The Dead-Line by W.C. Tuttle

Book Details

The Dead-Line – Hashknife Hartley and Sleepy Stevens are accidentally caught in the middle when a range war develops between cattlemen and shepherds.

The Dead-Line (1924) – “Hashknife” Hartley found it dividing cattle and sheep. Ambushes, murders, and plenty of skullduggery abound when the shepherds want to cross the pass to graze their sheep closer to the Lo Lo River. Jack Hartwell, son of the biggest cattle baron around, is right in the middle of it. Why? Because he’s married to the daughter of the biggest sheep baron around and they live in a tiny shack in the middle of the no-man’s-land. And someone is a spy for the other side.

W. C. Tuttle (1883-1969) was born in Montana. He wrote more than 1000 magazine stories and dozens of novels, almost all of which were westerns. He wrote at least five or six series, but his best known one featured Hashknife Hartley and Sleepy Stevens, two wandering cowboys who served as unofficial detectives solving crimes on the ranches where they worked. Tuttle was also a screenwriter, and he wrote for 52 films between 1915 and 1945.

The Dead-Line is a novel of 42 chapters and contains 4 illustrations.

Files:

1. Tuttle-Dead-Line.epub

Excerpt: The Dead-Line

1

JACK HARTWELL’S place was not of sufficient importance in Lo Lo Valley to be indicated by a brand name. It was a little four-room, rough-lumber and tar-paper shack, half buried in a clump of cottonwoods on the bank of Slow Elk Creek.

The house had been built several years before by a man named Morgan, who had the mistaken idea that a nester might be welcome on the Lo Lo range. He had moved in quietly, built his shack, and— then the riders from Marsh Hartwell’s Arrow outfit had seen his smoke.

Whether or not Marsh Hartwell legally owned the property made no difference; he claimed it. And few men cared to dispute Marsh Hartwell. At any rate, it was proved that a nester was not welcome on the Arrow.

It was an August afternoon. Only a slight breeze moved the dry leaves of the cottonwoods, and the air was resonant with the hum of insects. Molly Hartwell, Jack Hartwell’s wife, stood on the unshaded front steps of the house, looking down across the valley, which was hazy with the heat waves.

Mrs. Hartwell was possibly twenty years of age, tall, slender; a decided brunette of the Spanish type, although there was no Spanish blood in her ancestry. She was the kind of woman that women like to say mean things about; and try to make themselves believe them.

The married men of the Lo Lo mentally compared her with their women-folk; while the single men, most of them bashful, hard-riding cowpunchers, avoided her, and hoped she’d be at the next dance.

Jack Hartwell did not wave at her as he rode in out of the hills and dismounted at the little corral beside the creek. He unsaddled, turned his sweat-marked sorrel into the corral and hung his saddle on the fence.

Jack Hartwell was a few years older than his wife; a thin-waisted, thin-faced young man with an unruly mop of blond hair and a freckled nose. His wide, blue eyes were troubled, as he squinted toward the house and kicked off his chaps.

He could not see his wife, but he knew that she was waiting for him, waiting for the news that he was bringing to her. After a few moments of indecision he shrugged his shoulders and walked around the house to her.

She was sitting down in the doorway now, and he halted beside her, his thumbs hooked over the heavy cartridge belt around his waist.

“It’s hot,” he said wearily.

“Yes, it’s hot,” she said. “There hasn’t been much breeze today.”

“Water is gettin’ kinda low, Molly. Several of the springs ain’t runnin’ more than a trickle.”

“We need rain.”

Neither of them spoke now, as they looked down across the valley. Winged grasshoppers crackled about the duty yard, and several hornets buzzed up and down the side of the house, as if seeking an entrance. Finally the woman looked up at him and he moved uneasily.

“Yeah, it’s him—Eph King.”

There was bitterness in Jack Hartwell’s voice, which he did not try to conceal.

A flash of triumph came into the woman’s eyes, and she turned back to her contemplation of the hills. Her husband looked down at her, shaking his head slowly.

“Molly, it’s goin’ to mean — in these hills.”

“Is it?”

She did not seem to mind.

“They’ve drawn a dead-line now,” he said slowly, “and there has been some shootin’. They’ve sent for the outfits down in the south end, and they’ll be here tonight.”

“Well, we won’t be in it,” she said flatly. “It means nothing to us.”

“Don’t it?”

Jack squinted hard at her, but she did not look up.

“No. The law has decided that a sheep has the same right as a cow. The cattlemen of the Lo Lo do not legally own all this valley.”

“Mebbe not—” Jack shook his head wearily—”but they hold it, Molly.”

“Well,” she laughed shortly, scornfully, “you are not a cattleman. You’ve got nothing to fight for.”

“No-o-o?”

She sprang to her feet, her eyes flashing.

“Well, have you?” she demanded. “Your own people have turned you down. Your own father cursed you for marrying a daughter of Eph King. You wasn’t good enough to even work for him; so he gave you this!” She flung out her arms in a gesture of contempt. “Is this worth fighting for?”

Jack Hartwell bit his lip for a moment and the ghost of a smile passed his thin lips.

“It ain’t worth much, is it, Molly? Still, it was worth so much that—”

“That they killed the man who took possession of it,” she finished angrily.

“Yeah, they killed him, Molly. Morgan was a fool. He had a chance to go away, but he would rather fight it out.”

“He was a friend of my father.”

“Yeah, I know it, Molly. But that has nothing to do with us.”

“Did you see the sheep?”

“Yeah. I went as far as the dead-line, Molly. The hills are full of sheep. They were comin’ down the draws like the gray water of a cloud-burst, spreadin’ all over the flats. As far back as yuh can see, just sheep and dust.”

“Are they on Arrow range?”

“On the upper edge. The punchers threw ’em back about half a mile, but I dunno.” Jack shook his head. “There’s so many of ’em.”

“Dad has thirty thousand head,” she said slowly. “Or he did have that many before—”

“Before yuh ran away to marry me,” finished Jack.

“I went willingly, Jack.”

“Oh, I know it, Molly.” He turned and threw an arm across her shoulder. “You’ve had a rotten deal, girl. I wish for your sake that it could be undone. I didn’t know that there was so much hate between your dad and mine. I knew that they were not friends, but— well, I know now.”

“Your father drove my father out of this valley.”

“But that was years ago, Molly.”

“And branded him a thief,” bitterly.

“Yeah, I reckon that’s right. It never was proved nor disproved, Molly. We’ve known for years that he was goin’ to try and shove sheep across the range into Lo Lo. He swore that he would sheep us out. There ain’t been a time in two years that men haven’t ridden the upper ranges, watchin’ for such a thing.”

“There’s a man livin’ in Kiopo Cañon, whose job is to watch the other slope. I dunno how it was he didn’t warn us; and I dunno how your father ever found out that we were goin’ to hold the roundup two weeks ahead of time. He sure picked the right time. If we’d ‘a’ known it, he’d never got his sheep up over the divide.”

“You say ‘we,’ ” said Molly slowly. “Are you one of them? After they have turned you out, are you still one of them?”

Jack turned away, shading his eyes with one hand, as he studied the hills.

“I’ve always been a cowman,” he said slowly. “I’ve been raised to hate sheep and yuh can’t change a man in a day.”

“What have the cattlemen done for you, Jack?”

Jack did not reply.

Excerpt From: W.C. Tuttle. “The Dead-Line”