The Boy Ranchers; Or, Solving the Mystery at Diamond X

THE

BOY RANCHERS

OR

Solving the

Mystery at Diamond X

By

WILLARD F. BAKER

Copyright © 2016 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be

reproduced or copied in any way without

the express permission of the publisher in writing

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from

the British Library

Contents

The History of Western Fiction

CHAPTER I - SOME RIDIN’!

CHAPTER II - A CALL FOR HELP

CHAPTER III - A MYSTERIOUS SEARCH

CHAPTER IV - SUSPICIONS

CHAPTER V - HITTING THE TRAIL

CHAPTER VI - THE RUSTLERS

CHAPTER VII - A CRY IN THE NIGHT

CHAPTER VIII - THE PROFESSOR!

CHAPTER IX - WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

CHAPTER X - DEL PINZO

CHAPTER XI - BAD BUSINESS

CHAPTER XII - RIDING HERD

CHAPTER XIII - THE ATTEMPT FOILED

CHAPTER XIV - THE STAMPEDE

CHAPTER XV - LOST

CHAPTER XVI - THE VISION

CHAPTER XVII - THE NIGHT CAMP

CHAPTER XVIII - QUEER OPERATIONS

CHAPTER XIX - PRISONERS

CHAPTER XX - THE DIAMOND X BRAND

CHAPTER XXI - THE ESCAPE

CHAPTER XXII - BACK TO THE RANCH

CHAPTER XXIII - CLOSING IN

CHAPTER XXIV - THE FIGHT

CHAPTER XXV - THE TRICERATOPS

The History of Western Fiction

Western fiction is a genre which focuses on life in the American Old West. It was popularised through novels, films, magazines, radio, and television and included many staple characters, such as the cowboy, the gunslinger, the outlaw, the lawman and the damsel in distress. The genre’s popularity peaked in the early twentieth century due to dime novels and Hollywood adaptations of Western tales, such as The Virginian, The Great Moon Rider and The Great K.A. Train Robbery. Western novels remained popular through the 1960s, however readership began to dwindle during the 1970s.

The term the American Old West (the Wild West) usually refers to the land west of the Mississippi River and the Frontier between the settled and civilised and the open, lawless lands that resulted as the United States expanded to the Pacific Ocean. This area was largely unknown and little populated until the period between the 1860s and the 1890s when, after the American Civil War, settlement and the frontier moved west.

The Western novel was a relatively new genre which developed from the adventure and exploration novels that had appeared before it. Two predecessors of popular Western fiction writers were Meriweather Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clarke (1770-1838). Both men were explorers and were the first to make travel and the frontier a central theme of their work. Perhaps the most popular predecessor of Western fiction was James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). His west was idealised and romantic and his popular Leatherstockings series depicted the fight between the citizens of the frontier and the harsh wilderness that surrounded them. His titles included: The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841). His tales were often set on the American frontier, then in the Appalachian Mountains and in the land to the west of that. His protagonists lived off the land, were loyal, free, skilled with weapons, and avoided civilised society as best they could. His most famous novel, The Last of the Mohicans, also idealised the Native American.

During the 1860s and 1870s, a new generation of Western writers appeared, such as Mark Twain (1835-1910) Roughing It (1872) and Bret Harte (1836-1902) The Luck of Roaring Camp (1868). Both writers had spent time living in the west and continued to promote its appeal through their literature. Harte is often credited with developing many of the cult Western’s stock characters, such as the honest and beautiful dance hall girl, the suave conman and the honourable outlaw. These characters went on to be firm favourites in popular, mass produced Western fiction. At the end of the nineteenth century, thousands of people were undergoing the treacherous journey to the west to make a new life for themselves and the fictional stories and legends of heroes and villains who had survived in this wild landscape captured the imagination of the public.

