Over the Northern Border by George Owen Baxter

Book Details

Over the Northern Border (1922) – A man sacrifices himself by going on the run twice, and taking responsibility for the misdeeds of others, to protect and preserve the happiness of two different couples.

Chapter I. Assumed Guilt.
Chapter II. With A Giant’s Strength.
Chapter III. Blue Fox.
Chapter IV. Trainor Instructs.
Chapter V. Trouble Ahead.
Chapter VI. The Meeting.
Chapter VII. On The Thousandth Chance.
Chapter VIII. Trainor’s Wise Intent.
Chapter IX. A Formidable Antagonist.
Chapter X. Need For Haste.
Chapter XI. The Price Of Sacrifice.

George Owen Baxter was the pen name of Frederick Schiller Faust (May 29, 1892 – May 12, 1944), born in Seattle, Washington. In his lifetime, Faust is estimated to have written nearly fifteen million words using eighteen different pen names including Max Brand, George Owen Baxter, Walter C. Butler, George Challis, Evan Evans, Frederick Faust, John Frederick, Frederick Frost, and David Manning, and others.

Over the Northern Border was published in Western Story Magazine in 1922.

Over the Northern Border has 2 illustrations.

Files:

1. Baxter-OverTheNorthernBorder.epub

Excerpt: Over the Northern Border

Chapter I.

Assumed Guilt.

IT ain’t hard at all,” said the sheriff. “Most likely he thinks that nobody seen him because of the dark. And he’s right when he thinks that nobody could make out his face. But the point is that there’s lots of ways of identifying a gent, and one of the ways is by the hoss that he rides. And old Jeffreys is willing to swear that he made out the gray gelding of Bill Vance, the high-headed fool of a hoss that young Vance has been riding around lately. So all I’m going to do, boys, is to wait till the moon comes up and then slip out to the Vance place. The reason that I want you fellows to come along is because I never can tell when the Vance people will put up a fight. They got the spirit of a load of dynamite, and any old spark is lightning enough to set them off and blow the tar out of everything within reach.”

“Till the moon comes up?” queried one of his men. “Well, that won’t be more’n half an hour, I guess, at the most and—”

But Jack Trainor, sitting in the next room of the hotel and hearing every syllable that was spoken because the wall between was of a thickness hardly rivaling cardboard, waited to hear no more. He had made out, from what passed before in their talk, that the sheriff had gathered the half dozen men in the next room to conduct an inquiry into the stage robbery which had occurred the night before. And now he had been struck rigid with horror by the mention of the name of Bill Vance, his brother-in-law.”

Trainor had left Bill’s house the previous evening after a visit of a fortnight. It seemed impossible that young Vance should have committed the robbery, but on second thought Jack remembered that his host had been absent during the entire first half of the night, pleading a business call across the hills. Moreover, he knew that Vance was desperately hard pressed for money. He had made considerable loans to Bill in the past, but all that he could raise on a cow-puncher’s pay had been little enough, considering the needs of a growing family.

However that might be, he had no time to argue about possibilities. The important thing for him to do was to rush back to Bill’s house and learn the truth from him and deliver the warning about the coming of the sheriff.

That was what he did. Five minutes later he was out of the hotel and on his horse galloping hard along the road. As he swung out of the saddle before the door, he saw the white rim of the moon slide up above the Eastern hills.

The house was black. The family slept. And yet, at the first rap at the door, there was an answering stir.

Did a guilty conscience make the sleep of Bill Vance light?

“It’s me, Bill!” he called softly, and a moment later the door was opened to him by his brother-in-law, the moonlight shining full on his face and making him seem old and pale.

“What’s wrong?” gasped out Vance.

“How d’you know that there’s anything wrong?” demanded Jack Trainot sternly. “Who said that there was anything wrong?”

“I don’t know— I only—”

“Bill,” commanded Jack, “you got to tell me the whole truth. Did you stick up the Norberry stage?”

There was another gasp from the wretched Bill. Confession of his guilt, and his despair for the consequences of his act which now confronted him, showed at once in his face.

“It was only because I—” He stopped short. “Who says I did it?” he asked.

“You’re guilty, Bill,” said Trainor. “And they know it. They know that the gent that stuck up the stage rode a gray horse. They recognized that highheaded young gray of yours, that Mike horse that you been riding lately.”

“They cu-couldn’t,” stammered Bill.

“It was dark and—”

“You did it, then?”

“Lord help me!” groaned Bill.

“Better start by helping yourself. Bill, they’ll be here in twenty minutes. They were to start by moonrise and then—”

“I’ll stay here.”

“You’re crazy, Bill! That’ll be ruin. They’ll get you sure. You ain’t got the face to stand up before a jury. They’ll see through you as clear as clay!”

“I don’t care what they do to me. It would be ruin if I ran for it. What would become of Mary and the kids if I ran for it?”

The heavy truth of that statement bore in upon the mind of Jack Trainor. He regarded his sister’s husband bitterly.

“Does Mary know that I’ve come back?” he asked.

“No. She’s sound asleep, I guess.”

“Then I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take the gray horse and make a getaway. You stay here where you are, and, if they ask, tell them that I was out last night, you don’t know where, and that I’ve gone out again to-night, and that both times I took the gray horse. Understand?”

“Good Lord, Jack, you don’t mean that you’ll take the crime on your own head? Man—”

“Shut up that talk. We ain’t got the time for it. You got a family, and it’s the ”

“needs of the family that made you do it—but you’ll never try it again, I guess.”

“Never, so help me—”

“Help yourself, Bill,” said the other sternly. “You been looking around to the Lord and other folks for help long enough.”

“But I can’t let you— I’m not a low-enough hound to let you step in and take the blame for this.”

“You got to let me. You got three people depending on you. I got none.”

“But Mary knows that you didn’t leave the house—”

“She’ll let it go as I want her to do— she knows that the family mustn’t be ruined!”

“But this may wreck your life, Jack!”

“My life is young. If it’s wrecked now, I got time to make a new life over again. Stop arguing and help me get the gray and throw a saddle over him!”

Ten minutes later, on the back of gray Mike, he wrung the hand of his brother-in-law.

“They’ll think that I started back for town and registered for a room at the hotel just as a bluff. Meantime, I’m going to ride for Jerneyville and show myself, and when I get through at Jerneyville there won’t be any doubts about me being the man that done the stick-up of the stage last night. Good-by, Bill. Go straight. And put every cent of that money you got by the holdup in such a place that it will be found and returned to them that lost it. A gent can’t get on by taking things that he don’t own by rights. So long!”

And, as he gave the gray his head, they could hear the drumming of many hoofs far down the road coming out from town. But Jack Trainor regarded them not. He had under him a fresh horse with a fine turn of speed, and, by the time the posse had finished making its examination of Bill Vance, he would be so far away that they could never hope to head him off without a change of horses.

Excerpt From: George Owen Baxter. “Over the Northern Border.”