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Show f "S3 The Everlasting I By Jackson Gregory B Copyright by Charlea Scrlbner's Sons ( SYNOPSIS In the California Bierra Mark King, prospector, seea Andy Parker killed by Swen Brodie, Parker's outlaw companion, compan-ion, both known to King. He Is on his way to the summer home of his friend, Ben Gaynor. CHAPTER I Continued 2 Gaynor, with a strange sort of smile King thought, half sheepish and the other half tender, cast a downward glance along the encasement of the outer man. Silk shirt, a very pure white; bright tie, very new; white flannels, very spick and span ; silken hose and low white ties. This garb for Ben Gaynor the lumberman, who felt not entirely at his ease, hence the sheepish grin ; a fond father decked out by his daughter as King well guessed; hence that gleam of tenderness. tender-ness. "Gloria's doings," he chuckled. . "I guess I'd wear a monkey jacket If she said so, Mark." But none the less his eyes, as they appraised the rough garb of his guest, were envious. "I can breathe better, Just the same, in boots like yours," he concluded. He stretched his long arms high above his head. "I wish I could get out Into the woods for a spell with you, Mark." "The very thing," said King eagerly. "That's just what I want." Bnt Gaynor shook his head and his thin, aristocratic face was briefly overcast, over-cast, and for an Instant shadows crept Into his eyes. "No can do, Mark," he said quietly. "Not this time. I've got both hands full and then some." King leaned forward In his chair, his hands gripping Gaynor's knee. "Ben, it's there. I've always known It, always been willing to bet my last dollar. Now I'd gamble my life on it. I came up this time from Georgetown. You remember the old trail, up by Gerle's, Red cliff and Hell hole, leaving leav-ing French meadows and Heaven's gate and Mount Mildred 'way off to the left. I had it all pretty much my own way until I came to Lookout ridge. And who do you suppose I found poking around there? Swen Brodie. And Andy Parker." Gaynor frowned, impressed as King had been before him. King went on. "He and Parker were up on the cliffs not a quarter-mile from the old cabin. They stood close together, to-gether, right' at the edge. Parker fell. Brodie looked down, turned on his heel und went off, smoking his stinking pipe, most likely. I buried Parker the next morning." "Poor devil," said Gaynor. Then his brows shot np and he demanded: "You mean Brodie did for him? Shoved him over?" "That's exactly what I mean. I saw the whole thing from the mountain across the lake, too far to swear to anything like that. But this I can swear to : Brodie was in there for the same thing we've been after for ten years." "How do yon know what Brodie and Perker were after?" "Andy Parker. He was sullen and tight-mouthed for the most part until delirium got him. Then he babbled by the hour. And all his talk was of Gus Ingle and the devil's luck of the unlucky un-lucky Seven, with every now and then a word for Loony Honeycutt and Swen Brodie. Now I've told you my tale, let's have yours. You saw Honeycotf; could you get anything out of him?" "Only this, that you are dead right about his knowing or thinking that he knows. He Is feebler than he was last fall, a great deal feebler both in body and mind. 'Oh, I know what you're after,' he cackles at me, shrewd enough to hit the nail square, too, Mark. 'And,' he rambles on, 'you've come to the right man. But am I goin' to blab now, havln' kept a shut mouth all these years?' And then he goes on to proclaim that he Is feeling a whole lot stronger these days, that come mid-spring mid-spring he'll be as frisky as a colt, and that then he means to have what Is his own! And that is as close as he ever comes to sayin anything." "He can't live a thousand years," mused King. "He Is eighty now, if he's a day." "Eighty-four by his own estimate." "He knows something, Ben." "So do we, or think we do. So does Brodie, It would seem. Does old Honeycutt know any more than the rest of us?" "We are all young men compared with Loony Honeycutt, all Johnny-come-lately youngsters. Gus Ingle and his crowd, as near as we can figure, came to grief In the winter of IS53! By old Honeycutt's own count he would have been a wild young devil of seventeen seven-teen then. And " "And," cut In Gaynor, "if you believe be-lieve the murderous old rascal, he knows with sly, Intimate knowledge how and why the man In the lone cabin was killed. All In that same winter of '53 P King pricked up big ears. "I didn't know that What does he say?" "He talks on most subjects pretty much at random. It makes a man shiver to stand there In the sunshine and