The Adventures of Drag Harlan, Beau Rand & Square Deal Sanderson - The Great Heroes of Wild West. Charles Alden Seltzer

      Chapter I. A Man Spreads Poison

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      STANDING, though resting one shoulder against a door-jamb of the bunkhouse, Amos Seddon watched his daughter. The shoulder that rested against the door-jamb was slightly drooped, the left arm hanging limply: the thumb of the right hand was hooked in the cartridge belt that encircled Seddon's waist. That hand, too, was limp, and there was a glum pout on the man's lips.

      His thoughts were not pleasant, for they ran to Beaudry Rand, his neighbor, with a virulent savagery that made him ache to use the gun, whose stock lay so near to his limp fingers. Some day, he told himself, he would use the gun on Beaudry Rand.

      It was not that Rand had done anything to him, particularly; he hated Rand for the things that Rand had not done. That paradox was vague and mysterious to those who did not know; but the torture of it was that Seddon feared some persons — besides Rand — did know. And there was not a time when Seddon rode into Ocate that he did not seem to feel there were many of the town's citizens who were secretly laughing at him. And he suspected that those citizens in possession of the secret were wondering why he did not take the boy from Rand.

      To be sure, he had kept his affair