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William MacLeod Raine was an American author who wrote classic adventure novels about the Wild West.
"Call Me Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em"
The boy had spent the night at a water-hole in a little draw near the foot of the mesa. He had supped on cold rations and slept in his blanket without the comfort of glowing pi?on knots. For yesterday he had cut Indian signs and after dark had seen the shadow of Apache camp-fires reflected in the clouds.
After eating he swung to the bare back of his pony and climbed to the summit of the butte. His trained eyes searched the plains. A big bunch of antelope was trailing down to water almost within rifle-shot. But he was not looking for game.
He sniffed the smoke from the pits where the renegades were roasting mescal and judged the distance to the Apache camp at close to ten miles. His gaze swept toward the sunrise horizon and rested upon a cloud of dust. That probably meant a big herd of cattle crossing to the Pecos Valley on the Chisum Trail that led to Fort Stanton. The riders were likely just throwing the beeves from the bed-ground to the trail. The boy waited to make sure of their line of travel.
Presently he spoke aloud, after the fashion of the plainsman who spends much time alone in the saddle. "Looks like they'll throw off to-night close to the 'Pache camp. If they do hell's a-goin' to pop just before sunup to-morrow. I reckon I'll ride over and warn the outfit."
From a trapper the boy had learned that a band of Mescalero Apaches had left the reservation three weeks before, crossed into Mexico, gone plundering down the Pecos, and was now heading back toward the Staked Plains. Evidently the drover did not know this, since he was moving his cattle directly toward the Indian camp.
The young fellow let his cowpony pick its way down the steep shale hill to the draw. He saddled without a waste motion, packed his supplies deftly, mounted, and was off. In the way he cut across the desert toward the moving herd was the certainty of the frontiersman. He did not hurry, but he wasted no time. His horse circled in and out among the sand dunes, now topped a hill, now followed a wash. Every foot of the devious trail was the most economical possible.
At the end of nearly an hour's travel he pulled up, threw down his bridle reins, and studied the ground carefully. He had cut Indian sign. What he saw would have escaped the notice of a tenderfoot, and if it had been pointed out to him none but an expert trailer would have understood its significance. Yet certain facts were printed here on the desert for this boy as plainly as if they had been stenciled on a guide-post. He knew that within forty-eight hours a band of about twenty Mescalero bucks had returned to camp this way from an antelope hunt and that they carried with them half a dozen pronghorns. It was a safe guess that they were part of the large camp the smoke of which he had seen.
Long before the young man struck the drive, he knew he was close by the cloud of dust and the bawling of the cattle. His course across country had been so accurate that he hit the herd at the point without deflecting.
An old Texan drew up, changed his weight on the saddle to rest himself, and hailed the youngster.
"Goin' somewheres, kid, or just ridin'?" he asked genially.
"Just takin' my hawss out for a jaunt so's he won't get hog-fat," grinned the boy.
The Texan chewed tobacco placidly and eyed the cowpony. The horse had been ridden so far that he was a bag of bones.
"Looks some gaunted," he commented.
"Four Bits is so thin he won't throw a shadow," admitted the boy.
"Come a right smart distance, I reckon?"
"You done said it."
"Where you headin' for?"
"For Deaf Smith County. I got an uncle there. Saw your dust an' dropped over to tell you that a big bunch of 'Paches are camped just ahead of you."
The older man looked at him keenly. "How do you know, son?"
"Smelt their smoke an' cut their trail."
"Know Injuns, do you?"
"I trailed with Al Sieber 'most two years."
To have served with Sieber for any length of time was a certificate of efficiency. He was the ablest scout in the United States Army. Through his skill and energy Geronimo and his war braves were later forced to give themselves up to the troops.
"'Nuff said. Are these 'Paches liable to make us any trouble?"
"Yes, sir. I think they are. They're a bunch of broncos from the reservation an' they have been across the line stealin' horses an' murderin' settlers. They will sure try to stampede your cattle an' run off a lot of 'em."
"Hmp! You better go back an' see old man Webb about it. What's yore name, kid?"
For just an eye-beat the boy hesitated. "Call me Jim Thursday."
A glimmer of a smile rested in the eyes of the Texan. He was willing to bet that this young fellow would not have given him that name if to-day had not happened to be the fifth day of the week. But it was all one to the cowpuncher. To question a man too closely about his former residence and manner of life was not good form on the frontier.
