The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mystery Ranch, by Arthur Chapman

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Title: Mystery Ranch

Author: Arthur Chapman

Release Date: January 16, 2010 [EBook #30989]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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MYSTERY RANCH

BY ARTHUR CHAPMAN

AUTHOR OF "OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS," AND "CACTUS CENTER"

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1921

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY ARTHUR CHAPMAN

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CHAPTER I

There was a swift padding of moccasined feet through the hall leading to
the Indian agent's office.

Ordinarily Walter Lowell would not have looked up from his desk. He
recognized the footfalls of Plenty Buffalo, his chief of Indian police,
but this time there was an absence of the customary leisureliness in the
official's stride. The agent's eyes were questioning Plenty Buffalo
before the police chief had more than entered the doorway.

The Indian, a broad-shouldered, powerfully built man in a blue uniform,
stopped at the agent's desk and saluted. Lowell knew better than to ask
him a question at the outset. News speeds best without urging when an
Indian tells it. The clerk who acted as interpreter dropped his papers
and moved nearer, listening intently as Plenty Buffalo spoke rapidly in
his tribal tongue.

"A man has been murdered on the road just off the reservation,"
announced the interpreter.

Still the agent did not speak.

"I just found him," went on the police chief to the clerk, who
interpreted rapidly. "You'd better come and look things over."

"How do you know he was murdered?" asked the agent, reaching for his
desk telephone.

"He was shot."

"But couldn't he have shot himself?"

"No. He's staked down."

Lowell straightened up suddenly, a tingle of apprehension running
through him. Staked d