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Show Wkmm 3 tHi !f f By VINGIE E. ROE Copyright, Doubleday, Doran & Co., Ino. WNU Service CHAPTER I Lone Mesa. The girl, clin'ins to the face of the weathered cliff, her booted feet barely touching the narrow ledge below, was chiefly conscious of the strain upon her wrists. All the pain In the world seemed centered there. She knew that three hundred feet of space hung blue and clear beneath her, that the azure Bky cupped serenely above, and still she endured with her mouth set and her dark eyes llamlng upward at the face which topped the mesa's rim. This was a man's face, young and lean and weathered as the land about, a face wild as a hawk's, with long blue eyes that watched her painfully. Moreover, It was a drunken face or tt had been ten minutes ago. Now It was sobering fast, and there was sweat at Its temples. "Let go with one hand please an' catch th' rope," Its owner begged, "for th' love of God I" "Leave God out of It!" the girl panted thinly. "A lot you know about him " "Then for your folks, miss. Haven't you got some folks somewhere who'd break their hearts If you If you fell?" "Sure I have a brother who'd kill you If he knew." "I'd give him th' chance. Only catch th' rope. It's a little pull. I'll have you up here In a minute." "For what?" she asked bitterly. The man groaned. "For your life an' your safety." "You give me your word?" "Yes. Will you take It?" i "I will. Swing that loop to my other houlder. I'm left-handed." With the expert precision of a trained cow hand the man swung the loop around her slim body. With a cat-like sweep of her left hand the girl caught It, let go the bare root of I'll take your advice. I am a little tired." She rose and entered the deep house, a cool place, Its walls laid up of flat stones chinked with adobe mud. Its bare floors bright with Indian rugs. Sonya Savarin loved her brother's house, his wife, his child, and himself him-self best of all. For five years she had lived with them In this lone land of cactus, sand, and sunlight, and It seemed as If a hand tugged at her heart whenever she thought of leaving them. She had thought of that gravely the last year. Of New York and Rodney Elake and all they stood for convention conven-tion and affluence and what the world called life. It had been a year, on the nineteenth of next month, since she had promised to marry him. Uod was the soul of gallantry and had made three trips to Arizona In that time, always urging her to come away with him, to give up her work, and always she had put him off a little longer. Not that she wasn't fond of him. Who could fall to be fond of him with his good looks, his smiling good-nature? And he was Serge's closest friend. Dated from college days. But how could she give up her work here among the people whom she had learned to love and who needed her and her skill so badly? Wasting herself, Rod said. If she must practice medicine, why not do It where the results were valuable, valu-able, among folks who counted, where she could make a career for herself In her chosen field? These thoughts passed through her mind as she divested herself of her dusty riding clothes and bathed In the low pool In one corner of her room where the living waters of the spring were close as a hand In Its glove, these two. A tight conspiracy against the crown, Serge sometimes told them smilingly, meaning himself. But It was a conspiracy of love and loyalty and that dear service which only love engenders, and he knew it. It had served him well, for tilings had not been too easy on the ranch in the sagebrush sage-brush country where Serge Savarin ran his flocks of sheep, and women can hold up the hands of men when the waters of circumstance become too deep. These two had waded with him, leaning in against his shoulders. Frail Llla had carried his child, too, and Sonya had stood by at its deliverance. That had been three years back, and he knew In his heart that If It hadn't been for their strong courage he'd have given up. But he had been ashamed to quit, and times were better now. The flocks had become herds. He had Indians with them In camps all over the sage. "Hello, Sonya," said Llla. "How's Two Fingers' wife?" "Bad," said Sonya. "I'm afraid I'm going to lose her. She's a sweet thing, too, pretty and young. Two babies. The patience of these Indians Is pathetic. pa-thetic. She whispered to me that If she had to go away, why sorrow? It was the common lot." "Poor creature," said Llla her eyes filling. "What more can you do, dear?" "Only a very little more. I'm going back early tomorrow and stay with her till the crisis