OCR Text |
Show "He'd like to win from you because be-cause he likes to humble an enemy, but he wouldn't accept your money if he won," Len defended. "He'd return your check just to have the laugh on you." "Do you think I'll lose? You told me you were going to make Mad Hatter beg for mercy." ' "I'm going to try to prove to my father what a poor judge of women and horseflesh he is. I am not merely mere-ly content to win from him. I want to win by a dozen lengths." With that large confidence women have in the men of their fancy she said, "You'll do it." "I have sufficient incentive to ride a cyclone, Mary. I'm terribly sorry my father hurt your feelings." "You won't have to grieve over it very long. One of my weaknesses is inability to live with a grouch and I wouldn't be surprised if you don't possess sufficient influence to induce me to abandon my grouch against your father within a week." Her hand slipped over his. "I couldn't bear to hurt you, Len. We've known each other for eons and eons ever since you were a tadpole and I was a fish in the paleozoic slime. And we never quarreled, did we?" The dominating sweetness of her choked him; she had about her, when she chose to exert it, an elfin quality. She had character enough to have a temper, and courage cour-age enough to go to the attack. Finally Fi-nally he managed to say: "Would you care to ride with me, on Fabli-to, Fabli-to, in the street parade ts the rodeo erounds tomorrow? Sort of a Wild T r. r - -v--- t why subject the bank to that annoyance annoy-ance and expense? The bank will accept, of course, and sign a receipt re-ceipt and agreement freeing the Burdans from a deficiency judgment." judg-ment." ".Then you will pay off the loan on the home ranch, Len?" "Not if I can help it. I'll need my capital for another purpose, so I'll have to high-pressure the bank into carrying me for it. I'll remind them that they have about three thousand head of cattle eating my grass and I wish them removed immediately, im-mediately, in order that I may stock ! my range with cattle of quality. They will investigate and discover that the Burdans have assigned their state lease to me and that I have paid the defaulted rental before the lease could legally be canceled. That news will throw a chill into them." "Why?" j "Because they'll have to spend a couple of thousand dollars to round up the cattle. They'll have to hire it done :and the loan is sour enough without adding more vinegar. Then they'll have to sell the cattle to a packing plant because nobody will wish to buy them for breeding stock; the local buyers will know the bank has a bear by the tail and the result re-sult will be murder most foul." "But would your action be quite ethical, Len?" "Absolutely. In the world of business busi-ness one must protect himself in the clinches and breakaways and the bank should have protected itself by securing an option, at a reasonable reason-able price, on the Burdan state land ( leases, as additional security. By exercising the option when foreclosure foreclo-sure on the cattle could no longer be delayed they would have protected protect-ed themselves from the rabbit punch I plan to give them. And the lease would have been readily salable after aft-er the option had served its purpose. pur-pose. Ham Henley, viewing the parade from the front window of his office on the second floor of the Henley building, with Mrs. Maxwell as his guest, saw Mary ride by with his son. Both Len's mounts were high-school high-school horses and he had taught Mary the trick of putting her mount through his act. They rode at the head of the parade now some fifty feet in advance of it and an equal distance behind a band that played "Alexander's Rag Time Band." And the horses were cake-walking. "I reckon there's some peacock blood in my son," Ham Henley said. "He certainly loves to show off. The . cheers o' the mob mean more to him than the cheers of his pappy." "Has he ever heard any of pap-py's pap-py's cheers?" Margaret asked innocently, inno-cently, and he did not answer. His sultry glance was on Mary Sutherland. Suther-land. "Isn't that girl lovely, Ham?" his guest went on. "She can ride, too." "I got a plan in mind to bust that deal up, in case it's incubatin', Margaret. I can acquire the Wagon Wheel ranch for a song an' sing the THE STORY THUS FAR: Mary Sutherland, Suth-erland, an eastern girl, Is hired to Arl-lona Arl-lona by the advertisements of the Wagon Wheel dude ranch, operated by Ma and Pa Burdan. She Is met at the station by Len Henley, rodeo