Free Monty Price's Nightmare by Zane Grey

Chapter I
    â€™Round the campfires they cursed him in hearty cowboy fashion, and laid upon him the bane of their ill will. They said that Monty Price had no friend—that no foreman or rancher ever trusted him— that he never spent a dollar—that he would not keep a job—that there must be something crooked about a fellow who bunked and worked alone, who quit every few months to ride away, no one knew where, and who returned to the ranges, haggard and thin and shaky, hunting for another place.
    He had been drunk somewhere, and the wonder of it was that no one in the Tonto Forest Ranges had ever seen him drink a drop. Red Lake and Gallatin and Bellville knew him, but no more of him than the ranges. He went far­ther afield, they said, and hinted darker things than a fling at faro or a fondness for red liquor.
    But there was no rancher, no cowboy from one end of the vast range coun­try to another who did not admit Monty Price’s preeminence in those peculiar at­tributes of his calling. He was a mag­nificent rider; he had an iron and cruel hand with a horse, yet he never killed or crippled his mount; he possessed the Indian’s instinct for direction; he never failed on the trail of lost stock; he could ride an outlaw and brand a wild steer and shoe a vicious mustang as bragging cowboys swore they could; and supreme test of all he would endure, without complaint, long toilsome hours in the piercing wind and freez­ing sleet and blistering sun.
    â€˜I’ll tell you what,” said old Abe Somers, “I’ve ranched from the Little Big Horn to the Pecos, an’ I’ve seen a sight of cow-punchers in my day. But Monty Price’s got ‘em all skinned. It shore is too bad he’s onreliable—packin’ off the way he does, jest when he’s the boy most needed. Some mystery about Monty.”
    It was an old story in the Tonto—how once when Monty returned from one of his strange absences and rode in to Cass Stringer’s.
    Cass was the biggest rancher in those parts, and, as it happened, at the time was without a foreman and in urgent need of men. “Monty, I’ll give you a job—make you foreman—double any wages you ever got—if you’ll promise to stick through summer and the fall round-up.” Monty made the promise, and he ran Cass’ outfit as it had never been run before; and then, with the very day of the round-up at hand, he broke his word and rode away.
    That hurt Monty in the Tonto coun­try. He never got another foreman job, but it seemed he could always find some outfit that would employ him. And strangely he was always at one and the same time unwelcome and welcome. His record made him unpopular. But, on the other hand, while he was with an outfit, he made for efficiency and speed. The extra duty, the hard task, the problem with stock or tools or har­ness—these always fell to Monty. His most famous trick was to offer to take a comrade’s night shift.
    So it often happened that while the cowboys lolled round their camp fire, Monty Price, after a hard day’s riding, would stand out the night guard, in rain and snow. But he always made a bargain. He sold his service. And the boys were wont to say that he put his services high. Still they would never have grumbled at that if Monty had ever spent a dollar. He saved his money. He never bought any fancy boots or spurs or bridles or scarfs or chaps; and his cheap jeans and saddles were the jest of his companions.
    Nevertheless, in spite of Monty’s shortcomings, he rode in the Tonto on and off for five years before he made an enemy.
    There was a cowboy named Bart Muncie who had risen to be a foreman, and who eventually went to ranching on a small scale. He acquired a range up in the forest country where grassy valleys and parks lay between the wooded hills, and here in a wild spot among the pines he built a cabin for his wife and baby. It came about that