Western novels became popular in England and throughout America through ‘Penny Dreadfuls’ and Dime Novels. These appeared in the late 1800s and were texts that could be bought cheaply (for either a penny or a dime – ten cents) as they were often cheaply printed on a large scale by publishers such as Irwin P. Beadle. Malaeska; the Indian Wife of the White Hunter (1860) by Ann S Stephens (1810-1886) is considered by many critics to be the first dime novel. These sensationalist dime and penny novels capitalised on stories of outlaws, lawmen, cowboys, and mountain men taming the western frontier. Many were fictional, but some were based on real heroes of the west such as Buffalo Bill (the scout, bison hunter and performer), Jesse James (the American outlaw, robber, gang leader and murderer) and Billy the Kid (the American gunfighter). By 1877, these Western characters were a recurring feature of the dime novel. The hero was often a man of action who saved damsels in distress and righted the wrongs of the villains that he faced. For this hero, honour was the most important thing and it was something that the dime heroes never relinquished.

In the 1900s, Pulp magazines helped relay these tales over to Europe where non-Americans also picked up the genre, such as the German writer, Karl May (1842-1912). Pulp magazines were a descendent of the dime novel and their content was largely aimed at a mass market. As their popularity grew, they were able to specialise and there were Pulp magazines devoted specifically to Westerns, such as Cowboy Stories, Ranch Romances, and Star Western. The popularity for these magazines and for Western films in the 1920s made the genre a popular phenomenon.

The status of the genre in the early twentieth century was also enhanced by particular novels by different writers. One of the most influential Western novels was The Virginians (1902) by Owen Wister (1860-1938) which was considered to be a ground breaking literary Western. Wister dismissed the traditional idea of the solitary pioneer conquering new lands and making a new life for himself, and replaced this traditional character with the cowboy. The cowboy was a mix of cultural ideals, such as southern chivalry, western primitivism and stout independence. These were characteristics that many Americans cherished. Wister contrasted the lawlessness of the West to the order and civilisation of the East. He introduced new characters, such as savages and bandits who attacked the more civilised Eastern characters. His cowboy heroes shared many features with the medieval knights – they rode horses, carried weapons, fought duals and valued their honour above all other attributes. Zane Grey’s (1872-1939) Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was also a popular Western novel. Grey was a prolific writer and wrote over ninety books which helped shape Western fiction. He changed Wister’s cowboy into a gunslinger who was feared by criminals and held in awe by other civilians. Other popular Western writers in this period include Andy Adams (1859-1935) whose titles include The Outlet (1905) and A Texas Matchmaker (1904), Edward S Ellis (1840-1916) who wrote Seth Jones, or The Captives of the Frontier (1860) and The Steam Man of the Prairies (1868), and Bertha Muzzy Bower (1871-1940) who wrote Chip of the Flying U (1906) and The Dry Ridge Gang (1935).

The Western hero lived in an environment where climate, natives and the terrain could be his enemies, and it was his job to tame the wilderness around him, but in doing so he determined his own extinction. In bringing forward civilisation and settlement, they brought about their own demise and their reason for existing. Western heroes could only exist on the frontier. Rebels were popular heroes in the Western novel and these heroes were often compassionate to those less fortunate than themselves and fought for the downtrodden. They were loyal, idealistic, independent, and knew the difference between right and wrong. They fought for the good and made personal sacrifices in order that good would triumph. The hostile setting of the Wild West transformed the characters into survivors as they were forced to alter themselves in order to live in this new setting. The Old Wild West captured the attention of many as it exemplified the spirit of freedom, individualism, adventure and unspoiled nature. It depicted a world that was separate from organised, urban society and showed the life of the wilderness, frontier and its inhabitants. The Western romanticised American history and the treacherous, mysterious and otherworldly Old West.

CHAPTER I

SOME RIDIN’!

Two riders slumped comfortably in their saddles as the ponies slowly ambled along. The sun was hot, and the dust stifling, a cloud of it forming a floating screen about the horsemen and progressing with them down the trail.

