Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 January 1909 — The Round=Up [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Round=Up

A 'Romance of Arizona Novelized From Edmund Day’s Melodrama

By JOHN MURRAY and MILLS MILLER

CHAPTER 11. JIM ALLEN was tlie sole owner and proprietor of Allen Hacienda. His ranch, the Bar One. stretched for miles up and down the Sweetwater valley. Bounded on the east and west by the foothills, the tract was one of the garden spots of Arizona. Southward lay the Sweetwater ranch, owned by Jack Payson. Northward was the home ranch of the Lazy K, an Ishmaelitlsh outfit, ever at petty war with the other settlers In the district. It was a miscellaneous and constantly changing crowd recruited from rustlers from Wyoming, gamblers from California, half breed outlaws from the Indian Territory—in short, “bad men” from every section of the western country. They had a special grudge against Allen and Pay■on, whom they held to be accountable for the sudden disappearance about a year before of their leader, Buck McKee, a half breed from the Cherokee strip. However, no other leader had arisen equal to that masterful spirit, and their enmity expressed itself only In such petty depredations as changing brands on stray cattle from the Bar One and Sweetwater ranches and the slitting of the tongues of young calves so that these would be unable to feed properly and as a result be disowned by their mothers, whereupon the Lazy K outfit would slap its brand on them as mavericks. Allen was a Kentuckian who had served in the Confederate army as one of Morgan's raiders and so had received by popular brevet the title of colonel. At the close of the war he had come to Arizona with his young wife, Josephine, and had founded a home on the Sweetwater. He was now one of the cattle barons of the great southwest. . Prosperity had not spoiled him. Careless In his attire, cordial in his manner, he was a man who was loved and respected by bis men from the newest tenderfoot to the veteran of the bunk house. Ills wife, however, was not so highly regarded, for she bad never been able to recognize changes in time or location and so was In perpetual conflict with her environment. She attempted to make the free and independent cowboys of the “stand around” like the house servants of the Kentucky blue grass, and she persisted in the effort to manage her husband by the feminine artifice of weeping. In the days of her youth and beauty this bad been very effective, but now that these bad passed it was productive only of good humored raillery from him and mirth from the bystanders. "No wonder Jim has the finest ranch in Arlzony.” the cowboys were wont to say. “with Josephine a-lriigatln* it all the time.” Allen Hacienda was certainly a garden spot In that desert country. The building was of the old Mexican style, an architecture found by centuries of experience to be suited best to the climate and the materials of the land. The house was only one story In height. The rooms and outbuilding sprawled over a wide expanse of ground. The walls were of native atone and adobe clay. Over them clam-* bered grapevines. In front of the home Mrs. Allen had planted a garden. A ’dobe wall cut off the house from the corral and the bunk house. A heavy girder spanned the distance from the low roof to the top of the barrier. Latticework supporting a grapevine formed, with a girder, a gateway through which one could catch from the piazza a view of a second cultivated plot. Palms and flowering cactuses added color and life to the near prospect. Through the arbor a glimpse of the Tortilla mountains, forty miles away, held the eye. The Sweetwater, Its path across the plains outlined by the trees fringing Its banks, flowed past the ranch. Yucca palms and sahuaros threw a scanty shade over the garden. Shortly after the arrival of the Allens in Arizona they were blessed with a daughter, the first white child born In that region. They waited for a Protestant clergyman to come along before christening her, and as snch visits were few and far between the child was beginning to talk before she received a name. From a “cunning” habit she had of repeating the last words of questions pnt to her her father provisionally dabbed her Echo, which name, when the preacher came, he insisted upon her retaining. As Echo grew older, in order that ■he might have a companion, Colonel Allen went to Kentucky and broughf back with him a little orphan girl who was a distant relative of his wife. Polly Hope her name was. and Polly Hope she insisted on remaining, although the Allens would gladly have adopted her. Colonel Allen trained the girls In all the craft of the plains Just as If they were boys. He taught them to ride astride, to shoot, to rope cattle. They accompanied him everywhere he went, cantering on bronchos by the side of his' Kentucky thoroughbred. Merry, dark eyed, black haired Echo always rode upon the off aide and saucy Polly, with golden curia, blue eyes and tip tUted nose, upon the near. The exConfederate soldier dubbed them In military style hts “right and left wlnn.” As tbejthree would “make a

