Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 84, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1909 — The Round=Up [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Round=Up

SYNOPSIS. Chapter I—'Returning with gold from the mines to an Arizona ranch to claim Echo Allen, his promised bride, Dick Lane is attacked by Apaches led by Buck McKee, a renegade. After spending six months in a hospital Lane writes to his friend Jack Payson, owner of the Sweetwater ranch, to tell Echo he is coming home. He tells Payson he has $3,000 to pay a mortgage placed by Jack on his ranch to help him. ll—Colonel Jim Allen, owner of the Bar One ranch, Is father of Echo and father by adoption of Polly Hope, Dick and Bud Lane. Polly and Bud are sweethearts. In Dick’s absence Echo falls in love with Jack, realizing ■ that her love for Dick was merely friendship. Dick is believed to be dead, owing to the return of McKee with a lying story. Bud "chums” with McKee despite the warnings of Slim Hoover, the fat and popular sheriff. Echo and Jack become engaged. 111. Echo declares to Jack after the latter suppresses Dick’s letter, fearing to lose her, that she will be true to her promise to Dick if he returns. Bud quarrels with Jack about Echo, the boy championing his absent brother’s cause. IV—Aided by Bud, McKee murders Terrill, the station agent, stealing from him $3,000 of county money. McKee suggests to Bud that Dick may still be living. V—-The boys gather at the Allen ranch for the wedding of Echo and Jack. VI and Vll—McKee plans to to throw suspicion of Terrill’s murder on Jack, and he and Bud go to the Allens’ for thejjvedding. Mckee raises a disturbance and is put Out. VIII— All ready for the wedding. IX— Dick turns up at the Allens’ just as his rweetheart is married to Jack. Only Allen and Jack see him. Jack is tempted to shoot his friend, who pays the $3,000 to him and returns to the desert. X —The cowpunchers send for a piano as a surprise for Echo, now married to Jack. XI — Jack keeps his business affairs secret from his wife, not daring to tell her where he got the $3,000 to pay the mortgage. Polly flirts with Slim, alfhough she loves bud The boys give the piano to Echo. Buck McKee comes to Payson’s at the head of his followers, the Lazy K outfit, to accuse Payson of killing Terrill.

Chapter Xl—Continued. Echo rose hastily. The vague, haunt' tag half thoughts of weeks were cry»-j talllzed on the Instant She felt as It Dick was trying to apeak to her from out of the great beyond. With a shudder she sank into l lhltt at the tablet opposite Polly. ‘'Don’t,” she said, her voice scarcely, above a whisper. ‘T can’t bear to beat fata) spoken of. I dreamed of him the other night—a dreadful dream.” Polly was delighted with this new mystery. It was all so romantic! “Did you? Let’s hear it.” With unseeing eyes Echo gazed straight ahead, rebuilding from her dream fabric a tragedy of the desert in which the two men who had played so great a part in her life were the actors. "It seems,” she told, “that I was in the desert, such a vast, terrible desert, where the little dust devils eddied and swirled and the merciless sun beat down until it shriveled up every growing thing.” Polly nodded her head sagely. “That's the way the desert looks, and no water." Echo paid no heed to the interruption. Her face became wan and haggard as in her mind’s eye she saw the weary waste of waterless land quiver and BWim under the merciless sun. Not a tree, not a blade of grass, not a sign of life, broke the monotony of crumbling cliffs and pinnacled rocks. Onward and ever onward stretched How ridges and alkali whitened ra- •. ir es, blinding the eye and parching the throat. “Then I saw a man staggering toward me,” she continued. “His face

was white and drawn, his lips cracked and parched. Now and. then he would

A 'Romance ojF Arizona Novelized From Edmund Day's Melodrama

By JOHN MURRAY and MILLS MILLER

Ifumßle and fall and lie there on bis face in the hot sand, dlgg{hg°'into it with his bony fingers, seeking for water.” Echo 'shut her eyes as if to blot out the picture. Its reality almdst overpowered her. “Suddenly he raised his eyes to mine,” she resumed after a pause. “It was Dick.” i In her excitement she had arisen, stretching out her arms as if to ward off an apparition. "He tried to call me. I saw his lips move, framing my name. Dragging himself to his feet, he came toward me with bis arms outstretched. Then another form appeared between us, fighting to keep him back. They fought there under the burning sun In the hot dust of the desert until at last one was crashed to earth. The victor raised his face to mine, and—it was Jack.” Echo burled her face in her hands. Dry sobs shook her bosom. Awe stricken, Polly gazed at the overwrought wife. “Phew!” she laughed to shake off her fright “That was a sure enough nightmare. If I’d a dream like that I’d wake up the whole house yappln’ like a coyote.” As the commonplace ever Intrudes upon the unusual, so a knock on the door relieved the tension of the situation. It was Slim. He did not wait for an invitation to enter, but, opening the door, asked, “Can I come in?” “Sure, come in!" cried Polly, glad to find any excuse to shake off the depression of Echo’s dream. "Howdy, Mrs. Payson? Just come over to see Jack,” was the Jolly sheriff’s greeting. “He’s down at the corral,” she informed him. Mrs. Allen hurried in from the kitchen at this moment, calling: "Echo, come here an’ look at this here cake. It looks as if it had been sot on.”

