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Show , it DUE WOMAN Jft lllllill . 5y PETER B. KYNE -'flls8i months on the Wagon Wheel? she thought. She had a feeling that solitude soli-tude might be good for her in her present mood. The Burdans, she knew, planned to return to the ranch in a day or two to gather up a few personal belongings and they had no plans for the future. It might be possible to engage them to live at the Wagon Wheel' with her. Ma could cook and keep house for her and Pa could furnish protection. She would buy a cheap horse and ride around the country, look it over and wonder how she'd like to live in it. Margaret Maxwell might like to make her a visit there. She telephoned, the Burdans and outlined her proposition. Both, regarding re-garding her as the new and, presumably, pre-sumably, active owner of the ranch, had been hugging the hope she would engage them, for they found it heart-breaking to separate themselves them-selves from a spot grown immeasurably immeas-urably dear to them. "Cook?" Ma shrilled. "Miss Sutherland, Suth-erland, I don't lay down my skillet to nobody. I'm one o' these here old-time home-cookin' bodies an' I'm here to tell you the big mistake we made in our dude business was me not doin' the cookin'. But we got the THE STORY THUS FAR: Mary Snth- crland, an Eastern girl, Is lured to Arizona Ari-zona by the advertisements of the Wagon Wheel dude ranch operated by Ma and Fa Burdan. She Is met at the station by Len Henley, rodeo rider, who tells her that the Wagon Wheel has gone out of business. While at Phoenix Len enters the rodeo, drawing a bronc known as Mad Hatter. Mary learns that Len loves ber and that his father disapproves the match. She wagers one thousand to three thousand that Len will ride Mad Batter. He succeeds, but is injured. Mary buys the Burdan equity In Wagon Wheel, outbidding Ham Henley. Ham, feeling the ranch U his, offers It to his son. CHAPTER X A long silence. Then, ''And, of course, Mary, there is your family to consider." "I have a feeling the champion cowboy of the world would not strike their fancy as hard as he struck mine." She came back to the bedside, bed-side, took his hand and held it. "I suppose you and your father have seen enough exhibits A in blue overalls, over-alls, cowboy boots and big hats to j support his thesis?" He nodded lugubriously. "Len, do you really and truly love me?" "So much I think I shall never get over wanting you. What I feel lor you is something I have never felt for any woman and I have had my little romances and dreamed a few silly dreams that faded long before I got back to the inspiration ior them. But you were different. I have never before met a girl like you! You're the first specimen of your world that I have ever known it's the grand passion, I suppose. It Is said to come once to every man." He looked up at her and she saw misery in his eyes. "Your going will leave a scar," he whispered. "You think I ought to go, Don Leonardo? " "It would be safer to retreat. Mine . Is a small world, yours a large one . . . you have many opportunities to forget . . . love isn't enough for a happy life, my dear one. You would have to have congenial surroundings sur-roundings and congenial friends I I wouldn't be enough for you." "I'll not put you up against such a grim decision," she promised. t' Two minutes later his father walked into the room. "Passed your dude girl friend down in the lower hall," he announced. "She didn't see me. She was cryin'. You two been puttin' on the gloves, son?" "We will not be seeing each other again, sir." "Maybe that's just as well, Len. Mind tellin' the old man what the' never beheld a scene of greater solitude soli-tude and loneliness. "Ain't it beautiful?" Ma asked huskily. The Wagon Wheel, Mary thought, was beautiful in the sense that a snarling tiger is beautiful; it had a quality she found sinister under the harsh noon light; all around her was the armed desert growth, with little open spaces between. She didn't see anything a cow should And edible, yet, to her amazement, the cattle they passed looked sleek. "You'll love it," Ma assured her. "It may take time but you'll love it. At first maybe it'll frighten you but pretty soon it'll begin to get under your skin. It's just that Arizona's Ari-zona's different an' sort o' shocks an easterner when he meets her in a state o' nature, like a gal caught in the bathtub." Ma let in the clutch. "Come to think of it, I got a settin' hen due to hatch today or tomorrow. Glory be, I'll be home in time." She