raid” upon Florence, the county town, the inhabitants did not need to look out of doors to ascertain who were coming, for the merriment of tlu little girls gave sufficient indication. ‘.‘Here comes Jim Allen ridln’ like the destroyin' angel,” said young Sheriff Hoover on one of these occasions. “I know him by the rustlin’ of his ‘wings.’ ” The household was again Increased a few years later by the generous response of the Allens to an appeal from i a children’s aid society In an eastern j city to give a home to two orphaned ' brothers. Richard and Henry Lane, j Dick and Buddy (shortened in time to Bud), as they were called, being taken young, quickly adapted themselves to | their new environment and by the j time they arrived at manhood had i proved themselves the equals of any cowboy on the range in horsemanship I and kindred accomplishments. Dick. I the elder brother, was a steady, reliable fellow, modest as he was brave f and remarkably quick witted and resourceful in emergencies. He gave his confidence over readily to \| fellows, I but If ever lie found him- deceived withdrew it absolutely. It was probably this last characteristic Hint at- j tracted to him Echo Allen's especial regard, for it was also her distinguish ing trait. “You have got to act square with Echo,” her father was wont to I say. “for if you don’t you’ll never make It square with her afterward.” Bud was a generous hearted, ironetnous boy, who responded warmly to affection. He repaid his elder brother’s protecting care with a loyalty that knew no bounds. The colonel, who was a strict disciplinarian, frequently punished him In his boyhood for way- j ward acts, and the little fellow made no resistance—only soblied In deep pen- ; ltence. Once, however, w-hen Uncle Jim, as the boys and Polly called him. felt compelled to apply the rod to Dick—unjustly, as it afterward appear ed—Bud burst into a tempest of passionate tears and, leaping upon the colonel's back, clung there, clawing and striking like a wildcat, until Allen wa3 forced to let Dick go. It is shrewdly indicative of the colonel's character that not only did he refrain from punishing Bud on that occasion, but when floggings were subsequently due the little fellow laid on the rod less heavily out of regard for the loyalty to h!s brother he had then displayed. This attack also won the admiration of Polly Hope, who was something of a spitfire herself. A little Jealous of Dick for the chief place he held iu Bud's affection, she openly claimed the younger brother as her sweetheart and attempted to constitute him her knight, though with repeated discouragements, for Bud was a bashful lad and, though he had a true affection for the girl, boylike concealed It by show of rude indifference.

The tender relations of these boys and girls persisted naturally into young manhood and womanhood. No word of love passed between Dick ami Echo until that time when the “nest ing impulse.” the desire to have a home of his own, prompted the young man to go oq£ into the world and win his fortune. For a year he had acted as foreman of the Allen ranch, work ing in neighborly co-operation with Jack Payson of Sweetwater ranch, a man of about his own age. The two young men became the closest of comrades. When the fever of adventure seized upon Lane and he became dis satisfied with the plodding career of a wage earner, Payson Insisted on mort : gaging Sweetwater ranch for $3,000 and in lending Dick the money for a year’s prospecting in the mountains of Sonora, Mexico, in search of a fabulously rich “lost mine of the Aztecs.” Traditions of lost mines are plentiful In Arizona and northern Mexico. First taken up by the Spanish invaders of 300 years ago from the native Indians, they have passed down to each subsequent influx of white men. The directions are always vague. The inquirer cannot pin his Informant down to any definite data. Over the mountains always lies the road. Hundreds of lives have been sacrificed and cruelty unparalleled practiced upon innocent men, women and children by gold seekers in their lust for conquest Prosperous Indian villages have been laid waste, and whole bands of adventurers have gone into the desert in search of these mines, never to return. When the time for Lane’s departure came Echo wept at the thought of losing for so long a time the close companion of her childhood and%be sympathetic confidant of her youthful thoughts and aspirations. Dick, in whom friendship for Echo hud long before ripened into conscious love, took her tears as evidence that she was similarly affected toward him, and he allowed all the suppressed passion of his nature full vent in a declaration of love. The girl was deeply moved by this revelation of the heart of a strong man made tender as a woman’s by a power centering in her own bumble ■elf,' and, being utterly without experience of the emotion even in Ha protective form of calf love, which is the varioloid of the genuine affection, she imagined through sheer sympathy that she shared his passion. So she assented with maidenly reserve to his plea that she promise to .marry hint when

