Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 261, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1917 — Page 3

A Mountain Maid

By Margaret Daisy Jamieson

(Copyright, 1917, Weatern Newspaper Union.) “Money will solve the problem. Use it freely. The company must and will exterminate the Boyce-Grinnel raiders. Thus" the manager of the Brittln Iron Worlds to Adrian Burgoyne, who had been surprised at the strange mission indicated, but gratified at the confidence reposed in him and the signal discretion. “I shall do my best,” he said, modestly, “although it seems a hardship to legitimate business that a few lawless men can block the wheels of industry. Half the amount you are authorized to spend might bribe the gang to let us alone, but the policy and principle of the company is to submit to no blackmail extortions.” The word “extermination” had a tragic sound, but, according to the instructions of Adrian Burgoyne, Involved only the suppression of the lawless group to whom the manager had alluded through isolation or capture; The Brittln Iron Works had a magnesite mine at Tilson, a little town back in the wildest part of Tennessee. In the rugged mountains beyond it some ten outlaws represented’the remnant of two notorious moonshine and bandit gangs defied the community. They would ride furiously into the settlemehts, and shoot them up and terrorize and rob their inhabitants. Recently they had been after bigger game. Wherever there was a plant or business of any pretentious proportions they would first threaten trouble through anonymous letters. In most cases the smaller companies timidly submitted to paying regular tribute. The dealings of the band with the Brittln Iron Works were on a large scale. Their epistolary menaces were disregarded. Within a week two explosions occurred in the pits. Some timid workmen gave up their positions./ Burgoyne reacher Tilson and looked over the situation. He found it decidedly serious. The workmen were intimidated, and the timid police officers were reluctant to have anything to do with the hunting down of the outlaws. Burgoyne went back to Leesburg, the nearest city. Here he approached a private detective agency. Its proprietor was amenable to the liberal rewards offered. “Once we can get the gang rounded up into a court of law,” observed Rurgoyne, “there is evidence to land them in the penitentiary for the rest of their lives. I will pay one thousand dollars for the apprehension of each minor member of the band, and five thousand dollars for their leader, Budd Grinnell.” When Burgoyne got back to Tilson he went over the mines and inspired the workmen with confidence and courage by raising wages and organizing an armed group of special watchmen. In this he was signally aided by a man named Zed Baines, who had lived in the district for years, was fearless and independent, and whom the outlaws, after several encumbers with that sure shot, left distinctly alone. It was the second week of his sojourn at Tilson that Adrian started to see Baines at his home a little beyond the limits of the village. It was a warm day ha missed his way, sat down against a tree to rest, and the drowsy summer air led him into profound

slumber. “What Is this I” he cried vaguely, as he awoke at the consciousness of human contact. He stared in wondet. At his side knelt a veritable fairy of the forest, a young girl, bronzed, tawny haired, in rough frontier garb. She held his right hand In a firm clasp. To Its back her lips were glued. “Don’t stir till I tell you!” she ordered. Then she disclosed a steely blue mound on the back of his hand, and pointed to a writhing object in the grass a few feet away. __ “A rattlesnake!” breathed Adrian, a fhrtH onee he comprehended the situation. His grateful eyes fell upon the bent head of the Intrepid girl, who had probably discovered him just as the fehgs of the vemenous serpent had sunk into his hand, had dispatched the snake, and probably had saved his life. “Come, quick! you must run,” she urged. “Our house is less than half a mile away. Fight oft the drowsiness until we get some medicine down you.” A sight of his hand, now swollen to double its normal size, urged him on. When he reached a rude cabin, once within it he sank exhausted to a chair. The girl ran over to a jug on a shelf and filled a quart tin cup with the moonshine liquor it- contained. cup to Adrian’s lips. “What is it?” he remonstrated feebly. “It is whisky.” “I have never touched it.” “You will, this time,” answered his peremptory nurse—“it’s all that will save you!* 7 - y It did; save him. Adrian awoke, weak and nervoua but out of danger, to find his beautiful little friend at his side with a steaming bowl of broth. For several days he felt the effects of the snake bite. He spent most of his

