The Bandit of Hell’s Bend
By Edgar Rice Burroughs
One of the group rose and stretched, yawning. He was a tall, dark man. Perhaps in his expression, there was something a bit sinister. He seldom smiled and, when not in liquor, rarely spoke. He was foreman-had been a foreman for over a year, and, except for a couple of sprees, during which he had playfully and harmlessly shot up the adjoining town, he had been a good foreman, for he was a thorough horseman, knew the range, understood cattle, was a hard worker and knew how to get work out of others.
It had been six months since he had been drunk, though he had taken a drink now and then if one of the boys chanced to bring a flask back from town. His abstinence might have been accounted for by the fact that Elias Henders, his boss, had threatened to break him the next time he fell from grace. “You see, Bull,” the old man had said, “we’re the biggest outfit in this part of the country, and it doesn’t look good to see the foreman of the Bar Y shootin’ up the town like some kid tenderfoot that’s been slapped in the face with a bar-rag. You gotta quit it, Bull; I ain’t a-goin’ to tell you again.” And Bull knew the old man wouldn’t tell him again, so he stayed good for six months.
Perhaps it was not entirely a desire to cling to the foreman’s job that kept him on the straight and narrow path. Possibly, Diana Henders’ opinion had had more weight with him than her father’s. “I’m ashamed of you, Bull,” she had said, and she refused to ride with him for more than a week. That had been bad enough, but as if to make it worse, she had ridden several times with a new hand who had drifted in from the north a short time before and been taken on by Bull to fill a vacancy.
Genre: Mystery/Detective | Western
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Edgar Rice Burroughs
Burroughs was born on September 1, 1875, in Chicago (he later lived for many years in the suburb of Oak Park).
Biography.
The fourth son of Major George Tyler Burroughs (1833–1913), a businessman and Civil War veteran, and his wife, Mary Evaline (Zieger) Burroughs (1840–1920). His middle name is from his paternal grandmother, Mary Coleman Rice Burroughs (1802–1889). Burroughs was almost entirely of English ancestry, with a family line in North America since the Colonial era. Through his Rice grandmother, Burroughs was descended from settler Edmund Rice, one of the English Puritans who moved to Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early 17th century.
He remarked, “I can trace my ancestry back to Deacon Edmund Rice.” The Burroughs side of the family was also of English origin, having emigrated to Massachusetts around the same time. Many of his ancestors fought in the American Revolution. Some of his ancestors settled in Virginia during the colonial period, and Burroughs often emphasized his connection with that side of his family, seeing it as romantic and warlike. As close cousins, he had seven signatories of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, including his third cousin, who was four times removed, and the 2nd President of the United States, John Adams.
Burroughs was educated at several local schools. He then attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and the Michigan Military Academy. Graduating in 1895 but failing the United States Military Academy entrance exam at West Point, he became an enlisted soldier with the 7th U.S. Cavalry in Fort Grant, Arizona Territory. After being diagnosed with a heart problem and thus ineligible to serve, he was discharged in 1897.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