.< he should return and provide a home for her, Her more cautious mother secured a modification of this pledge by limiting the time that Echo should wait for him to one year. If at the expiration of that period Lane did not return to claim her promise or did. not write making satisfactory arrangements for continuance of the engagement Echo was to be considered free to marry whom she chose. Soon after Lane’s departure Mrs. Allen persuaded the colonel to send Echo east to a New England finishing school for girls, where her mother hoped that her budding love for Lane might he nipped by the frigid atmosphere of intellectual culture, if not, indeed, supplanted by a saving Interest In young men in general and perhaps in some particular scion of a blue blooded Boston family. The jfian succeeded In part only The companionship of her schoolfellows, her music and art lessons, her books (during the limited periods allotted to serious study and reading) and, above all. her attrition at receptions with another order of men than that she had known In the rough, uncultured west occupied her mind so fully that poor Dick Lane, who was putting a thought of Echo Allen in every blow of his pick, received only the scraps of her attention. Dick hnd few opportunities to mall a letter and none of them for receiving one. Unpracticed in writing, his epistolary compositions were crude In the extreme, being wholly confined to bald statements of fact. Had he been as tender on paper as be was In his words and accents when be kissed away her tears at parting her regard for him would have had fuel to feed on and might have kindled lntb genuine love. As it was, she was forced to admit that in comparison with the brilliant university men with whom she conversed Dick Lane intellectually was as quartz to diamond. On the other hand, she contrasted Dick In tbe essential point of manliness most favorably with the mt'.« butterflies of society that hovered

around her. What one of them was so essentially chivalrous as the western man—so modest, so self sacrificing, so brave and resolute and resourceful? Dick Lane, or Jack Fayson, for that matter, in all save the adventitious points of education and culture was the higher type of manhood, and Jack, at least, if not poor Dick, could hold his own in mental and artistic perception with the brightest, most cultured of Harvard graduates. At the end of the year she came back home to await Dick's return from the wilds of Mexico. Therfe was great anxiety about bis safety, for Geronlmo, attacked by Crook in the Apache stronghold of the Tonto basin, had escaped to the mountains of northwestern Mexico with his band of fierce Chirlcabuas. Now. Dick Lane had not been heard from in this region. When he neither made appearance nor sent a message upon the day appointed for his return, his brother, Bud, was for setting out instantly to find him and rescue hint if he were in difficulties. Then it was that Echo Allen discovered the true nature of her affection for her lover—that it was sisterly regard, differing only In degree, but not in kind, from that which she felt for hla brother. She joined with Polly in opposing Bud’s going, urging his recklessness as a reason. “You are certain to be killed.” she said, “and I cannot lose you both.” Jack Payson, for whom Bud was working, then came forward and offered to accompany him and keep within bounds. Again there was a revelation of her heart to Echo, one that terrified her with a sense of disloyalty. It was Jack she really loved, noble, chlvalrlc, wonderful Jack Payson, whom, with a southern girl’s Intensity of feeling, she had unconsciously come to regard as her standard of all that makes for manhood. Plausible objections could not be urged against his sacrificing himself for his friend. With’ an Irresistible impulse she cast herself upon his breast and said, “I cannot bear to see you go.” Payson gently disengaged her arms. “I mqek Echo. It is what Dick would do for me if I were In his place.” However, while Payson and Bud were preparing for their departure Buck' McKee apeared in the region and reported that Dick Lane bad been killed by the Apaches. He told with convincing details bow he had met Jane as each was returning from a

