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Show ' THE PROGRESSIVE OPINION lllllll nV PETER B. KYNE .tic. .--l- !'! CHAPTER I When Mary Sutherland left the Santa Fe local train from Prescott to Phoenix that January morning, dawn was just breaking over Ari-ton- She had made arrangements to be met at Sughuaro, but as the train pulled out she saw no friendly lutomobfle headlights gleaming be-tide 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 There was a tower and water-tan- k and cattle 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 Pres-cott Chamber of Commerce pam-phlet which spoke glowingly of the "air-coole- d sunshine" of Yavapai County, she had been beguiled into confusing the widely advertised win-ter climate of Arizona with that of Cuba and had descended upon Sug-huaro arrayed in sports wear and a light polo coat. When she had been waiting an hour and had, magnanimously, ar-rived at the conclusion that d sunshine really was worth ad- - his perspicacity was a smile from which all trace of irritation had van-ished. "You'd win," Mary admit-ted. "And now that you have so cleverly introduced me to you, I'll prove to you I'm pretty smart my-self and introduce you to me." And she climbed up on the running board of his pick-u- p truck, leaned in and read the name on the automobile 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, 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 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 grati-tude." The driver of the sedan had al-ready unlocked the door of the trail-er house and started a fire in a little Iron trash-burn- 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, re-arrange the cargo in the truck and sort of person. Ostensibly a cow-man he had not, in thirty years, suc-ceeded in developing into a reason-ably fair cowman and he was now too old to look after his ranch 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 acci-dent he had been wont to invest it in some highly speculative enter-prise. His most recent 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 point. "His advertisement read: Why go to a synthetic dude ranch? Why not come to the Wagon Wheel with six town-ships in which to ride with the round-up and know the delights of a bona fide cattle ranch? Splendid horses and the finest board and lodging. Write Mrs. William Burdan, 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-u- p cook." "At any rate, Mr. Henley, your Pa Burdan was a realist." "Three years ago, in order to build a swell new ranch-hous- e for the expected dude trade, and fur-nish it after a Los Angeles interior decorator's idea of an Arizonn ranch-hous- he borrowed the limit on the cattle from the State Bank oi 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 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-age- d 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. Simultane-ously the State Bank of Arizona called Pa Burdan's notes and on January second payment of his 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 wag-on for me because the station wagon had been attached." "No.the station wagon wasn't at-tached. Fortunately Pa was buying it on the installment plan, so the U ft RO j vertising, a caravan came down the highway. At the intersection with the railroad it paused briefly, In 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-u- p truck, was towing a two-whe-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 cara-van crossed the tracks, turned left up the dirt road that paralleled them and pulled in alongside the plat-form. From the pick-u- p 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 enough," the girl replied. He nodded. He saw she was 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 wait-ed, while Mary Sutherland 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 transpor-tation to the Wagon Wheel ranch?" "If necessary," he replied grave-ly, "that can very easily and promptly be arranged." "I wrote Mrs. Burdan, of the Wag-on Wheel ranch, a week ago that I would arrive at six-te- n this morn-ing and she telegraphed that the sta-tion wagon would meet me.- - But she hasn't sent the station wagon and I must say that omission isn't 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 misfor-tunes, it discontinued yesterday to entertain paying guests." "Do you mean to tell me," Mary Sutherland demanded, "I am ma-rooned in a wide place in the road called Sughuaro?" "You are but you can be if you care to entrust the operation to a total stranger. "Are you the proprietor of an-other dude ranch in this vicinity and has Mrs. Burdan referred me to y"God forbid," he protested pious-ly "Nor is there any other dude ranch in this vicinity, 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. Railway Ex-cess I observe an old label on your trunk-fr- om it appears the trunk was once Txoressed Miss Mary Sutherland. Beach' Florida, to Miss Mary Sutherland, 680 Park Avenue, New YHis' cool assurance irritated her faintly "How do you know that is People