Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. SIX FEET FOUR by Jackson Gregory 1917 TO E. M. GREGORY "HERE'S YOUR BOOK" CHAPTER I The Storm II The Devil's Own Night III Buck Thornton, Man's Man IV The Ford V The Man from Poison Hole Ranch VI Winifred Judges a Man VII An Invitation to Supper VIII In Harte's Cabin IX The Double Theft X In the Moonlight XI The Bedloe Boys XII Rattlesnake Pollard XIII The Ranch on Big Little River XIV In the Name of Friendship XV The Kid XVI A Guarded Conference XVII Suspicion XVIII The Dance at Deer Creek Schoolhouse XIX Six Feet Four! XX Pollard Talks "Business" XXI The Girl and the Game XXII The Yellow Envelope Again! XXIII Warning XXIV The Gentleman from New Mexico XXV In the Dark XXVI The Frame-Up XXVII Jimmie Squares Himself XXVIII The Show Down CHAPTER I THE STORM All day long, from an hour before the pale dawn until now after the thick dark, the storm had raged through the mountains. Before midday it had grown dark in the canons. In the driving blast of the wind many a tall pine had snapped, broken at last after long valiant years of victorious buffeting with the seasons, while countless tossing branches had been riven away from the parent boles and hurled far out in all directions. Through the narrow canons the wet wind went shrieking fearsomely, driving the slant rain like countless thin spears of glistening steel. At the wan daybreak the sound filling the air was one of many-voiced but subdued tumult, like the faraway growling of fierce, hungry, imprisoned beasts. As the sodden hours dragged by the noises everywhere increased steadily, so that before noon the whole of the wilderness seemed to be shouting; narrow creek beds were filled with gushing, muddy water; the trees on the mountainsides shook and snapped and creaked and hissed to the hissing of the racing wind; at intervals the thunder echoing ominously added its boom to the general uproar. Not for a score of years and upward had such a storm visited the mountains in the vicinity of the old road house in Big Pine Flat.