successful prospecting trip In the Ghost range and how they had sunk their differences In standing together against an attack of the Indians. He extolled Dick's bravery, relating how, severely wounded, be had stood off the aavages to enable himself to escape. When he handed over Dick's wutcb to Echo—for he had learned on his return that she was betrothed to Lane—as a last token from her lover, no doubt remained In tbe minds of his hearers of the truth of his story, and Payson and Bud Lane gave up their purposed ATnutainn The owner of Sweetwater ranch, while accepting McKee’s account, could not wholly forget the half breed's former evil reputation and was reserved In his reception of the advances of the ex-rustler, who was anxious to curry favor. Warm hearted, impulsive Bud, however, whose fraternal loyalty had increased under his bereavement to the supreme passion of life, took the insinuating half breed Into the aching vacancy made by his brother’s death. The two became boon companions, to tbe great detriment of the younger man’s - morals. McKee had plenty of money, which he spent liberally, gambling and carousing In company with Bud. Polly was wild With indignation at her sweetheart’s desertion and savagely upbraided him for his conduct whenever they met, which! as tnay be inferred, grew less and less frequently. In revenge she made advances to another man who had long “loved her from afar." This was William Henry Harrison Hoover, sheriff of the county, known as “Slim” Hoover by' the humorous propensity of men on the range to give nicknames on the principle of contraries. for he was the fattest man in Pina! county. Slim was one of those fleshy men who have nerves of steel and muscles of Iron. A round, boyish face, twinkling blue eyes and flaming red hair gave him an appearance of innocence entirely at variance with his personality. A vein of sentiment made him all the more lovable. His associates -rant men of the plains, ■oldlers and the owners and frequenters of the frontier barroom—respected him greatly.

“He's square as Slim” was the best recommendation ever given of a man In that region. Pinal county settlers had made Slim sheriff term after term because be was the one citizen supremely fitted for the place. lie bad ridden the range and ‘'busted - ’ bronchos before election. After it he bunted wrongdoers. Right was right and wrong was wrong to him. There was no shading In the meaning. All be asked of men was to ride fast, shoot straight and deal squarely In any game. He admitted that murder, horse stealing and branding another man's calves were subjects for the unwritten law. But In his code this law meant death only after a fair trial, with neighbors for a Jury. He was not scrupulous that a judge should be present His duties were ended when he brought in his prisoner.

Hoover’s rule had been marked by the taming of bad men in Florence and a truce declared In the guerrilla warfare between the cattlemen and the sheepmen on the range. Slim’s seemingly superfluous flesh was really of great advantage to him. It served as a mask for his remarkable athletic abilities and so lulled the outlaws with whom he had to deal Into a false sense of superiority and security. Slow and lethargic in his ordinary movements, in an emergency he was quick as a panther, never falling to get the droi> on his man. - Furthermore, his fat exerted a beneficial Influence on his character in keeping him humble minded. Being the most popular man in the county, he would probably have been swollen with vanity had there been any space left vacant for it in his huge frame. He was especially admired by the women, but was at ease only iu tbe company of those who were married. It was his fate to see the few girls of the region, with every one of whom by turns he was In love, grow up to marry each some less diffident wooer.

"Dangnatlon take it!” he used to say. “I don’t git up enough spunk to cut a heifer out o’ the herd until somebody else has roped her an’ slapped his brand on to her. Talk about too many irons in the fire! Why, I’ve only got one, an’ it’s bet up red all the time waitin’ fer the right chnnet to use it, somehow I never git It out o' the coals. What’s the use. anyhow? Nobody loves a fat man.” Slim was Inordinately puffed up by Polly's preference for him, which she showed by all sorts of feminine tyrannies, and he was forced continually to slap his huge paunch to remind himself of what he considered bis disabling deformity. “Miss Polly,” he would apostrophize tbe absent lady, “you don’t know what a volcano of seethin’ fiery love this here mountain of flesh Is that you’re walkin’ over. Some day I’ll erupt an’ JeSt eternally calcify you If you don’t look out!” The sheriff took no stock in Buck McKee’s professed reformation and was greatly worried over the influence he had acquired over Bud Lane, who had before this been Slim’s protege. Accordingly he readily conspired with her to break off the relations between the former outlaw aud tbe young horse wrangler, but thus far bad met with no success. Payson, feeling himself absolved by tbe death of Dick Lane from all obligations to his friend, began openly to woo Echo Allen, but without presuming upon the revelation of her love for him which she had made at his proposition to go into the desert to Lane’s rescue. She responded to bis courteous advances as frankly and naturally as a hud opens to tbe gentle wooing of tbe April sud- Softened by. her grief