passes." "If she dies," said Llla, "what will become of the babies?" "Two Fingers has a sister over In Long Ruins. Maybe she'd take them. I'd hate to see them go into the school. They're so little and so wild like baby quail. They need a woman's love, not a routine." Lila sighed and looked at Babs through the open door. "This world Is hard on children and women," she said, "and only a man's true love redeems it." "And here comes one of the crusaders crusad-ers now," said Sonya nodding her black head toward the northern sage. "Serge." A pink flush spread quickly up under un-der Lila's fair skin. Her blue eyes crinkled at the corners. Always the sound of her husband's coming brought this phenomenon of joy to sight upon her face. A little later he came in from the back patio, scrubbed and shining, his riding clothes brushed free of the day's sand and dust, his dark face burned by sun and wind. A handsome man was Serge Savarin, taller than Sonya, showing his Russian blood in the bold contours of his face, the fire In his black eyes, the slowness of his movements. He kissed Lila with a long kiss, smiled at Sonya. "Whew !" he said. "Sure is good to get home." Rodney Blake came In, his hands in the pockets of his plus-fours. "This is the darnedest family," he complained, grinning. "Here am 1, a guest under its roof, and I've twiddled my thumbs all day waiting for It to see I'm around." "Now, Rod !" said Lila, "is that nice? Haven't Babs and I paid you all the attention possible?" "Babs I The young autocrat 1 She's slept most of the time and ignored me the rest. You've done pretty well, Lila, considering the thousand things you've done today about the house, but as for these others, well, I know 1 should be highly affronted by their Indifference. Some day I'm going to be, no kidding." "Yeah, like h 1 you will," said Serge. "Come here, Babs, and sit on daddy's lap for supper." It was a pleasant meal that followed, fol-lowed, and later the small group sat In the big patio watching the twilight march across the mysterious land In unspeakable beauty. Sonya, resting her head against the long chair's back, sighed in sheer ecstasy of appreciation. "Tired, dear?" asked Rod tenderly. Sonya moved and looked at him. "Tired? Why, no, I'm not tired now," she said. "Then why the sigh?" "Oh. I don't know. Just just drinking drink-ing in all this, 1 guess " She waved her hands apart, and the gesture compassed the whole lone country with simple eloquence. The man, smoking, watched her with speculative eyes In which there was a glint of hardness. This country and its problems they menaced his hope, and he was beginning to hate them with a deep and abiding hatred. Serge was talking about the bands of his sheep on Bad Land Levels, and Lila was asking this and that question at Intervals, and presently Sonya, watching the great stars come out upon the blue heavens, lost the purport of their words. She was thinking of the woman in the lowly hogan beyond Chee wash, and of the dark-faced man who loved her In his silent fashion, and her heart was sad and heavy with her fear for them. And then, superimposed upon their pathetic tragedy, she saw again the sky beyond Lone .Mesa's rim and the wild fair face of a man sobering In -bewilderment and anguish. She stirred In her chair, and Rod Blake touched her hand. "Eh?" she said, startled. TO BE CONTINUED. the dead plnon pine stump on the rim which had saved her, and swung clear. Hand over hand the man raised her the scant ten feet which had separated them and pulled her over the edge of the cliff. Together they rose to their feet and stood looking Into each other's eyes with tragic tenseness which precluded pre-cluded speech. Then the man stooped and picked np the girl's wide hat and timidly held It out to her. She took It without a word, set It on her dark head, brushed the white, sandy sift of the cliff-face from her shirt and riding breeches, and watched him catch her horse and lead It back. She took her rein and swung up in her saddle, her Hps set in a tight line above her firm chin. In that tense silence she leaned to the start, when he caught her horse's bit. "I miss," be said thickly, "I want to to say that I ain't ever felt so bad in my life. I've (lone a lot of things that wouldn't bear light, but nothln' so bad as this. I never made so big a mistake In Judgment In all my days, an' there ain't no excuse I can offer. I Just Just didn't know a woman lived who'd rather die than than " "No?" said the girl like a rasp. "You've got a lot to learn, then. Now, get out of my way." She lifted the rein again, leaned In her saddle, and the tall black horse