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Show IK DUDE WOMANjtljL IllllIlllX, V PETER B.KYNE .KvSc -1I stroked the horse's neck a minute and then commanded him to "come in" as she had heard ropers do at the rodeo. The well-trained animal at once walked forward a few steps to ease the strain on the riata, and Mary cast it loose from the pommel. Using the horse as a crutch she edged him over to a large boulder in the dry river bed, got her sound leg up on this boulder and threw her body across the saddle; with her right hand she lifted her numb leg over and sat erect; her left foot found the stirrup and she started for the ranch headquarters at a walk. Pedro was sitting on the veranda of his cottage playing with his twins and saw her ride up from the river, so he knew something unusual had happened and ran to meet her. "I've been shot by a cattle thief, Pedro," she told him and rode around to the back of the dude house and paused before the outside door to her room. "Lift me off, Pedro, please, and carry me in to my room." He did so, ran to summon Ma Burdan and Carlotta and continued on to Len Henley's trailer house where he knew there was a first-aid cabinet. The' Burdans and Carlotta were gathered in the room when he returned with his supplies. "You will all be so good as not to discuss this matter with anybody," he announced. "It will be embarrassing embar-rassing to Dona Maria if this news reaches the world." He led the Flying W horse over to the barn, unsaddled him and put him in a stall. Then he saddled Pablito, strapped the dead cow-thief's cow-thief's carbine and gun boot on the saddle and jogged off down the riv- THE STORY THUS FAR: Mary Sutherland Suth-erland Is lured to Arizona by the ads of the Wagon Wheel dude ranch, operated by Ma and Pa Burdan. She Is met at the station by Len Henley, whose father, Ham, has purchased the Burdan notes from the bank and feels that the ranch Is now his. Len rides Mad Hatter at I the rodeo to a finish. Mary, who has . won three thousand dollars on him, now buys the Burdan equity In Wagon Wheel, outbidding Ham, who disapproves Len's match with Mary. Learning that Mary does not have the money to pay for the notes, Ham threatens foreclosure. Mary re-hlres Ma and Pa Burdan and drives to to ranch. Sheriff Wade calls an Mary at Wagon Wheel. CHAPTER Xin She saw his car stop on top of the hill and she knew he was looking back at the Wagon Wheel. Forthwith Forth-with she felt the exultation of victory. vic-tory. She soliloquized: "Take a good look at it now, Don Hamilton. When you see it again you'll have another heart-ache provided you recognize It!" The following morning she set forth alone and afoot to investigate the scene of next fall's duck shooting. shoot-ing. She followed the easy footing along the dry sandy bed of the Santa Maria until she came to the bend and stood gazing out over the low ground which still contained some water from the last freshet. With pleasure she saw a raft of perhaps two dozen pin-tail ducks out in the middle of it; a slight breeze was drifting them slowly toward the river, riv-er, so Mary went in behind a clump of mesquite to hide, hoping, by patient pa-tient waiting, to csma home with a brace of them. Suddenly she heard the thud of hooves coming up the wash; around the bend came a calf Mary judged might be six months old and she saw that it was exerting all its speed. Behind it came a man on a dun-colored horse, his riata swinging. swing-ing. About twenty yards from the girl's point of concealment he made his cast and the loop settled over the calf's neck, the man tied hard and fast to the pommel of his saddle, sad-dle, the horse slid an his haunches to a halt and the calf, arrested suddenly, sud-denly, swung around and fell heavily heav-ily on its side. With amazing speed the rider left the saddle, ran to the calf and, with a short piece of rope, hog-tied it after a brisk battle. He then gathered gath-ered some dry driftwood and kindled a fire; from his saddle he took a branding iron and thrust it in the flames, while Mary watched interestedly, inter-estedly, her interest considerably kindled now by the sight of a cow trotting up the wash and mournfully bellowing. Apparently the calf was hers, for she came up and smelled it and lowered her head threateningly at the man, but retreated when he kicked her. on the nose. But Mary had noticed something, i The cow wore the Wagon Wheel brand on her rump, so, of course, the calf was Mary's property