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Show I Wuwi W T7 B & i..,,u ii.Ji 3y PETER B.KYNE iiXM CHAPTER I When Mary Sutherland left the Santa Fe local train from Prescott to Phoenix that January morning, dawn was just breaking over Arizona. Ari-zona. She had made arrangements to be met at Sughuaro,. but as the train pulled out she saw no friendly automobile headlights gleaming beside be-side the wooden platform and board shanty that was Sughuaro; so she sat down on her trunk to await the arrival of the station wagon from the Wagon Wheel ranch. As the darkness waned she saw that Sughuaro was something more than a flag-station. , There was a tower and water-tank and cattle corrals cor-rals a little east of the passenger and freight platform and just west of it a paved highway intersected the Santa Fe tracks. However, even this evidence of civilization failed to still a mounting sense of panic as time passed and the car from" the Wagon Wheel ranch did not appear. A stabbing chill lay upon the land and she wished she had brought a heavy fur coat. Deceived by a Prescott Pres-cott Chamber of Commerce pamphlet pam-phlet which spoke glowingly of the "air-cooled sunshine" of Yavapai County, she had been beguiled into confusing the widely advertised winter win-ter climate of Arizona with that of Cuba and had descended upon Sughuaro Sug-huaro arrayed in sports wear and a light polo coat. When she had been waiting an hour and had, magnanimously, arrived ar-rived at the conclusion that air-cooled air-cooled sunshine really was worth advertising, ad-vertising, a caravan came down the highway. At the intersection with the railroad jt paused briefly, in deference def-erence to the railroad company's printed exhortation to Stop, Look and Listen, and Mary saw that it consisted of four vehicles. -The first, a pick-up truck, was towing a two-wheel two-wheel trailer containing two horses; the second, a sedan, was towing a trailer house. She was on the point of shouting to these men for aid, when the caravan cara-van crossed the tracks, turned left up the dirt road that paralleled them and pulled in alongside the platform. plat-form. From the pick-up truck an alert young man stepped out, lifted a large hat and said very politely: "I imagine, Miss, that an hour has given you ample time to see all the points of interest in Sughuaro." "Any advanced thinker would hold that a minute would be long I enough," the girl' replied. He nodded. He saw she was displeased, dis-pleased, and experience-had taught him that the world is very apt to hear about it when young and pretty women are displeased. So he waited, wait-ed, while Mary Sutherland appraised ap-praised him for about five seconds and then said: "Are you acquainted in these parts?" He nodded affirmatively. "Do you know where, when and from whom I can engage transportation transpor-tation to the Wagon Wheel ranch?" "If necessary," he replied gravely, grave-ly, "that can very easily and promptly be arranged." "I wrote Mrs. Burdan, of the Wagon Wag-on Wheel ranch, a week ago that I would arrive at six-ten this morning morn-ing and she telegraphed that the station sta-tion wagon would meet me. But i she hasn't sent the station wagon and I must say that omission isn't i calculated to encourage a paying guest to cheer for the Wagon Wheel ranch." "The lack of your cheers would scarcely come under the head of a deprivation, Miss Sutherland. From all I can learn no dude has ever, cheered for the Wagon Wheel ranch and, as a result of its failure to please, combined with other misfortunes, misfor-tunes, it discontinued yesterday to entertain paying guests." "Do you mean to tell me," Mary Sutherland demanded, "I am marooned ma-rooned in a wide place in the road called Sughuaro?" "You are but you can be de-marooned de-marooned if you care to entrust the operation to a total stranger." "Are you the proprietor of another an-other dude ranch in this vicinity and has Mrs. Burdan referred me to you?" "God forbid," he protested piously. pious-ly. "Nor is there any other dude ranch in this vicinity, notwithstanding notwithstand-ing the fact that we have quite a lot of vicinity. I'm just a wandering Boy Scout alert to perform his one good deed for the day." "But you know who I am." "I observe an old Railway Express Ex-press label on your