hear him hinting broadly It was a boy seventeen who, carrying nothing but an ax, did for the poor devil in the cabin." "And I, for one, believe him!" He began to pace up and down, frowning. "Brodie has been hanging around him lately, hasn't he?" "Yes. Brodie and Steve Jarrold and Andy Parker and the rest of Bro-die's Bro-die's worthless crowd of Illicit booze-runners. booze-runners. They hang out In the old McQuarry shack, cheek by jowl with Honeycutt. Brodie, It seems, has even been cooking the old man's meals for him." "There you are!" burst out King. "What more do you want? Imagine Swen Brodie turning over his hand for anybody on earth If there Isn't something some-thing In It all for Swen Brodie." "Well," demanded Gaynor, "what's to be done? With all his jabberings, Honeycutt Is sly and furtive and Is obsessed with the idea that there Is one thing he won't tell." "There's one thing we haven't tried. Old Honeycutt Is as greedy a miser as ever gloated over a pile of hoardings. hoard-ings. We'll get a thousand dollars five thousand. If necessary in hnrd Hers Were the Softest, Tenderest Gray Eyes He Had Ever Looked Into. gold coin, if we have to rob the mint for it. You'll spread it on the table In his kitchen. You'll let It chink and you'll let some of It drop and roll. If that won't buy the knowledge we want But It will I" "I've known the time when five thousand thou-sand wasn't as much money as It Is right now Mark " "I've got It, If I scrape deep. And I'll dig down to the bottom." "And if we draw a blank?" But there was a step at the door, the knob was turning. Mark King turned, utterly unconscious of the quick stiffening stif-fening of his body as he awaited the introduction to Ben's wife. CHAPTER II At first, King was taken aback by Mrs. Ben's yonthfulness. Or look of youth, as he understood presently. She was a very pretty woman, petite, alert, and decidedly winsome. She chose to be very gracious to her husband's lifelong life-long friend, giving him a small, plump hand In a welcoming grip, establishing him In an instant, by some sleight of femininity which King did not plumb, as a hearth-side Intimate most affectionately affec-tionately regarded. She slipped to a place on the arm of Gaynor's chair, her hand toying with her husband's graying hair. "She loves old Ben," thought King. "That's right." She adored Ben ; you could see that. If she was not more at his side, the matter was simply explained; she adored their daughter Gloria no less, and probably somewhat' more, and Gloria needed her. Any small misstep mis-step which she herself had made In life her daughter must be saved from making; all of her unsatisfied yearnings yearn-ings must be fulfilled for Gloria. Ben Gaynor's eyes followed his wife pridefully when, at the end of fifteen pleasant, sunny minutes, she left them, and then went swiftly to his friend's face, seeking approbation. And he found It. "Pretty tardy date to congratulate you, old man," King said with a laugh. "Don't believe I ever remembered It before, did I?" Ben glowed and rubbed his long hands together In rich contentment "She's a wonder, Mark," he said heartily. Mark nodded an emphatic approval. Words, which Ben perhaps looked for, he did not add. Everything had been said In the one word "congratulate." From without came a gust of shouts and laughter from the Gaynor guests skylarking along the lake shore. "Come," said Ben. "You'll have to meet the crowd, Mark. And I want you to see my little girl ; I've told her so many yarns about you that she's dying of curiosity." King followed his host He would shake hands, say a dozen stupid words, and escape for a good long talk with Ben. Then, before the lunch hour, he would be off. They came abreast of a wide stairway stair-way leading to the second story. Down the glistening threads, making her entrance en-trance like the heroine In a play, Just at the proper instant, In answer to her cue, came Gloria. "Gloria," called Gaynor. "Come here. my dear. Mark, this Is my little girt. Gloria, yon know all about this wild man. He Is Mark King." "Indeed, yes!" cried Gloria. She came smiling down the stairway, a fluffy pink puffball floating falrywlse. Her two hands were out. Ingenuously, pretty little plnk-nalled hands which had done little in this world beyond adorn charmingly the extremities of two soft round arms. For an instant King felt the genial current within him frozen as he stiffened to meet the girl he had watched in the extravagant dance down to the lake. Then, getting his first near view of her, his eyes widened. He had never seen anything Just like her; with that he began, realizing dully that he was straying into strange pastures. He took her