know. Nor had he ever intruded enough to ask the man who in eight months had become his majordomo and his friend. But in the jaunty son of a Don from Mexico he had found a man who worked like a Trojan, who could laugh in the face of danger, who continually preened his tiny black mustache from a metal mirror in his shirt pocket.

All Dud knew was that something besides the job had brought Miguel north accompanied by the Apache trailer.

Otherwise, Miguel spoke three languages besides Spanish and played the guitar like a maestro. His one open boast was that he had been ousted from an exclusive institution of higher learning in Mexico City because he knew more Latin verbs than his teacherand had proved it by trouncing the schoolmaster in a fistic encounter.

Nearly twenty-one hundred head, Mig, Hardin said to Gonzales, shoving his sombrero back into place. Thats only a loss of about sixty through stampedes and such in eight months. Sixty steers and four men, he added grimly.

Miguel understood. Somewhere back along the line in the last two hundred miles had been a Winchester wizard who shot like the very devil from hell. He struck during storms and at night. He struck from long range and at isolated men. And the last man had dropped less than twenty-four hours before while working a couple of strays back toward the drag.

How much farther we got before we hit the home range? queried Miguel, reaching for his tobacco sack. They were plodding along at a walk at point now, the lead steers bobbing along less than sixty feet behind. Strung Out in their positions along the flank, came a dozen or so riders so tanned they looked swarthy, all wearing sombreros and cartridge belts over their shoulders bandolier fashion. Off to one side rode Cinco Centavos Five Centsthe wandering Mexican boy wrangler they had picked up on the way through the Panhandle country in Texas, keeping his remuda bunched. Big Nigger Tom, the giant ebony cook, worked his four-horse wagon along not far from where Cinco lolled in the saddle and dreamed youthful dreams of dark-eyed Senoritas.

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