also! She watched the man remove his branding iron from the flames and test its heat on an old dry white sycamore log; it was not quite hot enough so he put it back in the fire, but not before Mary had seen wasn't I told," he demanded, "that Mary Sutherland had bought the Wagon Wheel ranch?" "I have a sound alibi," Margaret protested. "Mary asked me not to tell you." "Pappy?" ','1 knew she'd bought it," Ham Henley confessed. "That's why I couldn't go through with my plan to buy it lor you. She beat me to the bargain, an' after you told me you'd lost interest in ownin" it, I didn't see no reason to discuss it further. What does she want now, telephon-in' telephon-in' you?" he demanded suspiciously. suspicious-ly. "I thought you two had broke up." "We're still on speaking terms, for goodness sakes. She telephoned me because she's in trouble an' she didn't want the people standing around to know what the trouble is. They don't speak Spanish an' she had to confide in somebody that did. So, quite properly, she telephoned me in Spanish. She's In the hospital hos-pital at Prescott with a hole from a forty-five slug through her right thigh, put there by Breezy Wade. She shot it out with Breezy this morning and killed him with bird shot. Tore his jugular vein out, I take it She's met his father and likes him; he was down to the Wagon Wag-on Wheel and lunched there the other oth-er day and she's broken-hearted because be-cause she's brought woe upon him. She says Hank Wade's sweet and she's half crazy because she's killed a man!" "Three cheers," said his father complacently. "She killed a skunk!" "She wants you to come up to her, Margaret," Len went on. "She's all alone and frightened." "I'm practically there now," said Margaret Maxwell and went. Father Fa-ther and son looked at each other and Len said bitterly: "And a swell job you did, selling yourself out of a hell-cracking daughter-in-law. not to mention the possibility of grandsons grand-sons that certainly would have been tough enough to suit you." "You sold her short yourself," his sire defended. "All I did was give you a piece o' fatherly advice. I didn't say you shouldn't marry her. I got more sense than to do that. Seems to me I just sort o' advised you to go slow." "You did. You started me thinking think-ing and I went so slow I stopped." "Well," his father declared judicially, judi-cially, "just because she buys the Wagon Wheel, shoots it out with a rustler an' gets winged, don't look to me like a solid reason for chang-ln' chang-ln' my opinion that marriage of a man o' your world to a girl o' her world would be a mistake." "Might be a mistake," his son corrected. "Oh, well, If you're goin' to split hairs, son, marry her as soon as you can hobble to the altar an' find out for sure. I said my say once an' it looks like I'm never goin' to be able to live it down. The girl hates me for it an' I'm not goin' to risk hav-in' hav-in' you cool on me again. I'm through. If you marry her, Len, I'll be the best father-in-law that was ever jumped up out of the cactus cac-tus an' if time proves me a sound prophet you'll never hear me mut-terin' mut-terin' 'I told you so.' " "Well, what are you going to do 'now?" "I'm goin' to telegraph her a dozen doz-en roses an' my cheers." "She's in the orchid class, pap- py" "All right then, a dozen orchids. What'll I send for you?" "One small spray of forget-me-nots." "I'll hustle right along an' 'tend to it," his father declared, anxiom to find an excuse to escape. When Margaret walked into the hospital, she put her arms around Mary. Her nurse came in with a cablegram cable-gram which Sheriff Wade had just brought up, it having been sent in his care. Mary excused herself to Margaret and read it: "Hope disgrace you have visited upon family makes you quite happy stop sell that cattle ranch or give it away and return to New York immediately im-mediately with Joe Blanding who is flying out in his own plane with nurse at my request to get you stop would not have known about this if he had not telephoned after reading read-ing story in evening edition New York paper stop I am ashamed of you and you have broken my heart" "A dismal chirp from my mother in London," Mary announced with a quaver in her voice, despite her valiant effort to appear undisturbed. undis-turbed. "It seems I made the front page in a national story and now, back home, I'll always be known as the girl with one notch on her gun. Margaret, how do you suppose this news leaked