rider, who tells her that the Wagon Wheel has gone out of business. Len takes her to Phoenix where she meets Len's Aunt Margaret Maxwell. Hearing that the Wagon Wheel Is broke, Ham Henley, Len's dad, purchases pur-chases the Burdan notes from the bank. While at Phoenix Len enters the rodeo, drawing a bronc known as Mad Hatter, toughest horse In the West. Ham Henley bets his son three to one that he won't be able to stay on the horse. At a dance V Mary ands than Len loves her. i . . CHAPTER VI When they returned to the table Mary Sutherland said: "Don Leonardo, Leo-nardo, I tried to tell your father he ought to try to hedge on that bet he made with you. I assured him you were certainly going to ride that horse to a finish and he wouldn't believe me." "The Henleys have to be shown, Mary." "Well, between us, Don Leonardo, we'll show him. He has bet me three thousand dollars to a thousand you will not make time whatever that means." "It means I have to stay with Mad Hatter long enough to scratch him with my taped spurs twice in the shoulders and twice in the Banks; that I must ride with one hand free and held high, with the other hand holding a rope halter-shank. halter-shank. If I 'claw leather' that is, grasp the pommel to keep from being be-ing thrown or if I lose a stirrup, I will be disqualified. If and when I complete my contract the presiding Judge will fire a pistol and after that, if Mad Hatter throws me, it doesn't count" "Well, our bet takes in more territory," ter-ritory," his father explained. "She bets that you will not only make time but you'll ride him until he quits and you leave him without Ihe help of a pick-up man." The girl drew from her purse a tiny carved ivory elephant. "Elephants "Ele-phants are good luck, Don Leonardo. I had this one with me this morning morn-ing and what happened? Why, I met you. So have this in your pocket When you ride tomorrow. By the way, Mr. Henley, Senior, how much y shaking up will your innards stand?" "I don't know." 1 "I'm going to find out." He knew then that she would marry mar-ry his son if she could marry him for the sake of a new thrill; marry him because she had built him up Into a romantic figure and stick until un-til she discovered he wasn't. She raised her glass and bent a little toward him across the table. "To victory," she toasted. 'To victory vic-tory after a fight worth while!" Ham Henley dropped the ladies off at their hotel and said to his son: v "How about spendin' the night at my house?" "Not tonight, sir, thank you," Len replied coldly, and his father did not song myself. Len likes that spread. He's wintered with the Burdans the past five years an' knows it thoroughly. thor-oughly. I'm not goin' to ask him again to join up with me, but if he'll agree not to marry that dude woman wom-an I'll buy the Wagon Wheel ranch for him. I'll clean out all of the low quality cattle on it now and stock it with the best I'll give him a good caballado an' sufficient operatin' capital an' my blessin'. He'll be on his own then somethin' he always wanted to be, an' we can get together to-gether socially, anyhow. After all I can still hire good men to shoulder shoul-der my worries." Margaret Maxwell burst out at him. "For heaven's sake, Ham, will you ever learn to mind your own business insofar as your son is concerned? con-cerned? He'll make no such trade with you and you shouldn't have to be told that. You can't give him anything because you alienated him in the beginning by threatening not to give him anything unless he took program from you. You used the quirt on a thoroughbred, Ham. Don't do it again. If you want to set him up in business, get the Wagon Wheel in the shape you know he'd like to have it and then say: 'It's yours, son, if you'll take it because your old man loves you, and the acceptance accept-ance doesn't even entail an obligation obliga-tion on your part to love your old man." "Margaret," he replied petulantly, petulant-ly, "he'd ought to know he's all I got an' I love him. He ain't dumb." "Men don't get soft with each other, so you never have given him any visual evidence of paternal affection. af-fection. You're so afraid of being considered soft you lean backward to be hard. Ham, you know I'm a good friend of yours and don't like to scold you, because I feel sorry for you, but really, you're very difficult at times." "If that dude woman wasn't beautiful; beau-tiful; if she wasn't the kind to have men chasin' her like cows with calves chase a dog in a field, I wouldn't mind. But her kind sp'iles