"I'll call you Jim from Sunday to Saturday," he said, pulling a tobacco pouch from his hip pocket. "My name is Wrayburn-Dad Wrayburn, the boys call me."
The Texan shouted to the man riding second on the swing. "Oh, you, Billie
Prince!"
A tanned, good-looking young fellow cantered up.
"Meet Jimmie Thursday, Billie," the old-timer said by way of introduction. "This boy says there's heap many Injuns on the war-path right ahead of us. I reckon I'll let you take the point while I ride back with him an' put it up to the old man."
The "old man" turned out to be a short, heavy-set Missourian who had served in the Union Army and won a commission by intelligence and courage. Wherever the name of Homer Webb was known it stood for integrity and square-dealing. His word was as good as a signed bond.
Webb had come out of the war without a cent, but with a very definite purpose. During the last year of the Confederacy, while it was tottering to its fall, he had served in Texas. The cattle on the range had for years been running wild, the owners and herdsmen being absent with the Southern army. They had multiplied prodigiously, so that many thousands of mavericks roamed without brand, the property of any one who would round them up and put an iron on their flanks. The money value of them was very little. A standard price for a yearling was a plug of tobacco. But Webb looked to the future. He hired two riders, gathered together a small remuda of culls, and went into the cattle business with energy. To-day the Flying V Y was stamped on forty thousand longhorns.
The foreman of the Flying V Y was riding with the owner of the brand at the drag end of the herd. He was a hard-faced citizen known as Joe Yankie. When Wrayburn had finished his story, the foreman showed a row of tobacco-stained teeth in an unpleasant grin.
"Same old stuff, Dad. There always is a bunch of bucks off the reservation an' they're always just goin' to run our cattle away. If you ask me there's nothin' to it."
Young Thursday flushed. "If you'll ride out with me I'll show you their trail."
Yankie looked at him with a sneer. He guessed this boy to be about eighteen. There was a suggestion of effeminacy about the lad's small, well-shaped hands and feet. He was a slender, smooth-faced youth with mild blue eyes. It occurred to Webb, too, that the stranger might have imagined the Apaches. But in his motions was something of the lithe grace of the puma. It was part of the business of the cattleman to judge men and he was not convinced that this young fellow was as inoffensive as he looked.
"Where you from?" asked the drover.
"From the San Carlos Agency."
"Ever meet a man named Micky Free out there?"
"I've slept under the same tarp with him many's the time when we were followin' Chiricahua 'Paches. He's the biggest dare-devil that ever forked a horse."
"Describe him."
"Micky's face is a map of Ireland. He's got only one eye; a buck punched the other out when he was a kid. His hair is red an' he wears it long."
"Any beard?"
"A bristly little red mustache."
"That's Micky to a T." Webb made up his mind swiftly. "The boy's all right, Yankie. He'll do to take along."
"It's your outfit. Suits me if he does you." The foreman turned insolently to the newcomer. "What'd you say your name was, sissie?"
The eyes of the boy, behind narrowed lids, grew hard as steel.
"Call me Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em," he drawled in a soft voice, every syllable distinct.
There was a moment of chill silence. A swift surprise had flared into the eyes of the foreman. The last thing in the world he had expected was to have his bad temper resented so promptly by this smooth-faced little chap. Since Yankie was the camp bully he bristled up to protect his reputation.
"Better not get on the prod with me, young fellow me lad. I'm liable to muss up your hair. Me, I'm from the Strip, where folks grow man-size."
The youngster smiled, but there was no mirth in that thin-lipped smile. He knew, as all men did, that the Cherokee Strip was the home of desperadoes and man-killers. The refuse of the country, driven out by the law of more settled communities, found here a refuge from punishment. But if the announcement of the foreman impressed him, he gave no sign of it.
"Why didn't you stay there?" he asked with bland innocence.
Yankie grew apoplectic. He did not care to discuss the reasons why he had first gone to the Strip or the reasons why he had come away. This girl-faced boy was the only person who had asked for a bill of particulars. Moreover, the foreman did not know whether the question had been put in child-like ignorance of any possible offense or with an impudent purpose to enrage him.
"Don't run on the rope when I'm holdin' it, kid," he advised roughly.
"You're liable to get thrown hard."
"And then again I'm liable not to," lisped the youth from Arizona gently.
