Gary Abston peddled his bicycle against the flow of cars carrying day-shift workers through the half-light. He whirled into Walnut Street, twisted a fresh copy of the Morning Herald into a fiendishly clever knot, and hurled it in the general direction of a front porch that flashed past on his right. Never slowing, Gary threw the next paper entirely across the street. He chuckled as it cleared a picket fence. "Bang, bang!" he blurted. His red shirt, with a picture of a mounted cowboy on the back, ballooned in the early morning breeze.
"Whoa!" Gary roared. He stopped, held the bicycle upright with one foot on the pavement. A tall, lanky, slightly bowlegged man with squinting luminous green eyes stood on the sidewalk. Gary looked at the man. The newspapers fluttered to the parkway. The bicycle clattered in the street.
"Howdy, partner!" the tall man said. "The rustlers are headin' for the plateau! We'll take the short gash and head 'em off at the canyon!"
"Ramrod Jones?" Gary chirped.
"Here's the truck I haul Quizz-kid, the I.Q. Horse, in! Let's get after the rustlers!" Jones said.
"Gee, I've seen all your pictures, Ramrod," Gary said. "Silver City Raiders, Rustlers of Silver City, Silver City Rustlers—"
The great cowboy lifted the newsboy into the Honeychile truck.
Pink and rose clouds drifted through a brightening sky as the Honeychile Bakery truck careened along a narrow road badly in need of rock and grading. From the road, the truck rattled into a rutted track through dewy woods and skidded swaying to a stop at the side of a long, low, grassy hill.