Page:Clarence Mulford - Man from Bar-20.djvu/281



ACK on the CL the foreman was worried about his new, two-gun man, and had almost made up his mind to order the outfit into the saddle and to lead it up into the Twin Buttes country to aid Johnny. While he was turning the matter over in his mind he entered the bunk-house and saw Luke Tedrue, the oldest man on the ranch, dressed in a clean shirt, new trousers, and a pair of new boots. Luke looked surprisingly clean and he was busily engaged in cleaning and oiling the parts of an old .44 caliber Remington six-shooter, one of those early models which had been transformed from its original cap-and-ball class into a weapon shooting center-fire cartridges. It had been the butt of many joking remarks and the old man cherished it, and had defended it in many a hot, verbal skirmish. Considering its age and use it was in a remarkably fine state of preservation.

Luke had played many parts in his day, for he had been a hunter, frontiersman, scout, pony-express rider, miner, and cavalryman, and as an Indian fighter he had admitted but few masters. Tough, wiry, shrewd, enduring, of flawless courage and bulldog tenacity of 269