rolled down the grade, sounding sound-ing the siren, pulled into the ranch yard and shrieked. "Whoop-e-e-e!" She climbed out and hurried into the house of which she was still, at heart, the mistress. "You got five bedrooms in this ranch-house to choose from, Miss Mary," she an-, nounced, "an' don't go into the patio until I scout it first. There was a rattlesnake hummin' his love song there the mornin' I left. We used to have a she cat here that kept the place free o' rattlers she'd jump around 'em an' tease 'em to strike at her an' miss, an' when they got tired an' slowed up she'd sneak on 'em from the rear an' ketch 'em by the back o' the' neck an' then her an' her kittens et the brute. But she got old an' slowed up herself an' one day she didn't jump fast enough an' the snake got her. Now we'll be more or less snake-ridden around headquarters until Pa can break in a new she. She's is the best because be-cause a she's always out to protect her young an' rustle 'em up some grub." Mary left her setting about the preparation of luncheon in a nice large kitchen, modern in every respect. re-spect. Beyond the kitchen was a butler's pantry that accommodated a small bar. The dining room was beyond that and opened on a large living room that stretched across the front of the building. The living room, in turn, gave to a gun and trophy room. The building was in the form of a U, with the open end facing southeast, and five bedrooms, bed-rooms, with baths formed the other side of it with French windows opening on a large patio. A halfhearted half-hearted effort had been made once iVW "Len, do you really and truly love me?" notion dudes on a real cow outfit wanted life the way the cowboys lived it so we had 'em eat with the help an' a round-up cook prepared the grub and served it. You give us seventy-five a month an' one o' them dude cottages to, live in an' I'll cook and Pa'll putter." "Let's go out tomorrow," Mary suggested. "Have you roon for my two trunks, a suit-case and a bag in your station wagon?" "Certainly have," Ma replied happily, hap-pily, "but we got to lay in some grub before we start. The commissary com-missary was low whenwe left." When the Burdan station wagon crossed the bridge over the Hassy-ampa Hassy-ampa River, Mary cast a swift glance down on the sand-bar where she had knelt to learn the wishes of the Spirit. That had been a delightful de-lightful little fiction then, but today to-day she wasn't so certain, for she was sensible of more than a visitor's visi-tor's interest in Arizona! They stopped at Congress Junction, which she knew would be her postoffice address, and Ma went in for the mail; then they rolled on west to Sughuaro, following a narrow gravelly grav-elly road through the desert. They crossed a dry wash at the bottom of a canyon and climbed out of the wash to a mesa. A coyote loped across the road in front of them and the red-crested Gambrel's quail appeared In small flocks in the open. And here, for the first time, Mary saw cattle wearing the Wagon Wheel brand, which wasn't really a wagon wheel, but a circle equally divided into eight parts. They came to a crest presently and Ma stopped and pointed: "There she is. Miss Sutherland. There's your Wagon Wheel headquarters." head-quarters." Ma threw the distant scene a kiss. "Honey," she said with deep feeling, "I certainly never expected to get back to you again." In a valley a few hundred feet below them a cluster of buildings stood, surrounded by trees. Stretching Stretch-ing southwest from these buildings a white boulder-strewn wash about a hundred yards wide wound away out of sight. This wash was the Santa Maria River, although in summer sum-mer it shrank to a mere trickle and a few pools among the boulders. Far "beyond, a flat-topped mountain probably prob-ably six or seven thousand feet high towered against the cerulean sky. West and north low hills stretched away into infinity; they were gray close at hand and a deepening blue I as they receded. A silence lay upon i the land and Mary thought she had rucKus was aDoutr "There was no ruckus. We're both civilized. It was a mistake we both recognized it and faced it. I'd been thinking about what you said and decided you were right, so when she came in here about five minutes ago I let her have it. There was no sparring. I had to get it off my chest." "That took guts," his father murmured. mur-mured. "At your age I lacked 'em." "Don't bother buying the Wagon Wheel for me, father," his son went on wearily. "I had a day dream about it once and the