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Show m wm WOMANJH illlllllllll JiH PETER B.KYNE ,Ki 1!' THE STORY THUS FAR: Mary Sutherland Suth-erland Is tared to Arizona by the advertisements ad-vertisements of the Wagon Wheel dude ranch, operated by Ma and Pa Burdan. She Is met at the station by Len Henley, who tells her the ranch Is out of business and who takes her to Phoenix. Here he rides the bronc, Mad Hatter, in a rodeo and wins three thousand for Mary from his dad, who bad bet against Len. Ham -has bought the Burdan notes from the bank and feels that Wagon Wheel Is now his, bat Mary has bought an equity in it. She re-hires Ma and Pa Burdan and takes up on the ranch, fighting the Wade gang, who after some losses, sell their land to Ham and are released from prison on promise of leaving the country. into his jail, they clamored to git it over with, figurin' if they pleaded guilty an' saved the county the cost of a trial maybe the judge would go easy on 'em. So that mornin' they had their preliminary examination in the police court, an' was remanded remand-ed for trial in the Superior Court "It was Saturday an' the Superior Court was closed, the court bein' in session over at the Apache Club try-in' try-in' a case in equity, to-wit: If a man picks up a full house, consistin' of three dirty deuces an' a pair o' fours; if the man on his left raises before the draw an' another man meets him an' back raises an' everybody ev-erybody else drops out except the dealer, which is the judge; an' if the man on his left stands pat an' the man that stays calls for one card; an' the dealer meets the back raise before the draw an' raises a dollar an' the man that stands pat meets him an' raises an' the man that draws one card raises him, what's the answer? Is the feller .that's standin' pat bluffln', has he got a flush, a straight or a full house? And did the feller that drew one card' fill in an inside straight or a bob-tailed flush or has he a full house or four of a kind or is he bluffin'? The judge decides to find out, so he throws away his fours an' draws another deuce! So he meets the bets already made an' raises five dollars for only a fool will ignore four of a kind, even if they are deuces. His Honor is in twenty-two dollars when he's called an' loses the pot to four treys!" "Murder most foul," his son murmured. mur-mured. "Well, Miss Sutherland, when are you leavin' us for New York?" "Some time this winter. I'll run back to see some shows. But I'll be back for Christmas here. Can't stay away too long or I'll get in Dutch with the Spirit of the Hassy-ampa. Hassy-ampa. And why do you address me as Miss Sutherland? You used to call me Dude." "Because you ain't a dude no more an' me an' Len knows it. We was watchin' you 'steal some cat' tie back one mornin' a week ago an' so we seen you baptized in the new faith." Mary flushed with pride. "I wasn't quite certain I had become an Ari-zonan Ari-zonan until my mother came out in May to see to it that I got rid of the Wagon Wheel and returned home to take, as she expressed it, my rightful position in the world. I didn't argue with her because one should never argue with a woman wom-an ": . . . . . "Hear! Hear!" Len Henley murmured. mur-mured. "I'll remember that. Go on." "I merely bought a motion picture projector and ran about three hundred hun-dred feet of film I had taken of you and me, Don Leonardo, in the parade pa-rade to the rodeo grounds last January, Janu-ary, and your ride on Mad Hatter. You may recall that I was a little bit crazy about you that day, so when Mad Hatter had kicked you within an inch of your life I dropped down from my box into the arena, picked you up and wept over you and kissed you. Finally I rode off with you in the ambulance and the camera man I had engaged to make a pictorial record of your last ride just kept on grinding. "- Ham Henley commenced a soft howling, an imitation of a brokenhearted broken-hearted dog. "Mother warned me there had never been any bronco busters in the Sutherland family, that all the women in her clan and all those in my father's had always managed to marry gentlemen, arid if I married mar-ried a bronco buster she'd disown me and disinherit me. So in case I should be disowned and disinherit ed, I had to have a place to hide my shame, and I decided to keep the Wagon Wheel." "If I'd been present when she said that," Ham Henley declared, "I'd have told her about the Henley family." fam-ily." He lifted the tall silver goblet and studied it. "I got a dozen silver goblets like this one," he said, "with the same crest. Maybe if we traced your proud line back to Jamestown, Virginia, around the year 1615 we'd run into kin-folk. The first Henley in America brought them goblets an' a solid silver service. It's been hocked a few times but we always managed to git it out agin an' keep it in the family." "I daresay," said Mary, "your ancestor was seeking a place where he couldn't be ordered around." "You're right. The King o' England Eng-land an' him had a fallin' out, so he left two jumps ahead o' the sheriff." "Spoke out of his turn, didn't he, Don Hamilton?" "He did. In fact, that's a habit us Henleys has to the present day. I spoke out o' my turn here a few months back " "You don't have to admit error," Mary reminded him, "in order to be forgiven. And nine times out of ten you would have been speaking words of wisdom out of your turn. I happened to be the odd number." "Well, anyhow, if I'd been present when your mother spoke her piece me an' her would most certainly have tangled. I'd ha' told her something some-thing about the Henleys, but since she ain't here to receive my blast I'll tell you. We got a record for good citizenship that sort o' nullifies our social short-comin's. Henleys has shed their blood in every war this country has fought; none of us has ever been in jail for dishonesty or immorality, we ain't spawned no half-wits