two hands because there was nothing else to do, feeling Just a trifle awkward in the unaccustomed act He looked down Into Gloria's face, which was lifted so artlessly up to his. Hers were the softest, tenderest gray eyes he had ever looked Into. From the beginning be-ginning he thought of her In superlatives. superla-tives. And thus did Gloria, like the springtime coquetting with an aloof and silent wilderness, make her bright entry into Mark King's life. "I have been acting-up like a Comanche Coman-che Indian outside," laughed Gloria. It was she who withdrew her hands. "My hair was all tumbling down and I had to ran upstairs to fight It back where it belongs. Isn't a girl's hair a terrible affliction, Mr. King? One of these days, when papa's back Is turned, I'm going to cut It off short, like a boy's." Gloria's eyes, despite their soft tenderness, ten-derness, were every whit as quick as Mark King's when they were, as now. Intrigued. Of course both she and King had heard countless references, one of the other, from Ben Gaynor. King had known that there was a baby girl, long ago; he had known, had he ever paused for reflection, which he had not, that a baby would not stay such during a period of eighteen years. She had heard a thousand thou-sand tales of "my good friend, Mark." Mark, thus, had been In her mind a man of her father's age, and about such a young girl's romantic Ideas do not flock. But from the first glimpse of him she had sensed other things. King would have blushed had he known how picturesque he bulked in her eyes; how now, while she smiled at him so ingenuously, she was doing his thorough going masculinity full tribute; how the clear manlike look of his eyes and the warm dusky tan of face and hands even the effect of the careless, care-less, worn boots and the muscular throat showing through an open shirt collar put a delicious little shiver of excitement into her. King, having agreed to stay to luncheon, lunch-eon, was in the bathroom off Golden's room, shaving. Gloria had danced away, singing, to her abandoned friends, who were returning to the house. "It's the Mark King, my dears!" she told them triumphantly, not unconscious of the depressing result re-sult of her disclosures upon a couple of boys of the college age who adored openly and with frequent lapses from glorious hope to bleak despair. They were all of Gloria's "set" with one noteworthy exception. Him she called "Mr. Gratton" while the others were Archie and Teddy and Georgia and Evelyn and Connie. It was to this "Mr. Gratton" that she turned, having made a piquant face at the dejected de-jected college youths. "You will like him Immensely, I know," she said. "Mr. Gratton" smiled urbanely. For his own part he might have been called every Inch a concrete expression of suavity. He was a shrewd-eyed man of thirty-five w-ith ambitions, a chalky complexion, and a very weak mouth with full red lips. "Miss Gloria," he whispered as he managed to have her all to himself a moment, "you'll make me Jealous." She was used to him saying stupid things. Yet she laughed and seemed pleased. Gratton egotistically supposed sup-posed her thought was of him; King would have been amazed to know that she was already watching the house for his coming. That afternoon King shook hands with Archie, Teddy, Gratton, and the rest, made his formal bows to Gloria's girl friends, and felt relief when the inept banalities languished and he was free to draw apart. Gratton, with slender finger to his shadowy mustache, mus-tache, bore down upon him. King did not like this suave individual. "I have been tremendously Interested," Inter-ested," Gratton led off ingratiatingly, "in the things I have heard of you. Sir. King. By George, men like you live the real life." The wild fancy came booming upon King to kick him over the veranda railing. "Think so?" he said coolly, wondering wonder-ing despite himself what "things" Gratton Grat-ton had heard of him. He was sorry that he had promised to stay to lunch. His thoughts all of a sudden were restive, flying off to Swen Brodie, to Loony Honeycutt, to what' he must get done without too much delay. Gratton was nobody's fooL save his own, and both marked and resented King's attitude. "What's the chance with Gns Ingle's 'Secret' this year, Mr. King?" he demanded de-manded siikily. King wheeled on him. "What do you know about It?" he said sharply. "And who has been talking talk-ing to you?" Gratton laughed, looked wise and amused, and strolled away. ... "But, my darling daughter," gasped Mrs. Gaynor, "You don't In the least understand un-derstand what you are about I What in the world was Mark King thinking think-ing of?" (TO BE CONTINUED.) |