[Illustration] BUCKY O’CONNOR A Tale of the Unfenced Border By William MacLeod Raine To My Brother EDGAR C. RAINE MY DEAR WANDERER: I write your name on this page that you may know we hold you not less in our thoughts because you have heard and answered again the call of the frozen North, have for the time disappeared, swallowed in some of its untrodden wilds. As in those old days of 59 Below On Bonanza, the long Winter night will be of interminable length. Armed with this note of introduction then, Bucky O’Connor offers himself, with the best bow of one Adventurer to another, as a companion to while away some few of those lonely hours. March, 1910, Denver. BUCKY O’CONNOR CONTENTS BUCKY O’CONNOR CHAPTER I. ENTER “BEAR-TRAP” COLLINS CHAPTER II. TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION CHAPTER III. THE SHERIFF INTRODUCES HIMSELF CHAPTER IV. A BLUFF IS CALLED CHAPTER V. BUCKY ENTERTAINS CHAPTER VI. BUCKY MAKES A DISCOVERY CHAPTER VII. IN THE LAND OF REVOLUTIONS CHAPTER VIII. FIRST BLOOD! CHAPTER IX. "ADORE HAS ONLY ONE D.” CHAPTER X. THE HOLD-UP OF THE M. C. P. FLYER CHAPTER XI. "STONE WALLS DO NOT A PRISON MAKE.” CHAPTER XII. A CLEAN WHITE MAN’S OPTION CHAPTER XIII. BUCKY’S FIRST-RATE REASONS CHAPTER XIV. LE ROI EST MORT; VIVE LE ROI CHAPTER XV. IN THE SECRET CHAMBER CHAPTER XVI. JUAN VALDEZ SCORES CHAPTER XVII. HIDDEN VALLEY CHAPTER XVIII. A DINNER FOR THREE CHAPTER XIX. A VILLON OF THE DESERT CHAPTER XX. BACK TO GOD’S COUNTRY CHAPTER XXI. THE WOLF PACK CHAPTER XXII. FOR A GOOD REASON CHAPTER I. ENTER “BEAR-TRAP” COLLINS She had been aware of him from the moment of his spectacular entrance, though no slightest sign of interest manifested itself in her indolent, incurious eyes. Indeed, his abundant and picturesque area was so vivid that it would have been difficult not to feel his presence anywhere, let alone on a journey so monotonous as this was proving to be. It had been at a water-tank, near Socorro, that the Limited, churning furiously through brown Arizona in pursuit of a lost half-hour, jarred to a sudden halt that shook sleep from the drowsy eyes of bored passengers. Through the window of her Pullman the young woman in Section 3 had glimpsed a bevy of angry train officials eddying around a sturdy figure in the center, whose strong, lean head rose confidently above the press. There was the momentary whirl of a scuffle, out of the tangle of which shot a brakeman as if propelled from a catapult. The circle parted, brushed aside by a pair of lean shoulders, muscular and broad. Yet a few moments and the owner of the shoulders led down the aisle to the vacant section opposite her a procession whose tail was composed of protesting trainmen. “You had no right to flag the train, Sheriff Collins, and you’ll have to get off; that’s all there is to it,” the conductor was explaining testily.