leisure time at the old cabin. Lura Baines bad come into his life in a way that left a lasting impression. He was seated in the one large room of the house telling his wonder-eyed little friend of the marvels of the outside world she had never seen, when she sprang up with a warning cry. A shadow crossed the threshold, then it disclosed a great, brawny, fierce-vis-aged man. He swung out a slip knot piece of rawhide. It looped the head and then the body of the unprepared Adrian. With a great laugh Budd Grlnnel secured the strap about, thechair. “Hardly,” sneered Grlnnel, as Lura reached for her father’s rifle. The outlaw anticipated this, and flung the weapon through the window and dropped into a chair directly opposite Lura, the table between them. “What do you want?” she gasped, her brave nature for the moment thrown off its balance, but her mind working activity as seeking some way out of the dilemma. “What I’ve got,” sneered Grinnell. “That fellow yonder. He’ll never chase another gang down. I am going to end him, here and now, and then —I’m going to take you along with me.” “Without my consent, I suppose?” questioned Lura, calm enough now. - “Oh, I’ve got my horse. You are a mere featherweight.” “Unwillingly? So much for that! I will either kill you, or myself, the first chance I get.” “See here, girl,” said Grinnell, looking impressed, “I’m lonesome, I want you, I’m going to leave the district, and I’ve got some money. I know your tune _that young fellow Is your spark. Good I Give him up, come with me willingly, and I’ll let him live.” * “I must think—give me time,” murmured Lura. Her pretty brown hand played with the salt cellars that stood upon the table, with pepper boxes and mustard pot. Opposite to her, complacently expectant, Grinnell lolled and leered. Adrian, despite his nearness to death, had to smile as Lura picked up the large red-pepper sifter. He recalled his first meal at that table, when Baines had passed it to him and, unwittingly, Adrian had used the contents freely. How Lura had laughed! but speedy and merciful to rush for a glass of milk to subdue his sufferings. She did not laugh now. Charming little actress that she was, where interest in Adrian Burgoyne and love were the impelling motives, she assumed the role of a thoughtful, distressed maiden. Suddenly she removed the cover of the pepper box and flung the fiery granules squarely into the face of the leering ruffian. Then she seized an iron kettle and swung It across the head of the shrieking, blinded scoundrel, Grinnell. He went down like a shot. "Quick!” cried Lura, rushing to the side of Burgoyne and liberating him. “Tie him up, take his revolver and guard him till I return.” Adrian stood over the prostrate and helpless bandit. Glancing from the window, he saw Lura astride Grinnell’s own horse, speeding down the road. At a little distance she met her father, searching for Burgoyne to deliver a telegram that had just arrived from Leesburg. It told that the detectives had captured all of the bandits except Grinnell —cautioned Burgoyne to look out for the outlaw chief, who had threatened a direful vengeance. - The local authorities, the old terror removed, were willing to co-operate now with Burgoyne. They took Grinnell to the jail at Leesburg. “This Is for you,” spoke Adrian to Lura, one (lay a week later, “it is the reward of five thousand dollars offered for the capture of Grinnell, which you have earned.” “Oh, no! no!—I cannot accept it;lndeed I cannot,” she demurred. “There Is no other way,” insisted Adrian. Then their eyes met. “Lura,” he said softly, “you must know that I love you.” “You —you !• —me, a poor, humble girl!” “Poor, Lura? Dear, you have more money how than myself. A frontier heroine, indeed—you have saved my life twice over. Will you trust your own to my keeping?” She drew closer to him, her face radiant. “Oh, Adrian!” she cried, “the world seems all made over again. I am so happy!” -

Congress Holds Purse Strings.

The Constitution of the United States vests In congress power “to raise and support Armies," subject to the provision that “no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years.” This limitation was- designed as a check on the possible abuse of power by the president as commander in chief. As army appropriations must be made every two years, the military branch of the government Is completely dependent on the will of congress. Congress holds the purse strings and a military president who should ( attempt to take things into his own hands or use the army for improper purposes would soon find its supplies cut oft at the fountain head.

Didn't Penetrate.

At a dinner at which he presided, the hlshon of London entered Into conversation with a lady, who in' the course of the talk asked to be allowed to put a conundrum to his lordship, says the Philadelphia Star.. Receiving ready permission, she merrily cried: “Well, then, does the butterfly because the tomato can?" The bishop 'laughed heartily ait the sally; but not so heartily as when, later a young l man approached him. “I want to know, said this person, “about that joke of Miss Brown’s. She asked if the butter flew because the tomato could. Pray tell me what the joke isF

THE EVENING REPUBLIC AN, RENSSELAER. IND.