One of the riders, a tall, lanky and weather-beaten cowboy, taking a long breath, raised his voice in what he doubtless intended to be a song.

It was, however, more a cry of anguish as he bellowed forth:

  "Leave me alone with a rope an’ a saddle,

  Fold my spurs under my haid!

  Give me a can of them sweet, yaller peaches,

  ‘Cause why? My true-love is daid!"

Bad as all that; is it, Slim? asked the other, who, now that he had partly emerged from the cloud of dust, could be seen as a lad of about sixteen. He, like the other, older rider, was attired cowboy fashion.

Eh? What’s that, Bud? inquired the lanky one, seeming to arouse as if from a day dream. See suthin’?

Nope. I was just sort of remarking about that sad song, and——

Oh, shucks! That wa’n’t sad! declared Slim Degnan, foreman of the Diamond X ranch. Guess I wa’n’t really payin’ much attention to what I was singin’, but if you want a real sad lament——

No, I don’t! laughed Bud Merkel, whose father was the owner of Diamond X ranch. Not that I blame you for feeling sort of down and out, he added.

Oh, I don’t feel bad, Bud! came the hasty rejoinder. We did have more’n a ride than I figgered on, but I don’t aim to put up no kick. It’s all in the day’s work. You don’t seem to mind it.

I should say not! We had a bully time. I’d spend another night out in the open if we had to. I like it!

Yes, you seem to take to it like a duck does to water, added Slim. But it’s a shame to mention ducks in the same chapter with this atmosphere! Zow hippy! But it’s hot an’ dusty an’ thirsty! Come along there, you old hunk of jerked beef! he added to his pony, giving a gentle reminder with the spurs and pulling on the reins. The pony made a feeble attempt to increase its gait, but it was no more than an attempt.

The animal that was ridden by Bud—a pinto—started to follow the example of the other.

Regular mud-turtle gallop, commented the foreman.

They’ll go faster when they top the rise, and see the corral, commented Bud.

An’ smell water! That’s what I want, a long, sizzling, sozzling drink of water! cried Slim, whose name fitted him better than did his clothes. Then he broke forth again with:

Oh, leave me alone with a rope an’ a saddle——

Slowly the riders plodded along. The sun seemed to grow more hot and the dust more thick. As they approached a hill, beyond which lay the corral and ranch buildings of Diamond X, Bud drew rein, thus halting his pony.

Let’s give ‘em a breather before we hit the hill, he suggested to the foreman.

I’m agreeable, son, was the foreman’s easy comment as he slung one leg over the saddle and sat sideways.

Slim Degnan and Bud had ridden off to look for a break in one of the many long lines of wire fences that kept the stock of Diamond X somewhat within bounds, and it had taken longer to locate and repair the break than they had counted on.

They had been obliged to remain out all night—not that this was unusual, only they had not exactly prepared for it—and, in consequence, did not have all the ordinary comforts. But, as Bud had said, he had not minded it. However, the ponies were rather used up, and the riders in the same condition, and it was with equal feelings of relief that they came within sight of the last hill that lay between them and the ranch.

Well, might as well mosey along, spoke Slim, at length. Sooner we get some water inside us, an’ th’ ponies, th’ better we’ll all be.

I reckon, agreed Bud. But I don’t believe Zip Foster could have done the job any quicker than we did.

Who? queried Slim, with a quizzical look at his companion.

Zip Foster, answered Bud.

Never heard of him. What outfit does he ride for? asked the foreman, but he saved Bud the embarrassment of answer by suddenly rising in his saddle and looking off in the distance.

Bud had his own reasons for not answering that seemingly natural question, and he was glad of the diversion, though he was not at once aware of what had caused it. But he followed the direction of the foreman’s gaze, and, like him, saw arising in the still air, about two miles away, a thin thread of smoke—a mere wisp, as though it had dangled down from some fleecy cloud. But the smoke was ascending and was not the beginning of a fog descending.

Can’t be any of our boys, murmured