Free The Cowpuncher by Bradford Scott Page B

Huck, he gave a start, brought his hand down from his head and peered hard at her.
    “If that’s the man I think it is,” he snapped, “ we’re lookin’ for him, too.”
    Sue’s heart leaped. “You recognize that description?”
    “Shore,” the yardmaster snorted. “That’s the hellion who put Fred Rowles in the hospital for two weeks with a busted head. We been hankerin’ to lay our hands on that hobo.”
    “What do you mean?” Sue cried.
    The yardmaster told Sue about the fracas in the railroad yards when two hobos, trying to get a freeride, were discovered by Fred Rowles who tried to throw them off the train and was badly beaten up by one of them.
    “That sounds like Huck.”
    “Lucky for him,” the yardmaster concluded, “that Rowles came outa this alive, or there would’ve been a murder charge on this hombre’s head.”
    “But what happened to him? Did you catch him?”
    “No, dashblame it,” the man growled. “Him an’ the other feller gave us the slip.”
    “Where could they have gone?”
    “I wish you could tell me, ma’am,” he said grimly. “The boys would kinda like to get their hands on both of them. But they run out on us. Mebbe they hopped the train goin’ east—and mebbe they hopped the train headed west. Think most likely it was east—that freight left quicker than the westbound.”
    “Oh.”
    Sue thanked him and headed back to the station. The first joy at finding some trace of Huck had already gone, and disappointment was taking its place. There was no doubt in her mind that it was Huck who had been involved in the fighting.
    The dispatch and ease with which he had handled the railroad detective fitted the Huck who had given a hiding to a town bully who had boldly accosted her on the street in Stevens Gulch several months before.
    And the important thing was that Huck was all right—even if she hadn’t found him.
    According to the yardman, he was headed east.Probably, Sue thought, because he feared he had murdered the “bull” and was running away. Running away didn’t sound like Huck. But she was forced to admit that it provided the first good reason she had found for Huck’s failure to return to the Bar X.
    As Sue reconstructed it, Huck, out of funds and too proud to wire for money, had decided to hop a freight and ride back to Stevens Gulch—she knew how any cowboy detests walking. Apparently he had picked up a companion and together they tried to find an open car, when they were surprised by the railroad “bull.” Huck had beaten the man in a fist fight; but then another “bull” came along and before Huck had time to discover how badly hurt the first man was, he had to flee. Then, fearing he had killed the man, and knowing the obvious consequences, he had impulsively decided to get away.
    Sue Doyle accepted this gratefully, for it left her her pride. Huck hadn’t deserted her. Her kiss hadn’t driven him away. The telegram she sent her father when she got to the station was brief and business-like:
DEAR DAD: ON HIS TRAIL. TAKING THE TRAIN EAST. LOVE. SUE.

X
The Broken Trail
    It was wild and lonely there in the shadow of the towering Twin Peaks, with the rugged battlements of the Sangre de Cristo Range marching majestically into the northwest. It was a land of bare black rock and rushing white water, where the scream of the eagle sounded by day and the lonely shriek of the stalking panther by night.
    Streams foamed at the bottom of deep canyons and barrancas. The wind was bitter on the heights and snow lay in the crotches of the beeches and on the shaded sides of rocks.
    The ground was hard-frozen and the rustle of dead leaves and the creak of the mesquite thorns accentuated the harshness of the winter landscape.
    And yet it had not been a too-arduous trek for Huck and his companions. They followed the water-level route, by way of the river at first, to the terrain encompassed by the old priest’s map; then turned sharply to thread the winding course of