EL PASO to JUAREZ

YOU can see El Paso two ways. You can be a little hysterical, as I am, over the border-town thrillingness of things. Or you can close a cold, canny commercial eye and get a chamber-of-commerce angle on its go-West-young-man opportunities. I never saw h town where they care so little about dust storms and so much about industrial chances, writes Zoe Beckley in the Pittsburgh Dispatch. My ninth story window Is In as handsome a hotel as ever reared its elegant facade from the gilt and marble, Turkish rug and hat check belt of New York city. It has all the modern conveniences with a few western developments like free newspapers at your door in the morning. Now look out southward, past a rocky mountain almost at your elbow, into that longish, squat-buildlnged street where the sun shines and the dust blows. At its end runs a ribbon of muddy water, too shallow to wet the ankles of a Chihuahua pup. The Rio Grande! —Beyond you see ablotchofbro wn cubes scattered on the slope of the grim and rugged mesa, with the shotmarred, whitewashed Cathedray of Guadalupe rising feebly in their midst. Mexico! The cubes of ’dobe houses, where whole 1 families, including the dog, the burro, the pig and the flea, live in dirtish desuetude. Ragged, sans furniture, building their mesquite wood fires on the mud floor! Mexico! You are looking from the twentieth century Into the sixteenth, with only a street and a bridge to join them. Neat Shops Scare Trade Away. Now we’ll descendTiud walk toward that famous though mangy-looking international bridge where the neat United States sentry and the forlorn cot-ton-clad, grubby Carranzista meet face to face every 20 seconds at the mld-

Mission of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Juarez.

die. Near the bridge the Mexicans get dirtier, the street dustier, the shops shabbier. iZ “We don’t fix up the place much,” one storekeeper told me. “We’d lose our Mex trade. They don’t feel comfortable comirig Into a fussed-up, flossy place!” That wooden jumble over there to the left is the market. Note the Mexican women on the ground, shawls to the eyes (they believe all Illness comes from something in-breathed; hence the envered months) selling stuff, The flapjacks they claw from a bucket and stuff into the palm of the passerby are tortillas, Mex bread. They are not considered snqpworn because the customer finds them wanting in quality, but are casually slapped back again into their receptacle. Apparently the wearing qualities of tortillas are excellent. You have seen a limp stack of them. examined and rejected by half a dozen prospective purchasers, yet they look scarcely frayed, and are still quite salable. Hear the music? Guitafs, tambourines and voices. A group of greaser lads are playing, half for sheer love of it, half for the coins the people eating at the long, sloppy tables will throw them. Lunching and lining at the market place is the sociable Mexican mode. Baths Their Passports. There is a government bathhouse by the river bank, where certain ceremonies must be performed by the rebellious citizens of Juarez before they can commute regularly into El Paso as house and hotel servants, workmen and clerical employees. Now we crosslthe bridge. Afoot, the military authorities and customs men treat you indifferently. In the trolley ear the examination is more elaborate.

The International Bridge.

Past the poor ’dobe houses, through the doors of which you get glimpses of family life unpleasantly intimate, we go into the Via Diabolo, called by Jack London the wickedest slum in the world. I cannot vouch for its depravity, but I should think it must be the dirtiest, dustiest, poorest, weirdest, rowdiest, tawdriest and most heterogeneous, barring possibly some sinister suburb of Algeria.— 1 — Gaming houses are the staple Sunday attraction. Sweating crowds of men and women rim the tables, the lottery booths, the wheels of fortune — and, to judge by most of the patrons, of misfortune—that fill the barnlike shacks. One man in five is some sort of soldier, wearing some sort of fragmentary uniform. Poverty and Squalor. Notice the rakish cartridge belts—some worn straight around in rows, some over one shoulder, some over both crossed back and front. Ammunition is debited to the men, and they have to take care of it! The begrimed fellows, with the bits of leather thonged about their bare feet, with dirty serapes on their shoulders, are of the piteous peon class. You have seen poverty and squalor at home, but never such as this! The poor at home at least work in the hope of overcoming their wretchedness. Here all is sodden. No opportunity, no ambition, no hope at all. - There are a few. prosperous gamblers In the gaming dens who serve to set off the sinister raggedness of the rest Sinister, because everyone totes a gun, sometimes ,a rifle, and appears to appraise thirstily the modest jewel on your breast, the purse beneath your pocketflap. And now the bull ring, ancient chipped by random shots of many an opera bouffe revolution, painted in

