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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLYING U'S LAST STAND *** Produced by Mary Starr, and David Widger



THE FLYING-U'S LAST STAND


By B. M. Bower





CONTENTS


THE FLYING U'S LAST STAND


CHAPTER 1.   OLD WAYS AND NEW

CHAPTER 2.   ANDY GREEN'S NEW ACQUAINTANCE

CHAPTER 3.   THE KID LEARNS SOME THINGS ABOUT HORSES

CHAPTER 4.   ANDY TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME

CHAPTER 5.   THE HAPPY FAMILY TURN NESTERS

CHAPTER 6.   THE FIRST BLOW IN THE FIGHT

CHAPTER 7.   THE COMING OF THE COLONY

CHAPTER 8.   FLORENCE GRACE HALLMAN SPEAKS PLAINLY

CHAPTER 9.   THE HAPPY FAMILY BUYS A BUNCH OF CATTLE

CHAPTER 10.   WHEREIN ANDY GREEN LIES TO A LADY

CHAPTER 11.   A MOVING CHAPTER IN EVENTS

CHAPTER 12.   SHACKS, LIVE STOCK AND PILGRIMS PROMPTLY AND PAINFULLY REMOVED

CHAPTER 13.   IRISH WORKS FOR THE CAUSE

CHAPTER 14.   JUST ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER

CHAPTER 15.   THE KID HAS IDEAS OF HIS OWN

CHAPTER 16.   "A RELL OLD COWPUNCHER”

CHAPTER 17.   "LOST CHILD”

CHAPTER 18.   THE LONG WAY ROUND

CHAPTER 19.   HER NAME WAS ROSEMARY

CHAPTER 20.   THE RELL OLE COWPUNCHER GOES HOME

CHAPTER 21.   THE FIGHT GOES ON

CHAPTER 22.   LAWFUL IMPROVEMENTS

CHAPTER 23.   THE WATER QUESTION AND SOME GOSSIP

CHAPTER 24.   THE KID IS USED FOR A PAWN IN THE GAME

CHAPTER 25.   "LITTLE BLACK SHACK'S ALL BURNT UP”

CHAPTER 26.   ROSEMARY ALLEN DOES A SMALL SUM IN ADDITION

CHAPTER 27.   "ITS AWFUL EASY TO GET LOST”

CHAPTER 28.      AS IT TURNED OUT





THE FLYING U'S LAST STAND





CHAPTER 1. OLD WAYS AND NEW

Progress is like the insidious change from youth to old age, except that progress does not mean decay. The change that is almost imperceptible and yet inexorable is much the same, however. You will see a community apparently changeless as the years pass by; and yet, when the years have gone and you look back, there has been a change. It is not the same. It never will be the same. It can pass through further change, but it cannot go back. Men look back sick sometimes with longing for the things that were and that can be no more; they live the old days in memoryβ€”but try as they will they may not go back. With intelligent, persistent effort they may retard further change considerably, but that is the most that they can hope to do. Civilization and Time will continue the march in spite of all that man may do.

That is the way it was with the Flying U. Old J. G. Whitmore fought doggedly against the changing conditionsβ€”and he fought intelligently and well. When he saw the range dwindling and the way to the watering places barred against his cattle with long stretches of barbed wire, he sent his herds deeper into the Badlands to seek what grazing was in the hidden, little valleys and the deep, sequestered canyons. He cut more hay for winter feeding, and he sowed his meadows to alfalfa that he might increase the crops. He shipped old cows and dry cows with his fat steers in the fall, and he bettered the blood of his herds and raised bigger cattle. Therefore, if his cattle grew fewer in number, they improved in quality and prices went higher, so that the result was much the same.

It began to look, then, as though J. G. Whitmore was cunningly besting the situation, and was going to hold out indefinitely against the encroachments of civilization upon the old order of things on the range. And it had begun to look as though he was going to best Time at his own game, and refuse also to grow old; as though he would go on being the same pudgy, grizzled, humorously querulous Old Man beloved of his men, the Happy Family of the Flying U.

Sometimes, however, Time will fill a four-flush with the joker, and then laugh while he rakes in the chips. J. G. Whitmore had been going his way and refusing to grow old for a long timeβ€”and then an accident, which is Time's joker, turned the game against him. He stood for just a second too long on a crowded crossing in Chicago, hesitating between going forward or back. And that second gave Time a chance to play an accident. A big seven-passenger touring car mowed him down and left him in a heap for the ambulance from the nearest hospital to gather on its stretcher.

The Old Man did not die; he had lived long on the open range and he was pretty tough and hard to kill. He went back to his beloved Flying U, with a crutch to help him shuffle from bed to easy chair and back again.

The Little Doctor, who was his youngest sister, nursed him tirelessly; but it was long before there came a day when the Old Man gave his crutch to the Kid to use for a stick-horse, and walked through the living room and out upon the porch with the help of a cane and the solicitous arm of the Little Doctor, and with the Kid galloping gleefully before him on the crutch.

Later he discarded the help of somebody's arm, and hobbled down to the corral with the cane, and with the Kid still galloping before him on β€œUncle Gee Gee's” crutch. He stood for some time leaning against the corral watching some of the boys halter-breaking a horse that was later to be soldβ€”when he was β€œbroke gentle”—and then he hobbled back again, thankful for the soft comfort of his big chair.

That was well enough, as far as it went. The Flying U took it for granted that the Old Man was slowly returning to the old order of life, when rheumatism was his only foe and he could run things with his old energy and easy good management. But there never came a

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