The bully looked the slim newcomer over again, and as he looked there rang inside him some tocsin of warning. Thursday sat crouched in the saddle, wary as a rattlesnake ready to strike. A sawed-off shotgun lay under his leg within reach of his hand, the butt of a six-gun was even closer to those smooth, girlish fingers. In the immobility of his figure and the steadiness of the blue eyes was a deadly menace.
Yankie was no coward. He would go through if he had to. But there was still time to draw back if he chose. He was not exactly afraid; on the other hand, he did not feel at all easy.
He contrived a casual, careless laugh. "All right, kid. I don't have to rob the cradle to fill my private graveyard. Go get your Injuns. It will be all right with me."
Webb drew a breath of relief. There was to be no gunplay after all. He had had his own reasons for not interfering sooner, but he knew that the situation had just grazed red tragedy.
"I'm goin' to take the boy's advice," he announced to Yankie. "Ride forward an' swing the herd toward that big red butte. We'll give our Mescalero friends a wide berth if we can."
The foreman hung in the saddle a moment before he turned to go. He had to save his face from a public back-down, "Bet you a week's pay there's nothin' to it, Webb."
"Hope you're right, Joe," his employer answered.
As soon as Yankie had cantered away, Dad Wrayburn, ex-Confederate trooper, slapped his hand on his thigh and let out a modulated rebel yell.
"Dad burn my hide, Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em, you're all right. Fustest time I ever saw Joe take water, but he shorely did splash some this here occasion. I wouldn't 'a' missed it for a bunch of hog-fat yearlin's."
Webb had not been sorry to see his arrogant foreman brought up with a sharp turn, but in the interest of discipline he did not care to say so.
"Why can't you boys get along peaceable with Joe, I'd like to know? This snortin' an' pawin' up the ground don't get you anything."
"I reckon Joe does most of the snortin' that's done," Wrayburn answered dryly. "I ain't had any trouble with him, because he spends a heap of time lettin' me alone. But there's no manner of doubt that Joe rides the boys too hard."
The drover dismissed the subject and turned to Thursday.
"Want a job?"
"Mebbe so."
"I need another man. Since you sabe the ways of the 'Paches I can use you to scout ahead for us."
"What you payin'?"
"Fifty a month."
"You've hired a hand."
"Good enough. Better pick one of the boys to ride with you while you are out scoutin'."
"I'll take Billie Prince," decided the new rider at once.
"You know Billie?"
"Never saw him before to-day. But I like his looks. He's a man to tie to."
"You're right he is."
The drover looked at his new employee with a question in his shrewd eyes. The boy was either a man out of a thousand or he was a first-class bluffer. He claimed to have cut Indian sign and to know exactly what was written there. At a single glance he had sized up Prince and knew him for a reliable side partner. Without any bluster he had served notice on Yankie that it would be dangerous to pick on him as the butt of his ill-temper.
In those days, on the Pecos, law lay in a holster on a man's thigh. The individual was a force only so far as his personality impressed itself upon his fellows. If he made claims he must be prepared to back them to a fighting finish.
Was this young Thursday a false alarm? Or was he a good man to let alone when one was looking for trouble? Webb could not be sure yet, though he made a shrewd guess. But he knew it would not he long before he found out.
Tangled Trails A Western Detective Story by William MacLeod Raine
William Macleod Raine was a British-born American writer of Wild West fiction. Raine's stories of adventure during the famous, action-packed era of American history are still popular today. This edition of A Daughter of Raasay includes a table of contents.
William Macleod Raine was a British-born American writer of Wild West fiction. Raine's stories of adventure during the famous, action-packed era of American history are still popular today. This edition of The Highgrader includes a table of contents.
William MacLeod Raine was an American author who wrote classic adventure novels about the Wild West.
William MacLeod Raine was an American author who wrote classic adventure novels about the Wild West.
June Rivera was divorced by her husband after three years of marriage because he wanted to be with her sister who was pregnant for him. Kicked to the curb with a divorce and rejected by her parents,she struggles to make ends meet and get a job until she saves Luis Ambrose from an accident - the only child of Rafael Ambrose, a widowed man and the CEO of Ambrose Corporation. When little Luis asks to have her as a nanny, and Rafael's mother pressures him to get married, they draw a contract. To be Luis's nanny and his fake wife for one year in exchange for 50 million dollars!
