The Rider of Golden Bar. William Patterson White

      Chapter One.

       Billy Wingo

       Table of Contents

      "But why don't you do something, Bill?" demanded Sam Prescott's pretty daughter.

      Bill Wingo looked at Miss Prescott in injured astonishment. "Do something?" he repeated. "What do you want me to do?"

      "I don't want you to do anything," she denied with unnecessary emphasis. "Haven't you any ambition?"

      "Plenty."

      "Then use it, for Heaven's sake!"

      "I do. Don't I ask you to marry me every time I get a chance?"

      "That's not using your ambition. That's playing the fool."

      "Nice opinion of yourself you've got," he grinned.

      "Never mind. You make me tired, Bill. Here you've got a little claim and a little bunch of cows—the makings of a ranch if you'd only work. But instead of working like a man you loaf like a—like a——"

      "Like a loafer," he prompted.

      "Exactly. You'd rather hunt and fish and ride the range for monthly wages when you're broke than scratch gravel and make something of yourself. You let your cows run with the T-Up-And-Down, and I'll bet when Tuckleton had his spring round-up you weren't even on the job. Were you?"

      "Well, I—uh—I was busy," shamefacedly.

      "Fishing over on Jack's Creek. That's how busy you were, when you should have been looking after your property."

      "Oh, Tuckleton's boys are square. Any calves they found running with my brand, they'd run the iron on 'em all right."

      "They'd run the iron on 'em all right," she repeated. "But what iron?"

      "Why—mine. Whose do you suppose?"

      "I don't know," she said candidly. "I'm asking you."

      "Shucks, Sally Jane, those boys wouldn't do anything crooked. Tuckleton wouldn't allow it."

      "Bill, don't you ever distrust anybody?"

      "Not until I'm certain they're crooked."

      "I see," said the lady disgustedly. "After you wake up and find your hide, together with the rest of your worldly possessions, hanging on the fence, then and not till then do you come alive to the fact that perhaps all was not right."

      "Well——" began Bill.

      "Don't you see by that time it's too late?" interrupted the lady.

      "Aw, I dunno. I—I suppose so."

      "You suppose so, do you? You suppose so. Don't you know, my innocent William, that there are a sight more criminals outside of jail than there are in?"

      "Why, Sally Jane!" said the innocent William, scraping a fie-fie forefinger at her. "Shame on you, shame on you, you wicked girl. I am surprised. Such thoughts in a young maid's mind. No, I ain't either. I always said if your pa sent you away to school you'd lose your faith in human nature. He did; and you did. And now look at you, talking just like a district attorney. And suspicious—I'd