sometimes bor-row my trunk? trunks, labels and all. "I know " he answered patiently, is adorned with the "hut vour purse initials M. S. in gold block letter. o re vour su teases and hand- - Dfg 5 So HI take the short end of a bet you're Mary Sutherland." xte reward for that evidence of 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-er- Intoned wearily: "Whole 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 glanaed 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 pa-per would earn me the severe con-demnation of the state chamber of commerce." He heated a skillet-fi- rst 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 car-ton of eggs, were in his grocery 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 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 de-clared, "but now that you mention the Wagon Wheel ranch, what hap-pened?" He explained that old Pa Burdan, the owner, had always been a futile 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 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 cow-hide trunk and cardboard suitcase, had Pedro load them into the station wagon for her, then climbed in be-hind the wheel and shouted: '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 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 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 depart-ment, Miss Sutherland. Let's get rolling. I have decided that you shall put up at a hotel in Phoenix. With that as your base you can range around and secure accommo-dations at an orthodox dude ranch. There are quite a few around Phoe-nix." "You said you are a rodeo tramp, Mr. Henley. What does a rodeo tramp do?" "He is a contestant who follows 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 Calgary, Al-berta, from Salinas, California, to Cheyenne, Wyoming." (TO EE CONTINUED) r-- 'S) ON THE (HOME J-- Z RUTH WYETji4PEARSg6) CENTER lxy X ENDS AND y ffDE0PJH TACK OYERPOLEVX XUbMATERIfU USE TAPE MEASURE OVER POLE H ICE TO CALCULATE TOP AMD BOTTOM 1 MEAURIJ,lSn LENGTH OF EACH SWAG ma !),( (Mh, ASUNSUIT for sister, giving chance, blossoms out iinto a sunflower, and brother's goes mannish with its chu-ch- u bib (in gay color. The tots will love ;ithem! Pattern 831 contains transfer pattern of ,2 bibs, necessary pattern pieces for suits 'in sizes 1, 2. 3 or 4 (all in one pattern); directions. Due to an unusually large demand and current war conditions, slightly more time is required in filling orders for a few of 'the most popular pattern numbers. Send your order to : Sewing Circle Needlecraft Dept. Box 3217 San Francisco 6, Calif. Enclose 15 cents (plus one cent to cover cost of mailing) for Pattern No Name Address ' ""THERE is a shortage of metal curtain rods, yet for two gen-erations we have not seen such elaborate window treatments. The formal swags, cascades and jabots so ' dear to our grandmothers seem to be exactly right with the Victorian furniture that is gaining in popularity all the time. Each piece of the draped valance shown here is cut sepa-rately. The diagram at the left gives the dimensions of the end jabots. The side swags cross in the middle and a center swag overlaps them. The measurements of this center swag are given here, but these will vary accord-ing to the space the swag is to fill. Each swag is cut bias at the v ends and pleated and tacked over the pole, as shown at the lower left. The method of taking measurements is shown at the1 right. NOTE This is the third of a series ol modern adaptations of period curtain fash-Ion- Formal swag valances mounted on a valance board are illustrated with directions in BOOK 1. The less formal type draped In one piece is shown in BOOK 5. Books are 15 cents each. Order directly from: MRS. 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Let's Face Facts Teamwork Solving Farm Truck Problem, Toughest Bottleneck By BARROW LYONS WNU Staff Correspondent I WASHINGTON, D. C. How would you like to be respon- sible for moving, with too few trucks, more than half of which are over seven years old, and many driven by green drivers, one of the biggest crops the United States has ever pro-duced? That is the job assigned to Robert A. Hicks, chief of the farm vehicle section, ODT di-- I r-- -v I vision of motor I transport. He has I i to organize and I II bring int0 e I X j toest bunch oI I I rugged individu- - I V i ' i alists ever lined . l I up in one group I . ' the farmers and I Vf I truckers of Amer- - L.AL.J lcaThere ls ,ust Barrow Lyons one thing thet makes the job possible the farmers and truckers know that if they don't use their trucks to best advantage, a large part of one of the greatest crops ever harvested won't get moved to mar-ket. Here are some figures that pretty much speak for themselves: In 1941 there were 1,583,000 trucks owned by farmers available for moving crops to market. Today the number is about 25 per cent less about 1,200,000 and hundreds are going off the road every day due to old age and smash-up- There are some 500,000 for-hir- e trucks also