nor fancy women an' we've put food in the mouths o' the hungry, sheltered the homeless an' I wiped away the tears o' the unhappy. un-happy. . We're rough an' tough an' proud of it more particular since we're back where we started with a gentleman." His eyes brimmed and he put his hand on Len's shoulder. "My son," he said with profound tenderness, "the woman don't live that can turn up her nose at you." Don Leonardo and Mary were sitting sit-ting in the semi-darkness of the colonnade, watching the bats flying around, and Don Leonardo had his guitar which Margaret had brought out to him. From time to time he picked out an air on it . . . Down at the other end of the colonnade his father and Margaret sat, discussing matters that concerned themselves only. Suddenly Don Leonardo commenced com-menced picking out a plaintive melody mel-ody in a minor key, practiced It five minutes and sang: "I loved my love by the Hassyampa, I loved my love and she loved me. When I lost my love by the Hassyampa Hassy-ampa I thought the Spirit had swindled me! Oh! Oh! Oh! The naughty little scamp Swindled me down by the Hassy-amp' Hassy-amp' But I wonder if he wonders now how I feel As I sit beside her at the Wagon Wheel. "Oh, night of love, oh, wondroui night Kiss me, darling, and hold me ti " After about two minutes of silence Ham Henley explained it to Margaret. Mar-garet. "The dude short-circuited him," he said. THE END CHAPTER XIX Presently she heard the complaint of tired, hungry, thirsty cattle up on the mesa. The drive was home! In about ten minutes a group of horsemen rode down off the mesa into the little valley where the headquarters head-quarters stood and down past the dude house to the horse corral all but Len Henley who dismounted and gave his reins to Lundy, while he strode stiffly over to the young mis tress of the Wagon Wheel, waiting in the colonnade to receive him. His face carried a patina of dust caked with sweat and little runnels had been eroded through it by subsequent sub-sequent perspiration; his clothing was dirty and torn, his leather chaps scratched, his shirt and trousers dark with dust and perspiration. She caught the sour odor of his tired, unwashed body and sweat-soaked clothing as he stepped up, hat in hand and murmured very formally: ( "Good evening, Miss Sutherland." She extended her hand in welcome wel-come and he accepted it eagerly and held ft while his eyes, bloodshot from the glare of the pitiless August sun reflected from the parched earth, devoured her. He swallowed twice and said: "That's the dress you wore that night at the Phoenix Country Club." He had remembered and the knowledge that he had completely disorganized her plan to be the calm and gracious hostess. "You're so lovely," Don Leonardo went on, "and I'm so happy to be out of your dog-house." "You were never in it," she managed man-aged to answer. "I I was cruel to you but I never meant it. I I f clawed you a little ... I sent you a message to make believe I didn't care thought it might help you out thought, too, if I hurt you a little you wouldn't stop thinking of me ... I didn't want to be forgotten and men forget!" Her eyes were going moist and she knew it. With a gallant effort she said aloud and cheerfully. "Do sit down, Don Leonardo and rest your weary bones while I see if I can't rustle you up a drink." She darted into the house and met Margaret Mar-garet Maxwell and Don Hamilton . 1 entering the living room from the " patio. "He's in the colonnade, Mar garet," she gasped and fled to her room. She had herself in hand in five minutes and came bravely out. Don Leonardo, too, had had time to reorganize re-organize himself after the shock of meeting her, and was chatting with his father and Margaret. She stooped beside his chair, picked up a cow-bell and jangled it and instantly, instant-ly, as if responding to the summons sum-mons of .Aladdin's lamp, a lathy, dusky genii appeared with a silver tray on which reposed four mint ju- leps in tall, lovely old frosted silver goblets. Both Henleys stood up to accept their juleps, both bowed to the ladies and both said "How!" But Len Henley added to Mary: "To your beautiful eyes, my dear," and she went out of control again. She thought: "There he stands, dog dirty, natural, easy, unashamed of the garments of labor, grateful that he has labor to perform. He's so wonderful. He's a man!" She contrasted con-trasted him with Joe Blanding, and smiled a little and Don Leonardo thought the smile was for him and his somber glance brightened. . "You seem to have done things to the Wagon Wheel, Mary," he ob served. "This is certainly a dude ranch now. Pedro showed me those two wonderful artesian wells you drilled ... I always had an idea one might get an artesian well. "I have so much water," Mary managed to answer, "that I can afford af-ford to waste it running it in open ditches, which saves me a great deal of money I had planned to put into concrete pipe for an underground under-ground irrigation system." "You'll lose quite a lot of water this year from saturation but pres- ently the ditch will silt up and seal the pores of the earth, as it were, and next year you'll only lose through evaporation." Don Leonardo turned to his father. "What, if anything, has happened to the Wade boys? Did you mix that bitter brew for them?" "No, by cracky, son, I didn't have to. The knowledge they'd been caught cold with the goods by their own father an' three reliable witnesses; wit-nesses; an' the realization they was all out o' luck with me on their trail; that I had enough political pull to get the attorney-general o' the state to app'int as special prosecutor prosecu-tor the high-powered criminal law- yer I'd hire instead o' dependin' on a cow-country prosecutin' attorney, sent the boys into a huddle, with the result that when 1 swore out warrants war-rants chargin' 'em with grand theft the mornin' after Hank got them |