Flames of the Storm and three more stories (ePub)

Western novelette by W C Tuttle, published in Adventure magazine. Excerpt: 'It was the year of the big drouth in the valley of Moon River; a season when every blade of grass was worth its weight in gold to the cattlemen, who watched with jealous care over their unstaked portions of the range and guarded closely their almost dry water-holes. Day after day through the long summer the merciless sun had baked the grass-roots; browning the land; burning below the surface, until a puff of wind would drift the soil, as a wind drifts dry snow. Even the sage and greasewood turned from purple to brownish-gray. Along the river, which wound its way through this crescent-shaped valley, the leaves of willow and cottonwood hummed paper-dry in the hot winds, while the river, itself, was shrunken to half its normal Summer stage. The range cattle were red-eyed, hollow of flank and dust-colored and when they stopped to graze their panting nostrils would send up tiny puffs of smoke-like dust. In all that valley of rolling hills, which sloped upward on both sides to the hazy heights of the Shoshone Mountains, there was no sign of green vegetation. Riding down the slope of one of these hills, heading toward the river, came a tall, thin cowboy, unshaven and unshorn. The expression of his thin face was serious as he squinted into the hazy distance and spoke softly to his rangy bay horse- "Bronc, 'f this ain't the best place I ever seen t' commit murder in, then my name ain't 'Skeeter Bill' Sarg." The horse sniffed suspiciously at the dry grass, but did not crop at it.'