out? We thought, with the sheriff's co-operation, we had it hermetically sealed." , "I'm terribly sorry, darling, but this morning's Prescott Register carries an eight-column head and a story with all the disgusting details." de-tails." Margaret drew a tightly folded fold-ed copy of the Register from her large handbag and handed it to Mary, who read it and promptly commenced com-menced to weep brokenhearted. (TO BE CONTINUED) that the brand on the log showed a W with wings. Later she would have called it Flying W. While she was pondering this incongruity the man branded the calf, cooled the iron in a vagrant pool, walked te his horse and tied the iron back on the saddle. And at that moment Mary decided to emerge from her mesquite bower and ask the stranger strang-er a few questions. She was in the clear when she stepped on a dry twig that snapped. Instantly the man turned and she saw his hand go swiftly in under the left breast of his leather windbreak wind-break and come back clasping a large pistoL Without an instant's hesitation he swung, raised the weapon and fired at her. She felt a terrific blow on .her right thigh, and her leg buckled under un-der her. She fell prone on her elbows el-bows in the sand, her shotgun out-thrust out-thrust from her, and as she fell another bullet lifted her hat off; a couple of seconds later a third bullet bul-let threw sand in her face, stinging her keenly and she thought: "This man is shooting at my head! He is trying to murder me. I must defend de-fend myself." She rolled on ber left side, rose a little on her left elbow, slid the safety catch forward, raised the gun and fired, all within the space of two seconds. The man's upraised arm dropped and he sat down abruptly and cried out The girl watched him until she saw his right 'land come up waveringly for a fourth shot and then she gave him the other barrel and he went over backward, twitched twice, straightened straight-ened his legs and was still. The man's horse had bounded to one side when his rider fired his first shot, thus escaping Mary's blasts of number six shot. She noticed no-ticed the horse stiir was holding the calf, however, and sne thought: "I must ride that horse home before I bleed to death." Forthwith she dropped her shotgun and commenced com-menced crawling toward him; she reached the taut riata and dragged herself along it to the horse's side, soothing him with words of reassurance reassur-ance as she came. Slowly she lifted herself up, stood on her sound leg and clung to the pommeL She About twenty yards from the girl's point of concealment he made his cast. er, backtracking Mary's homebound trail. He returned in about an hour, driving the branded calf and the cow before him, turned them into the horse pasture and put up his horse. Then he backed the Bur-dan's Bur-dan's station wagon out of the garage ga-rage and drove it around to the outside door of Mary's room in the rear of the dude house. "You will be good enough to dress Dona Maria," Ma-ria," he said to Carlotta. "I must take her to the hospital in Prescott. Senora Burdan, I will have a single mattress and blankets to make a bed in the station wagon." "It's a superficial wound," Mary protested. "My thigh bone is uninjured." un-injured." "Sometimes a bullet will carry into the wound, Dona Maria, a little piece of the garment it has penetrated pene-trated and that causes infection. The wound must be probed and cleaned and dressed again by a doctor. You will accompany me, Dona Maria, if you please." Margaret Maxwell, dropping in for a visit to Len Henley in the hospital at Phoenix, found his father there chatting with him, for Len was improving rapidly and could sit up in bed now. Hard on Margaret's heels came his nurse carrying a telephone tele-phone which she proceeded to plug in to the room telephone outlet "The operator downstairs telephoned up to the desk on this floor that somebody some-body is calling you from Prescott, Mr. Henley," she announced, and wiggled the receiver. "All right Put that Prescott party on the line, Mabel," and she handed Len the telephone and left the room. "Don Leonardo?" a weak voice asked. "This is Mary." "Mary! What are you doing in Prescott? I thought you had gone back to New York." Thereafter he listened without once interrupting her. Presently he said, "I'll tell her. I'm terribly sorry sor-ry but glad it's no worse. Keep your chin up. Goodby." He hung up and gazed rather wildly wild-ly at his father and Margaret "Why |