raucous dabs of white, green and yellow, tfith a band emitting frightful blares above the entrance arch I A grubby Mexican in cotton clothes and a hat with towering crown and 30-inch brim distributes handbills announcing that at 4 p. m. “four arragantes y bravos toros, four” will be fought to death. Follow the names of the intrepid matadores, banderillerqs, picadores, etc., who are to fight “under the auspices of the Charities association” (!). - Seats on the “entrada sombra” (shady side of the ring) are $2; those on the “entrada a sol” are $1 —and if in all the world there is to be seen more wanton cruelty and horror for a trifling fee tell me 'where it is! Yet women and young girls flock there, bringing dressed-up children as to a sylvan picnic! A huge motor dashes up to the beggarly “plaza” In a choking dustcloud. It grazes the toes of squatting beggars and loafing men, sideswiping the unruly Mexican horses on which halfdrunken “soldiers” 1011. From It step half a dozen Mexican officers In expensive, well-fitting service uniforms, brave leather puttees, spurs and festoons of braid. The crowd stares and cringes. The slim a subaltern, who buys tickets, and with great eclat they pass inside to their hideous entertainment. , , You wonder what is In the mind of the resplendent officer as he views the ragged, halwtarved desperadoes of his “army.” Some sophisticated persons whisper to you that few names are published of those who fall in batt]p. It pays better to keep the names on the roster ! The poor creatures’ pittances come In handy for bullfights and other extras.

ABOUT PERSONS

< John Clingan of Goldfield, Neb., Is recovering from a broken neck. Joseph Fuller, seventy-eight, in Charlestown, Mass., had for 40 years been a prison guard. J. M. Gage, asking divorce in Kansas City, allege that his wife kisses him too often. He is twenty-two; she Is fifty-two. Mrs. Luella Coleman, dead in Pittsburgh, 15 years ago founded a home for negro boys which has thus far educated 500 orphans. ■'7. W. Wetrick, forty, of Vera Cruz.lnd., attended his first theatrical exhibition the other day, taking his first electric car ride on the way to do so.

SOME POSTSCRIPTS

Two French scientists contend that ten per cent of the chickens in that country have tuberculosis and that tlfe disease runs as high as 28 per cent among poultry in some other nations. Water is heated in a new garbage Incinerator which contains a spiral grate made of bilfss pipes through which the water circulates, garbage being placed at the top of the device and falling as it is consumed. The more extensively it is used the better are the results obtained from a Swedish system for stimulating backward children by circulating electric currents through the air of the room in which they study. For automobile tourists a tireless cooker, refrigerator, set of vacuum bottles and dishes and silverware for six persons have been combined so compactly that the outfit can be carried on the running board of a car. That he has discovered a partly electrical and partly chemical process for the reduction of nitrogen suitable for fertilizers from relatively cheap and easily obtained material is the claim of a Brown university professor.— To safeguard the health of painters a British commission has advocated a law prohibiting the importation, sale or us J of any paint material containing more than five per cent of its dry weight, of a soluble lead compound. To obtain a powerful searchlight with a comparatively weak current, a Frenchman has mounted a number of Incandescent lamps on a revolving circle, each in -turn being illuminated briefly and their combined rays being collected by a reflector. —Houston I*OBt.

CURIOUS CONDENSATIONS

We have had envelopes since 1830. The Civil war cost the United States $3,000,000,000. A newly Invented butter pick has a lever attachment which pushes off its point a piece of butter that It has picked up. A cutlery steel asserted to be nonrusting. unstalnable and untarnlshabie has been developed by British manufacturers. -r-- rr In order to prevent oil waste a frame which will hold a heavy oil can and permit it to be tipped for pouring has been Invented. According to the last available figures in Great Britain, 843 new works of fiction were published in a year, against 309 naval and military books. Without stopping his train an engineer can move a lever in his cab and open a recently patented switch to enable him to enter a siding, the switch closing when the last car has passed over it. Many of the kings of Spain accorded to the finest swordmakers of Toledo certain privileges- snch as exemption from certain imposts and duties appertaining to the sale of’ swords, the purchase of iron and steel and other primary material. The state of South Australia has, since 1891, erected 29,148 miles of “vermin fences,” enough to encircle the globe and with the remnant build a double line of fence along the southern border of the United States. New South Wales has spent more than $27,000,000 for rabbit extermination and has within its borders 98,000 miles of fence. —' —--

SOME OBSERVATIONS

Confederate money has no redeemt / Patience is more often a necessity than a virtue. Whisky Is said'to improve with age, but so few men let it grow old. • No, you are not in the manufacturing line because you make promises. Even the yellow dog was never known to humble himself by seeking office.