dream faded I wouldn't be too happy there now, so forget it." He reached out a hand groping for his father's. , "When I get well you might give me a job, pappy. I know you better bet-ter than I used to . . ." "All right, we'll forget the Wagon Wheel," his father said, happy because be-cause there existed now no reason why they should ever mention it again. Apparently she hadn't told him and she wouldn't now. . . . In the privacy of her room Mary distilled her cargo of woe in tears which did not last long, for hers was a resilient nature and she had a normal, healthy contempt for women who wept unless their honest emotions have been sacrificed. And - there was a question before her now she had to find an answer to it. If she returned to New York it would be to a home deserted save for their butler and his wife, the cook and there would be Joe Blan-ding, Blan-ding, ready to pounce on her. She had fled to Arizona to escape Joe Blanding and his constant pleading with her to marry him. She despised de-spised Joe Blanding, although her mother had done all in her power to forward a marriage between them. He was the typical rich man's son idle, selfish, prodigal where his own comfort was concerned, but parsimonious parsi-monious otherwise; a play-boy who, not knowing how to live, drank to conceal his boredom. How she shrank from seeing Joe Blanding again and of course she wouldn't be back in town a week before he would know it and come whining around! The man was impervious to rebuffs; a dozen times she had refused to marry him, but still he persisted, apparently in the belief that he would, eventually, wear down her resistance. And he was such a whimpering weakling about it. He had no compunction about descending to the unutterable vulgarity vul-garity of tears in his efforts to im- press her with the depth of his love. He seemed to think the profundity of his passion was a rare and holy thing with which no sane woman uld fail to be impressed. H-t spend the next three to plant a garden here, but evidently evi-dently Pa had gotten tired or disgusted. dis-gusted. There was a fountain in the center, surmounted by a very good bronze of a bronco buster on a bucking horse and a scarlet flycatcher fly-catcher sat on the buster's outflung arm. Mary liked the furniture. It was all unstained oak and custom-made and the mattresses were excellent, the bedding of the best. The floors were laid with Navajo rugs and the light fixtures were of hammered bronze. She saw the Wagon Wheel had its own little independent lighting light-ing plant. There was a huge fireplace fire-place in the living room and a smaller small-er one in the gun room and each bedroom; lithographs of paintings by Frederick Remington and Charles Russell adorned the walls; on each side of the living room fireplace there were built-in bookcases containing con-taining reprint editions of western novels. A cheap piano that could be played manually or mechanically mechanical-ly gave an air of elegance and there was a combination radio and phonograph. To Mary's amazement the house furnishings proclaimed comfort and good taste. Every room had doors that could be opened on both sides and Mary was to learn that this was to provide a cooling draft during the hot summer. This main ranch-house was o adobe brick with a wide colonnade around the outside of it; the roof was of red tile, and Virginia creeper and Cape jasmine ran up the pillars pil-lars of the colonnade and crept over the roof of it The floor of this colonnade was of large square red tiles and there were benches set at intervals. Surrounding the main house, but at some little distance from it, were four small guest cottages, cot-tages, also of adobe, and furnished for housekeeping in the event a dude preferred his own cooking and greater privacy. A neglected lawn of Dutch clover surrounded all the living quarters; west of them was the bunkhouse, help's mess hall and kitchen, the blacksmith shop, garage, ga-rage, a large barn and a corral in which about twenty nondescript horses, some mules and two Guern-sey Guern-sey cows stood listlessly. Large pecan trees gave a promise of shade in the summer and there was a grove of grapefruit trees, ! some avocados and an open patch of ground that evidently would be a vegetable garden in the spring. There was a wooden tower with a small tank on it, over a well from which the vwater was lifted by a small windmill. A friendly shepherd shep-herd dog and two cats followed the new owner on her tour of inspection of the grounds. (TO BE CONTINUED) |