E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 30558-h.htm or 30558-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/30558/pg30558-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30558/30558-h.zip) CLAIM NUMBER ONE by GEORGE W. OGDEN Author of The Duke of Chimney Butte Trails End, Etc. Frontispiece by J. Allen St. John Grosset & Dunlap Publishers New York Made in the United States of America Copyright A. C. McClurg & Co. 1922 Published May, 1922 Copyrighted in Great Britain Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS I. Comanche 1 II. Guests for the Metropole 9 III. Unconventional Behavior 21 IV. The Flat-Game Man 46 V. Skulkers 63 VI. The Drawing 79 VII. A Midnight Extra 104 VIII. The Governor's Son 122 IX. Double Crookedness 140 X. Hun Shanklin's Coat 154 XI. Number One 172 XII. The Other Man 188 XIII. Sentiment and Nails 206 XIV. "Like a Wolf" 219 XV. An Argument Ends 233 XVI. A Promise 255 XVII. A Plan 273 XVIII. The Strange Tent 288 XIX. Crook Meets Crook 304 XX. A Sudden Cloud 325 XXI. The Crisis 343 CLAIM NUMBER ONE CHAPTER I COMANCHE Coming to Comanche, you stopped, for Comanche was the end of the world. Unless, of course, you were one of those who wished to push the boundary-line of the world farther, to make homes in the wilderness where there had been no homes, to plant green fields in the desert where none had been before. In that case you merely paused at Comanche, like the railroad, to wait the turn of events. Beyond Comanche was the river, and beyond the river, dim-lined in the west, the mountains. Between the river and the mountains lay the reservation from which the government had pushed the Indians, and which it had cut into parcels to be drawn by lot.