for Dick us for a departed brother as the flower is by tbe morning dew, tbe petals of. her affectloti opened and tald bare her heart of purest gold. The gentle, diffident girl expanded into a glorious woman, conscious of her (lowers and proud and happy that she was fulfilling the highest function of womanhood—that of loving and aiding with her love a noble man. Jack Payson, however, failed to get the proper credit for this sudden flowering of Echo's beauty and charm. These were ascribed to her year’s schooling in tbe east, and her proud mother was offended by tbe way iu which she accepted the young ranchman’s advances. “You hold yourself too cheap,” she said. “It Is at least due to the memory of poor Dick l.ane,” whom, uow that he was safely dead, she idealized into a type of perfect manhood, “that you make Jack wait as loug as you did him.” When Payson reasonably objected to this delay by pointing out that he -was fully able to support a wife, as Lane had not been, and proposed, with Echo’s assent, six months us tbe limit of waiting, Mrs. Allen resorted to her old expedienttears. 'Boolioo! You are going to take away my only daughter!” The colonel, however, though be had loved Dick Lane as if he were his own sou, was delighted to tbe bottom of his hospitable soul that it was a man not already In tbe family circle who was to marry Echo, especially when he was a royal fellow like Jack Payson. So he arranged a compromise between the time proposed by Mrs. Allen and that desired by the lovers, and the date of the wedding was fixed nine months ahead. “It will fall in June,” said tbe old fellow, who knew exactly how to handle bis fractious wife, “the month when swell folks back in the east do all their hltchln’ up. Why. come to think of it, it was the very month I ran off with yon in, though I didn’t know then that we was elopin’ so strictly accordin’ to the book of e’.l--kwet.”

CHAPTER 111. THE first instinctive thought of a man reveals his Innate character; those that follow, the moral nature that he has acquired through environment and circumstances. That Jack Payson was at bottom a good man is shown by bis first emotion, which was joy, and his first impulse, which was to impart the glad news to everybody upon, receiving tbe letter from Dick Lane telling that he was alive aud soon to come home. He wns in his bouse at the time. Bud Lane had just brought in the packet of mail from Florefice and was riding away. Jack uttered a cry of joy which brought the young man back to the door. “What is it?” asked Bud. But Jack had already had time for his damning second thought He was stunned by the consideration that the promulgation of the news in the letter meant his loss of Echo Allen. He dissembled, though as yet he was not able to tell an outright falsehood: “It's a letter telling me that I may expect to receive enough money in a month or so to pay off the mortgage. Now your brother’s debt needn't trouble you any longer. Bud.” “Whew-w!” whistled Bud. “That's great! Where does It come from?” “Oh, from an old friend that I lent the money to some time ago. But. say, Bud. there’s another matter I want to talk with you about. You’ve got to shake Buck McKee. I’ve got It straight that he is the worst man in Arizona territory—yes.' worse than an Apache. Why. he has been with Geronimo, torturing and massacring lone prospectors and robbing them of their gold.” “That’s a lie. Jack Payson. and you know it!’’ cried the hot headed young man. “It was Buck McKee who stood

by Dick’s side and fought the Apaches. And I’ll stand by Buck against ail tbe world. Everybody is In a conspiracy against him—Polly and Slim Hoover and you. Why are yon so ready now : to take a slanderer’s word against his? 1 Yon were keen enough to accept his story when It let you out of goiug to ; Dick’s rescue and gave you free swing 1 to court his girl. Let me see the name of tbe snake iu the grass that’s at tbe bottom of all this!” And he snatched for the letter in Payson’s band. The ranchman quickly thrust the missive Into his pocket. The injustice of Bud’s reflections on his former actions gave to his uneasy conscience Just that pretext be desired for justifying his present course. His cause being weak and unworthy, he whipped 1 up his indignation by adopting a high i tone and overbearing manner, even j demeaning himself by using his position as Bud’s employer to crush the | younger man. Indeed, at the end of the acene which ensued he had well nigh convinced himself that be had been most ungratefully treated by Bud while sincerely attempting to save the boy from the companionship of a fiend in human guise. “No matter who told me, youug ; man,” he exclaimed. “I got it straight, and you can take it straight from me. You either give- up Buck McKee or leave Sweetwater ranch. Snake In the grass!” he cried, working hlmswlf up into false passion. “It Is you. ungrateful boy, who are sinking tbe serpent’s tooth into the hand that would have helped you. I tell you now that I intended to .make you foreman, though Sagebrush Charley la an older and better man. It was for Dick’s sake I would have donejt.”

