Read Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 05 - Law O' The Lariat(1935) for Free Online Page A

the White Masks, an’ don’t want none,” he said. “They may
lift a steer now an’ then for the meat, but this ain’t the kind o’ play they’d
make. Looks more like a Greaser trick to me.”
                 This
agreed with the foreman’s own view, and he left it at that. He spent the day
riding the range, “having a look at the country” was how he would have
expressed it, and returned in the evening to find a man waiting to see him. The
visitor, chatting casually with the outfit, was a plumpish young man of just
under medium height, with fair hair, pale blue eyes, and a round, youthful face
which the sun had reddened rather than tanned.
                 “I’m
guessin’ yo’re the foreman,” he said, when Severn approached.
                 “Yo’re
a good guesser, seh,” the other told him. “What might be yore trouble?”
                 The
visitor’s eyes twinkled. “Well, barrin’ a severe pain in the pants’ pocket I
don’t know as there’s anythin’ the matter,” he replied.
                 “Yu
wantin’ a job?” asked Severn.
                 “ I’m needin’ one, which I s’pose amounts to the same thing,”
was the answer. “Yu see, years back, I got into the habit o’ eatin’ regular
meals.”
                 “Which
is shore a hard one to get out of,” the foreman agreed. “Yu understand cattle?”
                 “Cattle? Me? Why, they raised me on cow’s milk,” smiled the
stranger.
                 “Yu
don’t say,” ejaculated Severn gently, looking down from his superior height.
“They didn’t raise yu too much, did they?” The visitor joined in the laugh that
followed, and the foreman continued: “I can certainly use another man. What are
we to call yu?”
                 “Anythin’
yu like, an’ I’ll come a-runnin’ all same good dawg,” retorted the workless one
with jaunty impudence.
                 “Right,”
Severn smiled. “We’ll call yu `Sunset’—the name shore fits yu like yore skin.”
                 For
a moment the pale eyes flashed and the young man’s face grew even redder; then
his mouth opened into a wide grin.
                 “Sunset
goes, though my name’s Larry Barton,” he said. “An’ I shorely asked for it,
didn’t I?”
                 Severn
nodded. “Supper’ll be ready soon,” he told him. “Gentle Annie will find yu a
bunk.” He waved a hand towards Linley, and that youth’s face promptly rivaled
that of the new hand. “What the hell—” he began, but the foreman interrupted
him with a smile. “I heard yu singin’ this mornin’,” he explained.
                 “Yu
an’ me shore oughta be friends,” Sunset said, as he followed Linley to the
bunkhouse. “We’ve been christened together.”
                 The
boy grinned sympathetically, but he then and there abandoned any ambition he
may have cherished regarding an operatic career.
                 Later
on in the evening Barton sneaked up to the foreman’s shack, slid inside without
the formality of knocking, and grinned impudently at his new boss, who grinned
back again.
                 “Sunset,
yu are right welcome,” he said.
                 “If
I’d guessed yu would plaster that dam label on me I wouldn’t ‘a’ come,”
retorted the other. “I oughta known—”
                 “Better
than to get fresh with me,” interrupted Severn.
                 “Besides,
yu got company.”
                 Larry
laughed. “Shore, Gentle Annie. How
come yu to hit on that?”
                 “He
was bellerin’ like a sick calf this mornin’, Gentle Annie, do you lo-o-o-ve me, As you did long years a-g-o-o-o?
                 I
just couldn’t help it, but I reckon he’s a good kid all the same. He’ll stand
the