Longhorn Empire by Bradford Scott Page B

Across the forks of the Canadian,
     and across the Prairie Dog fork of the Red, with the limitless plains of the Texas Panhandle stretching on all sides, until
     before him was the strange and wonderful cleft across the plains known as the Palo Duro Canyon.
    The canyon, really a great sunken valley, was many miles wide and very deep. In places its rock walls were sheer, in others
     they were slopes of crumbling shale and rock fall. Shadowy, mysterious, well watered, with stands of cedar and other growth,
     it lay like the raw wound left in the rangeland by a random stroke of some flaming sword of vengeance. It was an ideal range
     for cattlefenced in by walls hundreds of feet high. It had offsets, such as Tule Canyon, where once more than fifty thousand head of
     wild mustangs ranged. When Charles Goodnight, the great Panhandle cattle baron, settled his cows in Palo Duro Canyon, he had
     to run buffalo from the range.
    Brant rode along the rim of the canyon. Finally, in the distant southwest wall, he saw a dark and sinister looking opening
     choked with a bristle of cedars that grew thickest along the shadowy battlements that hemmed it in. Far up the ominous gorge
     a mighty spire of naked rock soared above the stony walls. Veined and ledged and turreted, it had the appearance of a great
     light house standing isolated and alone, its lofty summit as devoid of life as it had been since the beginning of time.
    It was a grim and even sinister formation, but to Austin Brant it was a friendly beacon welcoming the traveller home.
    Brant skirted the west end of the canyon, crossed Palo Duro Creek and, just as dusk mantled the prairie in its mystic robe,
     he reached the Running W ranch house.
    After doing full justice to a bountiful surroundin’ Brant stood on the ranch house porch gazing across the star burned prairie;
     endeavoring to envision something of the future of this vast land of wide spaces and unlimited opportunity. Unlike many of
     the older cowmen who took it for granted that present conditions would always prevail, Brant sensed that changes were coming
     to the grasslands, that new forces were gathering, new events were in the making.
    Nor was he wrong in his guess. Already the change was under way. Nesters and farmers werearriving. Cowboys were taking up spots of land and running their own brands. Soon the supremacy of the great cattle barons
     would be challenged, and out of that challenge would come conflict.
    Some years before, Col o nel Charles Goodnight had formed a partnership with Adair, an Irishman, who invested $375,000 as
     against Good-night’s Palo Duro ranch, the JA. The Prairie Cattle Company, the Spurs, the Matadors, and other organizations
     were buying land and running in great numbers of long-horns. The XIT, owned by the Capitol Syndicate, for many years the greatest
     ranch in America, was in pro cess of formation. The XIT, when the deal to build the Texas State Capitol in exchange for land
     grants was consummated, would consist of three million acres— “Ten Counties in Texas!”
    As yet the change had little affected the region wherein lay John Webb’s Running W spread.
    “But we’re due to catch it, and before long,” Brant mused as he gazed across the broad acres which Webb owned, or laid claim
     to.
    Brant’s first chore the following day was to visit Wes Morley of the Bar M and hand him the sum of money needed to meet his
     note. Morley evinced surprise.
    “What’s eatin’ that old pelican?” he demanded. “I was in no hurry for this dinero. My note isn’t due for nigh onto a month,
     and I could get an extension if I needed it, I figger.”
    Brant was not particularly surprised at this information. It but confirmed his suspicion that Webb had desired to get him away
     from Dodge City at once.
    “And he came nigh to heading me into a worse rukus,” he chuckled to himself as he rode back to the Running W. “That one has
     still got me puzzled. How in blazes did Doran