“No.” Bud burst forth, “for, your guilty conscience’s sake! It would have been to pay for stepping Into Dick's place iu the heart of a faithless girl. Keep your job. I’m through with you.” And. leaping on his horse, Bud rode furiously back to rejoin Buck McKee In Florence. Jack I’ayson’s purpose was now cinched to suppress Dick Lane’s letter until Echo Allen was Irrevocably joined to him In marriage. He argued with himself that she loved him, Jack Payaon. yet so loyal was she by nature that If Dick Lane returned before the wedding and claimed ber she would sacrifice ber love to her sense of duty. This would ruin her life, he reasoned, and he could not permit it. There was honesty in this argument, but he vitiated It by deferring to act upon the suggestion that naturally arose with It: Why, then, not take Jim Allen, Echo’s father, to whom ber happiness was the chief purpose In life. Into confidence In regard to the matter? There will be time enough to tell the colonel before the wedding, he thought. In the meantime something might happen to Dick, and be may never return. He Is certain not to get back ahead of bis money. After the time that the note secured

by the mortgage fell due the young ranchman hail already secured two extensions of It for three months each. He now arranged a third and began negotiating for tb<> of some of his cattle to take cp ■ at the next time of paymer fi take the money from !.! tight, "even if he does «v. .* i ad yet if 1 refuse it it v. id !,,• -.tying Echo—‘paying for siepiM"” i.ito Dick's place,’ as Buif c::;'.'eased it. What •to do I don’t know Well, events will decide." And by this favorite reflection of the moral coward Jack Payson marked the lowest depths of his degradation. That afternoon Payson rode to Allen Hacienda to see Echo and to sound her upon her feelings toward Dick Lane. He wished thoroughly to convince himself that he. Jack Payson. held complete sway over her heart. Perhaps he might dare to put her love to the test and fulfill the trust his friend had imposed on him by giving her Dick’s letter.

Payson overtook Polly riding slowly on her way home from Florence. She barely greeted him. “Has she met Bud, and has he been slurring me?” he thought. He checked his pacing horse to the half trot, half walk, of Polly’s mount and, ignoring her incivility, began talking to her. “Did you see Bud in Florence?” “Yep. Couldn’t help it. Him an’ Buck McKee are about the whole of Florence these days.” “Too bad about Bud consorting with that rustler. I’ve had to fire him for it.”

“Fire him? Well you are a good friend.' Talk about men’s loyalty! If women threw men down that easy you all would go to the bowwows too fast for us to make dog biscuit. Now, I’ve settled Buck McKee’s hash by puttin' Slim Hoover wise to that tongue sllttiu’. Oh, I’ll bring Bud around, all right, all right, even if men that ought to be his friends go back on him." “But. Pollykins”— “Don’t you girlie me, Jack Payson. I’m a woman, an’ I’m goin’ to be a married one, too, in spite of all you do to Bud. Yes, slrree, bob! I’ve set out to make a man of him, an’ I’ll marry him to do it if he ain’t a dollar to his name. But money ’d make it lots quicker an’ easier. He was savin’ up till he run in with Buck McKee.” A sudden thought struck Payson. Here was a way to dispose of Dick Lane's money when it came. “All right, Mrs. Bud Lane to be. Promise not to tell Bud, and through you I’ll soon make good to him many times over the foreman’s wages he’s lost. It’s money that’s coming from an enterprise that his brother and I were partners in, and Bud shall have Dick’s share. He’s sore on me now, and I can’t tell him. Besides, he’d gamble it away before he got it to Buck McKee. Bud isn’t strictly ethical In regard to money matters, Polly, and you must manage the exchequer.” “Gee, what funny big words you use. Jack! But 1 know what you mean—he's too free handed. Well, he’ll be savin’ as a trade rat until we get our home paid for. An' I’ll manage the checker business when we’re married. No more poker an’ keno for Bud. Thank you. Jack. I always knew you was square.” Polly’s sincere praise of his “squareness” was the sharpest thrust possible at Payson’s guilty conscience. Well, he resolved to come as near being square and level as be could. He had told half truths to Bud aud Polly; be would present the situation to Echo as a possible though not actual one. If Polly were wrong and Echo loved him so much that she would break the word she pledged to Dick Lane, then he would confess all, and they would do what could be done to make it right with the discarded lover. Echo, observing from the window who was Polly’s companion, ran out to Jack, with a cry of Joy. He looked meaningly at Polly. She said: “Oh, give me your bridle! 1 know how many's a crowd.” Jack leaped to the ground and took Echo in his arms, while Polly rode off with the horses to the corral, singing significantly: “Spoon, spoon, spoon, While the dish ran away with the spoon." Jack and Echo embraced clinglngly and kissed lingeringly. “It takes a crazy old song like that to express how foolish we lovers are,” said JacJt. “Why. I feel that I could outfiddle the cat. outjump the cow, outlaugh the dog

