[Illustration: "They picked up our trail somehow ... they're about three miles back on the flat just a-burnin' the ground"] THE HEART OF THE RANGE BY WILLIAM PATTERSON WHITE AUTHOR OF "_The Rider of Golden Bar_," "_Hidden Trails_," "_Lynch Lawyers_," "_The Owner of the Lazy D_," "_Paradise Bend_," _etc_. 1921 TO RANGER A GOOD HORSE AND A BETTER FRIEND CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE HORSE THIEF II. THE YELLOW DOG III. THE TALL STRANGER IV. THE OLD LADY V. McFLUKE's VI. CHANGE OF PLAN VII. THE RIDDLE VIII. THE STARLIGHT IX. THROWING SAND X. THE BACK PORCH XI. THE LOOKOUT XII. THE DISCOVERY XIII. A BOLD BAD MAN XIV. THE SURPRISE XV. FIRE! FIRE! XVI. THE BAR S XVII. SIGNED PAPER XVIII. THE SHOWDOWN XIX. THE SHOOTING XX. DRAWING THE COVER XXI. GONE AWAY XXII. A CHECK XXIII. TAKING FENCES XXIV. DIPLOMACY XXV. STRATEGY XXVI. THE QUARREL XXVII. BURGLARY XXVIII. THE LETTERS XXIX. HUE AND CRY XXX. THE REGISTER XXXI. THE LAST TRICK XXXII. THE END OF THE TRAIL THE HEART OF THE RANGE CHAPTER I THE HORSE THIEF It was a warm summer morning in the town of Farewell. Save a dozen horses tied to the hitching-rail in front of various saloons and the Blue Pigeon Store and Bill Lainey, the fat landlord of the hotel, who sat snoring in a reinforced telegraph chair on the sidewalk in the shade of his wooden awning, Main Street was a howling wilderness. Dust overlay everything. It had not rained in weeks. In the blacksmith shop, diagonally across the street from the hotel, Piney Jackson was shoeing a mule. The mule was invisible, but one knew it was a mule because Piney Jackson has just come out and taken a two-by-four from the woodpile behind the shop. And it was a well-known fact that Piney never used a two-by-four on any animal other than a mule. But this by the way. In the barroom of the Happy Heart Saloon there were only two customers and the bartender. One of the former, a brown-haired, sunburnt young man with ingenuous blue eyes, was singing: "_Jog on, jog on, the footpath way, An' merrily jump the stile O! Yore cheerful heart goes all the day, Yore sad tires in a mile O_!" Mr. Racey Dawson, having successfully sung the first verse, rested both elbows on the bar and grinned at the bartender. That worthy grinned back, and, knowing Mr. Dawson, slid the bottle along the bar. "Have one yoreself, Bill," Mr. Dawson nodded to the bartender. "Whu--where's Swing? Oh, yeah." Mr. Dawson, head up, chest out, stepping high, and walking very stiffly as befitted a gentleman somewhat over-served with liquor, crossed the barroom to where bristle-haired Swing Tunstall sat on a chair and slumbered, his head on his arms and his arms on a table.