"I've warned you from the beginning. Don't marry him, but you won't listen." She stood close to me and smiled with concern. "You are not a woman worthy of a man as handsome, rich, smart, and virile as Blaze." My whole body trembled at her words. "Have you no shame?" I asked in a quivering voice. "Take a good look at yourself, Heather." She looked at me in the mirror. "You can't even look at your ugly face. Do you think Blaze can endure a lifetime of looking at that face?" Heather Bailey had a surprise from her husband that night: a divorce agreement. After a year of marriage and facing ups and downs, she couldn't believe Blaze intended to divorce her. But she was devastated when she saw him gazing lovingly at another woman because that person was closest to her. Shortly after she put her signature on their divorce papers, shock waves caught her up. Her flower shop was severely burnt, beyond repair. Her father's company collapsed, and her parents blamed her. She struggled to rebuild her life from the ground up and became more successful than ever. Having many customers who came from influential families, she started her action against Blaze. She won the very thing he wanted. But that was just the beginning.
They don't know I'm a girl. They all look at me and see a boy. A prince. Their kind purchase humans like me for their lustful desires. And, when they stormed into our kingdom to buy my sister, I intervened to protect her. I made them take me too. The plan was to escape with my sister whenever we found a chance. How was I to know our prison would be the most fortified place in their kingdom? I was supposed to be on the sidelines. The one they had no real use for. The one they never meant to buy. But then, the most important person in their savage land-their ruthless beast king-took an interest in the "pretty little prince." How do we survive in this brutal kingdom, where everyone hates our kind and shows us no mercy? And how does someone, with a secret like mine, become a lust slave? . AUTHOR'S NOTE. This is a dark romance-dark, mature content. Highly rated 18+ Expect triggers, expect hardcore. If you're a seasoned reader of this genre, looking for something different, prepared to go in blindly not knowing what to expect at every turn, but eager to know more anyway, then dive in! . From the author of the international bestselling book: "The Alpha King's Hated Slave."
[Cute Baby + Secret Identity + Powerful hero and heroine!] Caroline loved Damian with all her heart for five whole years. She devoted herself to him and lived humbly for his sake. However, when the couple faced a crisis, she hoped that the news of her pregnancy would fix their marriage, but what she got in return was just a divorce agreement. And to make things worse, while she was about to give birth, she had fallen into someone's trap and her life was in danger. After managing to survive such a harrowing experience, she was determined to cut all ties with the man. Five years later, she re-emerged with her head held high, being the CEO of a famous company. Those who used to bully her now got a taste of their own medicine. And the truth about the past gradually surfaced... Dazzled by Caroline's newfound confidence, her ex-husband wanted to get back together with her, but she just turned a blind eye to his advances. Damian pleaded desperately, "Honey, our baby needs both his parents. Please remarry me!"
On their wedding night, Rogelio wrapped his fingers around Marian's neck and spat at her, "Congratulations! From now on, you live in hell!" The reason for his wrath was that he believed she was responsible for the death of his elder brother. So, he married her but refused to touch her, determined to make her suffer for the rest of her pitiful life! However, due to an unforeseen accident, Marian was forced to sleep with Rogelio in order to save him, and she ended up getting pregnant. Concealing her pregnancy, Marian lived cautiously under Rogelio's watchful eyes. He hated her and relentlessly humiliated her, yet he would never allow anyone else to lay a finger on her— "Mr. Bailey, your wife got into a fight with someone!" Rogelio secretly took action, eliminating that person completely. "Sir, your wife claimed that all of your family's wealth belongs to her!" Rogelio quietly transferred all the shares to her. Unaware of all this, Marian only wanted to escape, but Rogelio pulled her into his warm embrace, whispering, "Mrs. Bailey, where do you intend to go with our unborn child?"
Amy didn't expect that her husband whom she had loved and trusted earnestly for many years would be cheating on her by having sex with his secretary. When she confronted him, he and his secretary mocked and ridiculed her, they called her barren to her face, afterall, she had not conceived for the past three years that she had been married to her husband, Callan. Terribly Heartbroken, she filed for divorce and left to the club, she picked a random gigolo, had a hot one night stand with him, paid him and dissapeared to a small city. She came back to the country six years later with three identical cute boys and three identical cute girls of the same age. She settled and got a job but soon find out that her CEO was the gigolo she had sex with six years back at the club. Will she be able to hide her six little cuties from her CEO, who happens to be the most powerful man in NorthHill and beleived to be infertile? Can Amy and the most powerful man in NorthHill get along considering the social gap between them.