and start an elopement that would knock the performance of the tableware as silly as—well, as I am talking now. I’m living to a dream—a midsummer night’s dream such as you were reading to me.” '** ■ “The lunatic, the lover and the poet," quoted Eaho suggestively. Dusk was falling. From the bunk bouse rose the tinkling notes of a mandolin. After a few preliminary chords the player, a Mexican, began g love song In Spanish. The distant

chimes of mission bells sounded softly on the evening air. Jack and Echo sat down upon tbe atepa of the piazza. Jack continued tbe strain of his thought, bat In a more serious vein: “Echo, I’m so happy that I am frightened.” “Frightened?" she asked wonderingly. “Yes, scared—-

downright scared,” he answered. “I reckon I’m like an Indian. An Indian doesn’t believe it’s good medicine to let tbe gods know he’s big happy, for there’s the thunder bird”— "The thunder bird?” “The evil spirit of the storm,” continued Jack. “When the thunder bird hears a fellow saying he’s big happy he sends him bad luck.” Echo laid her band softly on the mouth of her sweetheart. “We won’t spoil our happiness, then, by talking about it. We will just feel it—just be it.”She laid ber head upon Jack’s knee. He placed his arm lightly, blit protectlngly. over her shoulder. They sat in silence listening to the Mexican’s love song. Finally Jack bent over and whispered gently In her ear: "Softly, so the thunder bird won’t hear. Echo, tell me yon love-me; that you love only me; that you will always love me, no matter what shall happen; that you never loved until you loved me.”

Echo sat upright with a start. “What do you mean?” she exclaimed. “Of course I love you and you only, but the - future and the past are beyond our control. Unless you know of something that is going to happen which may mar our love your question is silly, not at all like your Mother Goose nonsense—that was dear. And, as for the past, you mean Dick Lane.” “Yes, I mean Dick Lane.” confessed Payson in a subdued tone. “I am jealous of him—that is, of even his memory.” “That is not like Jack Payson. What has come over you? It is the shadow of your thunder bird. You know wbat my feeling was for Dick Lane and what it is, for it remains the same, the only difference being that now I know It never was love. Even if it were he is dead, and I love you. Jack—you alone. Ob, how you shame me by forcing me to speak of such things! I have tried to put poor Dick out of my mind, for every time I think of him it is with a wicked Joy that he is dead, that be cannot come home to claim me as his wife. Oh. Jack, Jack, I didn't think it of you!” And the girl laid her face within her hands on her lover’s knee and burst into a fit of sobbing. Jack Payson shut his teeth. “Well, since I have lowered myself so far in your esteem and since your mind is already 6inning against Dick Lane we might as well go on and settle this matter. I promise I will not mention it again. But I, too, have troubles of the mind. I am as I am. and you ought to know it. I said I was jealous of Dick Lane’s memory. - It Is more. lam jealous of Dick Lane himself. If he should return, would you leave me and go with him—as his wife?” Again she sat upright. By a strong effort she controlled her sobbing. “The man I admired does not deserve an answer, but the child he has proved himself to be and whom I cannot help loving shall have It. Yes; If Dick Lane returns true to his promise I shall be true to mine.” She arose and went into the bouse. Payson rode homeward through the starlight consumed by torturing jealousy. He now had no thought of confiding ia .Tim Allen. He regretted that he had touched so dangerously near the subject of Dick Lane’s return in talking to Bud aDd Polly. Hia burning desire was to be. safely married to Echo Allen before the inevitable return of her former lover. “Fool that I was not to ask her one more question. Would she forgive her husband where she would not forgive her lover? What will she think of me when all Is discovered, as It surely will be? ' Well, I must take my chances. Events will decide." On his return to Sweetwater ranch he put the place* in charge of his new foreman, Sagebrush Charley, and went out to a hunting cabin he had built In the Tortilla mountains. Here he fought the problem over with his conscience—and his selfishness won. He returned, fixed in his decision to suppress Dick Lane’s letter and to go ahead with the marriage. (To be Continued.)

A love song in Spanish.