Free The Mysterious Rider by Zane Grey

Keen, strung, furtive, he kept motionless, awaiting events.
    "Buster Jack, these new pards of yours are low-down rustlers, an' one of them's worse, as I could prove," said Wade, "but compared with you they're all gentlemen."
    Belllounds leered. But he was losing his bravado. Something began to dawn upon his obtuse consciousness.
    "What do I care for you or your gabby talk?" he flashed, sullenly.
    "You'll care when I tell these rustlers how you double-crossed them."
    Belllounds made a spring, like that of a wolf in a trap; but when half-way up he slipped. The rustler on his right kicked him, and he sprawled down again, back to the wall.
    "Buster, look into this!" called Wade, and he leveled the gun that quivered momentarily, like a compass needle, and then crashed fire and smoke. The bullet spat into a log. But it had cut the lobe of Belllounds's ear, bringing blood. His face turned a ghastly, livid hue. All in a second terror possessed him-shuddering, primitive terror of death.
    Folsom haw-hawed derisively and in crude delight. "Say, Buster Jack, don't get any idee thet my ole pard Wade was shootin' at your head. Aw, no!"
    The other rustlers understood then, if Belllounds had not, that the situation was in control of a man not in any sense ordinary.
    "Cap, did you know Buster Jack accused my friend, Wils Moore, of stealin' these cattle you're sellin'?" asked Wade, deliberately.
    "What cattle did you say?" asked the rustler, as if he had not heard aright.
    "The cattle Buster Jack stole from his father an' sold to you."
    "Wal, now! Bent Wade at his old tricks! I might have knowed it, once I seen you.... Naw, I'd no idee Belllounds blamed thet stealin' on to any one."
    "He did."
    "Ahuh! Wal, who's this Wils Moore?"
    "He's a cowboy, as fine a youngster as ever straddled a horse. Buster Jack hates him. He licked Jack a couple of times an' won the love of a girl that Jack wants."
    "Ho! Ho! Quite romantic, I declare.... Say, thar's some damn queer notions I'm gettin' about you, Buster Jack."
    Belllounds lay propped against the wall, sagging there, laboring of chest, sweating of face. The boldness of brow held, because it was fixed, but that of his eyes had gone; and his mouth and chin showed craven weakness. He stared in dread suspense at Wade.
    "Listen. An' all of you sit tight," went on Wade, swiftly. "Jack stole the cattle from his father. He's a thief at heart. But he had a double motive. He left a trail-he left tracks behind. He made a crooked horseshoe, like that Wils Moore's horse wears, an' he put that on his own horse. An' he made a contraption-a little iron ring with a dot in it, an' he left the crooked shoe tracks, an' he left the little ring tracks-"
    "By Gawd! I seen them funny tracks!" ejaculated Folsom. "At the water-hole an' right hyar in front of the cabin. I seen them. I knowed Jack made them, somehow, but I didn't think. His white hoss has a crooked left front shoe."
    "Yes, he has, when Jack takes off the regular shoe an' nails on the crooked one.... Men, I followed those tracks They lead up here to your cabin. Belllounds made them with a purpose.... An' he went to Kremmlin' to get Sheriff Burley. An' he put him wise to the rustlin' of cattle to Elgeria. An' he fetched him up to White Slides to accuse Wils Moore. An' he trailed his own tracks up here, showin' Burley the crooked horse track an' the little circle-that was supposed to be made by the end of Moore's crutch-an' he led Burley with his men right to this cabin an' to the trail where you drove the cattle over the divide.... An' then he had Burley dig out some cakes of mud holdin' these tracks, an' they fetched them down to White Slides. Buster Jack blamed the stealin' on to Moore. An' Burley arrested Moore. The trial comes off next week at Kremmlin'."
    "Damn me!" exclaimed Folsom, wonderingly. "A man's never too old to learn! I knowed this pup was stealin' from his own father, but I reckoned he was jest a natural-born, honest rustler, with a hunch fer drink