available, many of them running on worn-ou- t tires. Of the trucks now owned by farm-ers, 55 per cent about 660,000 are more than seven years old, and about half of these are more than ten years old. To organize the operation of these trucks, most of which are owned by individual farmers, 142 district of-fices were set up and 20,931 trans-portation advisory committees formed, involving 88,913 persons. Working Better This Year This organization worked pretty well in most areas last year, al-though there was a good deal of grumbling, which was only natural. It is working better this year, and there is less grumbling because the necessity for cooperation is consid-erably greater and is generally rec-ognized. Everyone realizes this year why there is so great a shortage of trucks. Our army has prepared for the greatest invasion operation of all times. It knew that virtually any advance made on any front would have to be accompanied by heavy truck movements, for the en-emy will tear up every bit of rail line he can as he retreats, and it takes time to repair railway beds, bridges, culverts and lay new track. So the army has taken virtually the entire output of new trucks for military purposes. In 1941 there were 750,000 trucks produced for civilian use, of which number 456,000 replaced worn-ou- t or obsolete equipment. When the Unit-ed States entered the war, about 150,000 trucks In the hands of manu-facturers or dealers were "frozen." These have been placed where there was greatest need, and now are all working. During 1942 and 1943, only 3 000 new trucks were turned out for civilian use. The program for 1944 calls for 88,000 trucks for civilian al-location, but most of these will be produced in the second half of the year. If we get all that have been pro-grammed this year, the total avail-able for three years will be only 241,-00- 0 to replace a normal disappear-ance of 1,368,000 trucks. That gives only the statistical pic-ture The more difficult operation has been to get a great many peo-ple, strong on managing their own affairs in their own way, to work together toward the common goaJ of winning the war. Schedules on All Crops The first move in this direction was to program g opera-tions. Schedules have been set up for important crops. For n instance, through cooperativeri use of trucks, dairy toer, creameries plan to save 58 000 000 miles in moving milk and Team- Duplication of routes has eliminated. Fruit and been almost canning have re-quired vegetable crops for special planning. crops must be Where perishable round moved to canning factories, have been - clock programs canning facil-me- s worked out, wherever enough to take care are large of this traffic. In some instances both ends of t SThaui hTvTbeen eliminated by careful planning. When there are not enough trucks , area to take caje of the trhanyt be averted or a t.m fruit c v matoes or bg Tinfa a assistance is giv- - areas' is poSrsJgenerai, effective. But 14 of Our States Use Party Symbols on Ballots Only 14 states employ political party symbols on their ballots, six using the rooster and eight the star for the Democratic can-didates, and six the elephant and eight the eagle for the Republican candidates, says Collier's. Nor are all ballots marked in the same way, as in several Southern states the voter, instead of putting a cross beside the names of the per-sons for whom he is -- voting, marks out all the other names. ASK CIS 1A quiz with answers offering ? ' fyiJ&7e$zT 'norma,'on on var'ous subjects 4. To avoid any. distinction of rank. 5. Yes. Union soldiers in the field during the Civil war were permitted to vote. 6. Newfoundland. 7. Those tropical zones ' of the ocean where calms or baffling winds prevail, a becalmed state. 8. A patriot is one who loves and is devoted to his country. A patri- - arch is the founder or head of a family or an aged mart. 9. Arizona. 10. Mediterranean and Dead seas. The Questions 1. How does the size of Alaska compare with the size of Texas? 2. Arlington National Shrine was originally part of the estate of what prominent American? 3. What well-know- n character in fiction tilted at windmills? 4. Why did King Arthur's knights sit .at a round table? 5. Was absentee voting ever be-fore permitted to soldiers of the United States? 6. Off what shores are the Grand Banks? 7. What is meant by the "dol-drums"? 8. What is the difference be-tween a patriot and a patriarch? 9. Where would you be if you were on the Painted Desert? 10. Jerusalem, capital of Pal-estine, is situated at an elevation of 2,500 feet between what seas? The Answers 1. Alaska is twice as large. 2. Gen. Robert E. Lee. 3. Don Quixote. Polite Storks American storks (wood ibis) are efficient and polite. When a flock descends on a shallow pond, these birds do a sort of dance to rile the water and force tad-poles and small fish to the sur-face. As these rise to the top, they are killed by the nearest birds. But only when enough food is floating on the water for the en-- ; tire flock do the birds begin to feast. |