HOME TOWN HELPS

REMODELED HOUSE LIKE NEW Dwelling That Is Made Over May Come Nearer Meeting Needs Than One Constructed to Order. The remodeled house Is often more comfortable, charming and satisfying than one built new. Buying a house already built is much like purchasing clothes ready-made: it is never quite 4^-perfect fit; there in never perfect harmony with individual needs and requirements, says Noble Foster Hoggson In the Phlaldelphla Public Ledger. Remodeling makes it virtually a new house, with the added advantage that, the general plan being satisfactory, it is easier t° see J ast what modifications and improvements are needed than to see them in imagination from a study of the architect’s plans for a complete new building. An old house, endeared through years of occupancy and association, grows into a familiar adjustment to the needs of the family. But usually there comes a growing realization of the many ways in which it might he altered and improved. The growing family requires more rooms or changed arrangements; or the taste of the owner, becoming finer with the years, or bettered fortune making It easier to make his dreams a reality, brings him face to face with the problem of remodeling, should he not care to move to a new dwelling which might prove, when tested by occupancy, less satisfying; The two principal reasons for remodeling are the utilitarian and the esthetic: the need of more space or more convenience and comfort and the natural desire to make the home more beautiful to the eye. Both requirements can be met perfectly by proper remodeling, which may really prove an actual transformation. Remodeling gives a stamp of individuality to a dwelling as nothing else can, for it means the revising of the building within and without to harmonize with individual tastes and needs.

COST SHOULD BE IN HARMONY

Amount Put in House Should Not Be Out of Proportion to the Value of the Site. One of /tuKmost grievous mistake? the ownel can make is to build a house which Is out of proportion to the value of the land on which it is erected. The higher the cost of the land the better, as a rule, the character of future building operations in the neighborhood. For Instance, it is generally unwise to build a house costing $5,000 or $6,000 on a site costing less than $25 to S4O a front foot. Nor should the reverse mistake be made of building a cheap house on an expensive site — though that is governed by the restrictions which most developers of high-grade subdivisions impose. Cost of house and cost of site should be In fairly strict proportion. Buy as much ground as you can reasonably afford. Twenty-flve-foot lots In a suburban section are an abomination. Fifty-foot frontage should be the minimum for any modem residence built for a home, and 100 feet with the added possibilities of attractlve lawn and garden is better. As a bit of advice here is an excerpt from a booklet recently issued by a realty broker: “Forced growth in anything is haeardous; natural grpwth is a guaranty of stability and permanent values. Demand governs supply, not supply demand. A piece of real estate has no fixed value until someone takes it to keep and improve.”

Native Trees Are Desirable.

Many people have the decidedly mistaken idea that the only trees worth buying and setting out are the more or less expensive shrubs or evergreens which are not native to most sections of the country. The idea of paying out good money for a pine or a birch or a maple seems to go against the grain. As a matter of fact there are many places where such trees are to be had for the trouble of digging them np and transplanting them, but even this is considered too high a price. And yet for many purposes pines and maples are as good trees as can be had, and there is nothing listed in the catalogue more beautiful and graceful than a well cared-for group of white birches.

Fall Best Time to Paint House.

The fall of the year is by far the best time to paint the exterior of a house, for paint dries more slowly in cool weather and consequently lasts longer. The heat of the summer sun on a house painted in the spring does much more harm than any winter weatheflfhff a fall painting is well aSF" soned before the next summer arrives. Small flies and insects are also a pest in spring paiudng.

Where He Was Bound For.

“Do you think your boy Josh is going to remember the advice you gave him when he left home for the army?" “Not this trip,” replied Farmer Corn- ’ Tosscl. “Bv' sheer force of Habit his mother told him to be sure and keep out of trouble."