Echo closed the lid of the piano and called her mother’s attention to the presence of Slim Hoover. “How d’ye do, Slim Hoover? You might have left some of that dust out‘side.” The sheriff was greatly embarrassed by her chiding. In his ride from Florence to the Sweetwater the alkali and sand stirred up by the hoofs of the horses had settled on his bat and waistcoat so freely that his clothing had assumed a neutral gray tones above which his sun tanned face and red hair loomed like the moon in a fog. Josephine’s scolding drove him to brush his shoulders with his hat, raising a cloud of dust about hia head. “Stop It!” Mrs. Allen shouted shrilly. “Slim Hoover, if your brains was dynamite you couldn’t blow the top of your hehd off!” Polly was greatly amused by Slim’s encounter with the cleanly Mrs. Allen. Slim stood with open mouth, watching Mrs. Allen flounce out of the room after Echo, who was trying in vain to suppress her laughter. Turning to Polly, he said, “Ain’t seen you In some time.”

Slim was thankful that the girl was seated at the table with her back to him. Somehow or other he found he could speak to her more freely when she was not looking at him. “That’s so?” she challenged. “Come to the birthday?” “Not regular,” he answered.

Polly glanced at him over her shoulder. The look was too much for Slim. He turned away to hide his embarrassment. Partly recovering from his bashfulness, he coughed preparatory to speaking. But Polly had vanished. As one looks sheepishly for the magician’s disappearing coin, so Slim gazed at floor and ceiling ns if the girl might pop up anywhere. Spying an empty chair behind him, he sank into it gingerly and awkwardly. Meantime Polly returned with a broom and began sweeping out the evidences of Slim’s visit. She spoke again. “Get them holdups yet that killed ‘Old Man’ Terrill?” she asked. “Not yet. But we had a new shootln’ over’n our town yesterday.” Slime was doing his best to make conversation. Polly did not help him out very freely. “That so?” was her reply. “Spotted Taylor shot two Chinamen.” Polly’s curiosity was aroused. "What for?” she asked, stopping her sweeping for a moment “Just to give the new graveyard a start” Slim Polly joined in his merriment. “Spotted Taylor was always a public spirited citizen,” was her comment “He sure was,” assented Slim. "Get up thqre. I want to sweep under that chair.” £olly brushed Slim’s feet with the broom vigorously. With an elaborate “Excuse me!” Slim arose, but reseated himself in another chair directly in the pathway of Polly's broom. ; “Get out of there, too,” she cried. “Shucks! There ain’t any room for me nowhere,” he muttered disgustedly. “You shouldn’t take up ao much of it” Slim attempted to take a seat on the small gilt chair which was Jack’s Wfiddh!2JDres£ntJkfi.J2cho.,. Polly caught

sight dTßrm fn time. "Look outAsW shouted. “That chair wasn’t built for a full grown man like you.” Slim nervously replaced the chair before a writing desk. Polly wielded her broom about the feet of the sheriff, who danced clumsily about trying to avoid her. "You’re Just tryln’ to sweep me out of here,” he complained. “Well, If you will bring dust in with you, you must expect to be swept out,” Polly replied, with a show of spirit Pollxjwas shaking the mat vigorously at tne door when Slim said: “I see they burled Poker Bill this mornin’. ,r "Is he dead?” It was the first Polly had heard of the passing gway of one of the characters of the territory. She had expressed her surprise In the form of an interrogation, emphasizing the "he,” a colloquialism of the southwest Slim, however, had chosen to Ignore the manner of speech and, with a grin, answered: “Ye-es. That’s why they buried him.”

Polly laughed in spite of herself. "What did he die of?" she asked. As Slim was about to take a drink at the olla he failed to hear her. "Eh?” he grunted. "What did he die of?” she repeated. “Five aces,” was the sober reply of the sheriff before he drained the gourd. Polly put the broom back of the door and was rearranging the articles on the table before Slim could muster up enough courage to speak on the topic which was always uppermost In his mind when In her presence. “Say, Miss Polly” be Legan. “If you’ve anything to <say to me. Slim Hoover, just say it. I can’t be bothered today—all the flxin’s an* things,” saucily aidvised the girl. "Well, what I want to say is”— began the sheriff. At this moment Bud Lane, laboring under heavy excitement, burst open the door. . “Say, Slim, you’re wanted down at the corral,” he cried, paying no heed to Polly. “Shucks F’ exclaimed the disappointed sheriff. “What’s the row?” “I don’t know. Buck McKee, ha’s there with some of the Lazy K outfit. They want to see you.” Slim threw himself out of the door, with the mild expletive, “Darn the lucki” Bud turned quickly to Polly. "Did Jack pay off the mortgage last week?” he almost shouted at the girl. Polly stamped her foot in anger at what seemed to her to be a totally ir-

relevant question to the lovemaking she expected. “How do I know?” she angrily replied. “If that is all you come to see me for you can go an’ ask him. It makes me so doggone mad!" Polly, with flushed face and knitted brow, left the bewildered Bud standing in the center of the room asking himself what it was all about. The sound of the voices of disputing men floated in from the corral. Bud heard them and comprehended its significance. “It’s all up with me!” he cried in mortal terror. “Buck McKee has stirred up the suspicion against Jack Payson. Jack paid off his mortgage, and they want to know where he raised the money. Well, Jack can telL If he can’t I’ll confess the whole business. I won’t let him suffer for me. Buck shan’t let an innocent man hang for tyhat we’ve done.” The-sound of footsteps on the piazza and the opening of the door drove Bud to take refuge in an adjoining room, where he could overhear all that was happening. He closed the door as the cowpunchers entered, with Slim at, their head. (To be Continued)

“It was Dick."

“Five aces," was the sober reply of the sheriff.