trunk from which it appears the trunk was once expressed by Miss Mary Sutherland, Palm Beach. Florida, to Miss Mary Sutherland, 680 Park Avenue. New York." His cool assurance irritated her faintly. "How do you know that is my trunk? People sometimes borrow bor-row trunks, labels and all." "I know," he answered patiently, 'but your purse is adorned with the Initials M. S. in gold block letters and so are your suitcases and handbag- So I'll take the short end of a large bet you're Mary Sutherland." Tl'e reward for that evidence of his perspicacity was a smile from which all trace of irritation had vanished. van-ished. "You'd win," Mary admitted. admit-ted. "And now that you have so cleverly introduced me to you, I'll prove to you I'm pretty smart myself my-self and introduce you to me." And she climbed up on the running board of his pick-up truck, leaned in and read the name "on the automobile license li-cense fastened in a leather frame to the steering column. "We have with us this bright and snappy morning," she announced, "none other than that sterling citizen and rescuer of ladies in distress, Mr. Hamilton L. Henley, of Congress Junction, Arizona. Ari-zona. 'Rah, for Mr. Henley." He extended a firm, brown sinewy hand. "What do we do next?" the girl queried. "I cook breakfast and you eat it." "For goodness sake where?" "In yonder trailer.. I'm an excellent excel-lent cook and quite sanitary." He waved toward the vehicle. "As they say in Mexico: Be pleased to enter my home. It and all in it is yours." "A cactus cavalier, eh? I've never previously met one, so I accept your invitation with pleasure and gratitude." grati-tude." The driver of the sedan had already al-ready unlocked the door of the trailer trail-er house and started a fire in a little iron trash-burner t stove. "Miss Sutherland, this is Pedro Ortiz," Mr. Henley informed her, as he unfolded a canvas chair and set it for her before the little stove, which was already delivering a pleasing warmth. "Pedro, rearrange re-arrange the cargo in the truck and So she sat down on her trunk to wait. load the lady's baggage in it." He closed the door, washed his hands carefully at the tiny sink and after the manner of a. waitress in a bean-ery, bean-ery, intoned wearily: "Whole orange, or-ange, sliced orange, orange juice or canned pineapple, ham and eggs, bacon and eggs; any style, toast, hot cakes and coffee." Mary chose orange juice, bacon and eggs, country style, toast and coffee. "Coming right up," he assured her and set a coffeepot on his little gasoline stove. Presently he glanoed at his watch. "Eight o'clock. Time for the first news broadcast," he announced, and turned on a radio clamped on a shelf. "To serve a dude in Arizona breakfast without the morning paper pa-per would earn me the severe condemnation con-demnation of the state chamber of commerce." He heated a skillet first thrusting it under her nose in order that she might see it had been scoured thoroughly after the last using cut two thick slices of bacon from a slab which, with a carton car-ton of eggs, were in his grocery locker, lock-er, lighted the gasoline in his oven and set a plate in there to warm. "Eggs straight up or over?" he asked. "Who cares?" Mary replied. "You get them straight up. I can't turn them without busting them. My one culinary weakness. Draw up to the table." He placed her orange juice before her; when she had finished fin-ished drinking it, her bacon, eggs and toast were ready and he poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down with her, explaining that Pedro and he had already eaten breakfast at the Wagon Wheel ranch! "I was in a fair way of forgetting the scurvy treatment accorded me by that defunct hostelry," Mary declared, de-clared, "but now that you mention the Wagon Wheel ranch, what happened?" hap-pened?" He explained that old Pa Burdan, the owner, had always been a futile sort of person. Ostensibly a cowman cow-man he had not, in thirty years, succeeded suc-ceeded in developing into a reasonably reason-ably fair cowman and he was now too old to look after his ranch properly prop-erly and too stubborn to realize it. It appeared that to Pa the fields ahead were always ' greenest, and whenever the price of beef operated to make him some money by accident acci-dent he had been wont to invest