Border bred

Border bred by W. C. Tuttle is a Western adventure short story written in the early 20th century. Its topic is border smuggling along the U.S.–Mexico line, centered on a kidnapping, a daring rescue, and frontier justice carried out by a determined boy. After border officer Dan Dixon is killed by a contraband driver, his fifteen-year-old son Dobie lives alone near the line and looks out for little Jane Langdon. When smugglers led by Doc Carver and the Mexican chief Gonzales kidnap Jane to coerce her father Sam into running a major drug shipment, Dobie rides alone into Verdugo, Mexico. He fights and outwits guards, raids the barracks for a rifle, and slips into a cache where he overhears Carver admit to killing his father. Confronting him, Dobie is momentarily distracted by Jane’s cry, but he wins a brutal fistfight, ties Carver with a maguey rope, and frees the girl. He burns the drug shipment, uses the captive Carver to carry Jane, and escapes through the chaos to the U.S. officers, who receive Jane safely and take Carver into custody, leaving the smugglers’ plans in ruins.

Summary written by Project Gutenberg, by machine.