beneath her leaped to his stride from a standing start. Across the high mesa she went like a streak of flame, her scarlet shirt against the blue sky making a Are in the spirit of the man who stood watching watch-ing her. When he could no longer hear the sound of her horse's feet sliding slid-ing In the loose stone silt he stooped and picked up his own hat. For a long time he held It In his two hands, staring at It unseeing. Down on the sandy levels the girl gave her horse his head and sailed away toward the north and east- Two hours later she rode into the stone-flagged stone-flagged patio of her brother's ranch house and swung off with the last thunder of the Iron-shod feet. "That was a pretty piece of horsemanship, horse-manship, Sonya," said a man's voice; "quite spectacular. How long have you ridden like that?" "Oh, hello, Rod I Why, I don't know. Ever since I've been in this country, I guess five years now. It's a land that makes for flight and wide gestures." "I see. You've been gone an unconscionable uncon-scionable time. Where've you been?" "Over beyond Chee wash. There's a sick woman In a hogan, and I'm afraid she's going to die." A shadow passed across the girl's face, darkening it for a moment. "These Indians are so pitiful. Rod, so patient, so hopeless. And they are so poor. They make me fairly question ques-tion destiny sometimes." "My darling I Why bother your dear head? What's one Navajo more or less?" "I wish you wouldn't talk like that, Rod," she said earnestly. "If you knew them like I do you couldn't. They are a lost people, that I grant you, who know they are lost, and they are going down to oblivion like a gallant gal-lant ship with its sails set and flags flying. You don't understand. Hod." "No," said the man, getting up and coming toward her, "I don't. Neither do I want to. I only understand that your absurd devotion to them Is keeping keep-ing you from me and from your rightful right-ful place in life." He stooped and kissed her gently. "Go wash and rest a bit, child," he said; "you look rather fagged. Llla Is in the nursery with Babs, and Serge Is out on the range somewhere. Bald he wouldn't be In till night." -All rieht," said Sonya, "I guess The Man, the Tall, Lean Vandal of Saddle and Spur, Who Had Ridden Rid-den Her Down to the Mesa's Edge. ran softly through and out under the wall in a pipe. A treasure, this Indoor In-door pool. A blessing it would be hard to leave, along with Darkness, her horse, and Lila and little Babs. Yet she had come near as a breath to leaving them three hours back and had not given them a thought. There had been no thought in her when she flung her body out of the arms of the man who held her and over the edge of Lone Mesa only the age-old terror of conquest, the high, fierce flare of white-hot fury at defilement which has filled the heart of woman since creation. crea-tion. She had essayed death as instinctively instinctive-ly as she drew her breath, and had done It on the instant. The man, the tall, lean vandal of saddle and spur, who had ridden her down to the mesa's edge and lifted her bodily from Darkness' Dark-ness' back, came back In her vision, as he had come again and again on the ride home, In the patio with Rod. She could see the long blue eyes of him, wild with Inner fire under their sleepy look. They had large pupils under their bronze-colored lashes, and they were fierce and cruel, swift eyes that could change in a second from one vital expression to another. She had seen them change, instantly, when she looked up after the sliding fall over the rim, tne jolting catch of her clutching hands in the pinon roots. From that promising, sleepy wildness to wide shock. Had seen them literally liter-ally sober themselves from half-drunken dementia to anguished sanity. Strange eyes. Beautiful, even in their beastlike beast-like cruelty. There had been no mercy for her In them. A wave of the cold terror of that moment went over her, followed instantly by a burning flush ol anger. "I'll take my pound of flesh from him for this," she told herself through tight lips, "if it takes me the rest of my natural life. If a free citizen of this country can't ride In safety I'll know the reason why." Then she finished dressing and went out to where Lila, dark Serge's longhaired, long-haired, golden wife, put the finishing touches on the table for the evening meal. They were a striking foil for each other, Sonya and her sisler-in-law, one so tall and dark and vital, full-lipped, full of brow above her dusky eyes, sinuous in her movements, the other small and fragile as a flower, a fair thing to look at, to know. They |