it ,in some highly speculative enterprise. enter-prise. His most recent hallucination hallucina-tion (which Ma Burdan had shared) was that if the orthodox Arizona dude ranch with only sufficient cows to supply milk and cream for the dudes and only sufficient acreage for a building site and a modest horse and cow pasture, could make good money, a real cow outfit that catered to the dude trade must be an unbeatable business proposition. "He hooked me with that line," Mary interrupted at this pbint. "His advertisement read: Why go to a synthetic dude ranch? Why not come to the Wagon Wheel with six townships town-ships in which to ride with the roundup round-up and know the delights of a bona fide cattle ranch? Splendid horses and the finest board and lodging. Write Mrs. William Burdan, Congress Con-gress Junction, Arizona. So I wrote," Mary concluded, "and we traded." "The old gentleman drew a long bow about the horses and the food. The horses are all sorry nags, some of them dangerous for dudes to ride, and the food was plain ranch grub dispensed by a round-up cook." "At any rate, Mr. Henley, your Pa Burdan was a realist." "Three years ago, in order to build a swell new ranch-house for the expected dude trade, and furnish fur-nish it. after a Los Angeles interior decorator's idea of an Arizon" ranch-house, he borrowed the limit on the cattle from the State Bank of Arizona and gave that bank also a deed of trust on three sections of splendid land he owns in fee. The six townships his advertisement referred re-ferred to are contiguous to this fee land but they are all leased from the state." He paused to pour her coffee. "Last year a Wagon Wheel horse unloaded a female dude a stout middle-aged spinster and broke her leg and wrenched her back. She sued the Burdans on the ground that they had knowingly, carelessly and negligently mounted her on a disrespectful horse, and secured judgment. Yesterday she attached the Burdan bank account, horses and ranch equipment. Simultaneously Simultane-ously the State Bank of Arizona called Pa Burdan's notes .and on January second payment of his annual an-nual rental to the Land Department of the state of Arizona had fallen due." "You're breaking my heart," Mary murmured, "but go on. So they couldn't send the station wagon wag-on for me because the station wagon had been attached." ''No, the station wagon wasn't attached. at-tached. Fortunately Pa was buying it on the installment plan, so the legal title to it stood in the name of a finance company. You see, all these woes descended upon Ma and Pa yesterday, like a flock of buzzards buz-zards upon a dead calf. Ma had endured much as the wife of the world's champion visionary, but she just couldn't take all this bad news at a gulp; so she packed her cowhide cow-hide trunk and cardboard suitcase, had Pedro load them into the station wagon for her, then climbed in behind be-hind the wheel and shouted: 'Good-by, 'Good-by, Pa. This is one jam you ain't a goin' to dream yourself out of. so I'm leavin' you for good an' all. An' don't try to follow me, because I got a full tank o' gas an' I aim to travel till she's emptier'n your head.' And away she went, out of sight around the bend." "What's going to become of them?" "I don't know. I'm trying to formulate for-mulate a plan to do something for them, but it's a pretty big order for me. I'd love to own the Wagon Wheel ranch. Everything Is lovely about it with the exception of Pa's scrub cattle and old, disillusioned saddle stock. "I take it you are under-capitalized." He nodded, rose and started to clear the table. He piled the soiled dishes in the sink and said: "The dishwashing lies in Pedro's department. depart-ment. Miss Sutherland. Let's get rolling. I have decided that you shall put up at a hotef in Phoenix. With that as your base you can range around and secure accommodations accommo-dations at an orthodox dude ranch. There are quite a few around Phoenix." Phoe-nix." "You said you are a rodeo tramp, Mr. Henley. What does a rodeo I tramp do?" . I "He is a contestant who follows I the circuit of the Rodeo Association of America. I appear at the big shows only, because the purses are bigger. Pedro and I gypsy from ' El Paso, Texas, to Ca!gary, Alberta, Al-berta, from Salinas. California, Cheyenne. Wyoming." (TO BE CONTINUED) |