Produced by Suzanne Shell, Jason Isbell and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net). [Illustration: "I'll spend the last dollar of the fortune my father left me, if needful, in finding that man and hanging him!"] The Taming of Red Butte Western by Francis Lynde _Illustrated_ Charles Scribner's Sons New York, 1916 1910, BY Charles Scribner's Sons Published April, 1910 [ILLUSTRATION: Publishers Stamp] To Mr. CHARLES AUGUSTINE STICKLE My brother--in deed, though not by blood--this tale of his birthland is affectionately inscribed. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Collars-and-Cuffs 3 II. The Red Desert 24 III. A Little Brother of the Cows 38 IV. At the Rio Gloria 59 V. The Outlaws 80 VI. Everyman's Share 102 VII. The Killer 122 VIII. Benson's Bridge-Timbers 141 IX. Judson's Joke 157 X. Flemister and Others 177 XI. Nemesis 187 XII. The Pleasurers 202 XIII. Bitter-Sweet 224 XIV. Blind Signals 248 XV. Eleanor Intervenes 260 XVI. The Shadowgraph 270 XVII. The Dipsomaniac 289 XVIII. At Silver Switch 305 XIX. The Challenge 324 XX. Storm Signals 346 XXI. The Boss Machinist 369 XXII. The Terror 380 XXIII. The Crucible 398 ILLUSTRATIONS "I'll spend the last dollar of the fortune my father left me, if needful, in finding that man and hanging him!" _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE His hand was on the latch of the door-yard gate when a man rose out of the gloom. 138 "Bart's afraid he can't duck without dying." 176 "Well, gentlemen, I'm waiting. Why don't you shoot?" 400 * * * * * The Taming of Red Butte Western I COLLARS-AND-CUFFS The windows of the division head-quarters of the Pacific Southwestern at Copah look northward over bald, brown mesas, and across the Pannikin to the eroded cliffs of the Uintah Hills. The prospect, lacking vegetation, artistic atmosphere, and color, is crude and rather harshly aggressive; and to Lidgerwood, glooming thoughtfully out upon it through the weather-worn panes scratched and bedimmed by many desert sandstorms, it was peculiarly depressing. "No, Ford; I hate to disappoint you, but I'm not the man you are looking for," he said, turning back to things present and in suspense, and speaking as one who would add a reason to unqualified refusal. "I've been looking over the ground while you were coming on from New York. It isn't in me to flog the Red Butte Western into a well-behaved division of the P. S-W." The grave-eyed man who had borrowed Superintendent Leckhard's pivot-chair nodded intelligence.