early. They get the notion men was made to sag in the knees on meetin' 'em, an' the sucker had better sag or roll his hoop out o' their presence. pres-ence. How can her kind make good as wives for poor men when the papers is full o' news about them flym' out to Reno to get shet ' rich men?" (TO BE CONTINUED) press the issue. Mrs. Maxwell, glad to escape to the peace and privacy Df her suite, bade the young folks good night and Len led Mary into a parlor off the lobby. "What happened?" hap-pened?" he asked. "You and Hamilton Ham-ilton were throwing off sparks." "I speak Spanish better than you or your father do also French and Italian. I've spent much of my life abroad and was educated in Switzer-i' Switzer-i' land. The Latin languages were a bobby of mine." "The old man is like that," he said sadly. "He didn't know it was Impolite to address me in Spanish when he knew Margaret didn't understand un-derstand that language and believed that you, being an Easterner, didn't either. He had something to say and he said it. He's a direct ac-tionist." ac-tionist." "A rugged individualist, perhaps. Well, he doesn't like me and I don't like him, and I hope I do not meet him again." "What possessed you to make that bet?" "A number of reasons. I wanted to shock him, to let him know I was as dead game a sport as he dead gamer, in fact." "You shouldn't have bet him I'd ride Mad Hatter until the brute was exhausted and then leave him without with-out the aid ef the pick-up men." "He shouldn't have accepted the bet, my dear, because in so doing he proved he was willing to take advantage of my ignorance and desirous de-sirous of feeding his silly and incredible in-credible dislike of me. And I want-j want-j ed to let him know I considered you Infallible." "Who started that bet talk?" "I did. I told him I couldn't understand un-derstand why a father would try to win a thousand dollars from a son who couldn't afford the loss and he replied that he felt it his fatherly duty to deflate you financially, to teach you horse sense. I then suggested sug-gested that if he were possessed of more of that same valuable commodity com-modity one wouldn't be so acutely aware of the chill that enveloped him and his son whenever they met." "He blew up, of course?" "No, he smiled. But he smouldered smoul-dered inside and threw up a smoke screen by asking me if I'd like some three to one on his son. I said I would and staked a rider to the bet he made with you." "Elephants are good luck, Don Leonardo." West spectacle. All the dudes in this area will participate." "I'd love to." "You'll have to have a costume, but you can buy that tomorrow morning early." "If you'll go shopping with me." "I'll have to. And I should not like to see you wear anything gaudy. I'd like to see you arrayed as a working cow-woman. Blue or gray flannel shirt, Vhipcord slacks with reinforced seat such as I wear, cowboy cow-boy boots, flat-crowned black hat with medium brim, a bright Windsor tie, chaps and spurs, with a wind-breaker wind-breaker if needed. All garments you can use when you visit me at the Wagon Wheel." "That will be fun." He had heard her use that phrase before and he wondered if it was her habit to embrace only that portion of life that promised fun and discard the remainder. "Tell me of your plan for acquiring that ranch on some cash and more credit." "The Burdans are going to lose everything and anything they can salvage from the wreck will be welcome. wel-come. So I'm going to buy their state land lease and their equity in the home ranch for say twenty-five twenty-five hundred dollars and stipulate that the money must be -paid to Ma so she will be protected against Pa's weakness for investment in j speculative enterprises floated by people he is not acquainted with. I shall then bring them back to the Wagon Wheel, because they love it, and hire Pa as choreman and Ma as my cook and housekeeper, at a very nominal salary, because Pa is a Spanish War veteran and was wounded at Santiago, so he draws a pension of sixty dollars a month. The knowledge that they have a home I'll give them one of the dude cottages food and an ample income will break down sales resistance." "It's liable to come from Ma," Mary suggested. "She is the strong man of that team." "She thinks she is. Well, I'll then get them to give the bank a bill-of-sale for all the cattle on the ranch. They can't save themselves from foreclosure and a deficiency judgment, and the bank will grab the unmortgaged cattle anyhow to meet the deficiency judgment: so |