Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/227

 He went to the door and locked up and down the one-sided street. Some soldiers were hitching their horses in front of the hotel, talking noisily. Fred went out to survey the land beyond.

Cattle Kate's front entrance was built with regard to a horseback-riding country. A platform, or porch, not roofed, projected in front of the door, steps leading to it on either end. This platform was the height of one's foot in the stirrup, and was handy for officers from the post in muddy weather, as well as for inebriate cowpunchers who found difficulty in getting into the saddle from the ground. Once in, no amount of liquor could reel them out.

A woman might dismount upon this platform with ease, and tie her horse to one of the ringbolts set along its outer edge, as the ranch wives and daughters commonly did when business brought them to Cattle Kate's store. These hitching places were dedicated solely to feminine use; this was understood far and near. Let any cowpuncher, cattle baron, or officer from the post transgress at peril of a dressing-down from Cattle Kate that he would not soon forget.

Fred stood on this little vantage point, running his eyes around the town. All of it lay on the side of the road where the hotel stood, as has been explained, due to governmental regulations. The center of the road was the deadline; there the sacred boundary of government property stretched. The moon was well up over this scene, every hous¢ in the town plainly revealed to Fred's eyes. He did not discover anything of hostile appearance, nor any familiar horses along the