Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 5, 1928 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

582 Old Jed eyed him for a moment. The glances of owner and foreman crossed. “ Then I want this to end right here, an’—I ginerally git what I want,” Brewster said. “Now, Mr. Nutting, you come up to the house.” “Yes, sir.” Dick Nutting flushed. He was practically unmarked by his argument with Rawlins, because, save only during the brief struggle for the gun the latter had not touched him. But during her father’s intervention, he had not been unconscious of the soinewhat amazed scrutiny of Miss Beryl Brewster’s eyes. Then for a fleeting instant, as old Jed ceased speaking, he met them fully, found them filled with a light of unconcealed amusement. And suddenly, as though that amuse- ment had grown to a point beyond any further effort at restraint, she laughed. So that, without being in any sense un- duly self-conscious, Mr. Nutting was forced to the conclusion that her sound- less merriment was excited by himself or his clothing or—both. It was nota particularly pleasing thought. Few men relish being laughed at by a wom- an. And when she happens to be as pretty a woman as Beryl Brewster un- deniably was, it but accentuates his natural embarrassment. Consequently, Mr. Nutting’s cheeks still wore an un- wonted tinge of color as he fell into step at her father’s side. CHAPTER II. “aE NUT.” N the Bar-Bee, Miss Brewster was a princess more or less. Indeed, the Coyote Basin in which her father had first established himself with his partner, Larry Barr, some forty years before was a little principality in itself. A splendid range and plenty of water had first attracted old Jed and his partner to it as the scene of their efforts at fortune building when they came West. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. From their small beginning had come all the rest. Now the ranch lay secure in its final form, inside the gray and green and yellow ramparts of sur- rounding hills, marked by a certain air of permanency—a permanency which old Jed dared to hope might outlast his years. The bunk house was of logs, as from the first, and roomy, commodi- ous, stout. The ranch house itself was more modern; two storied, of brick construction, with modern plumbing supplied from the inexhaustible source of icy springs. The corrals, six in number, were of pole design and sound in every sense. Bear Paw’s house, where, as fore- man, he lived with his wife, was a later addition. It was built of stone and of one story. The barns also were of stone, as were the other minor outbuild- ings. Beyond the house along the three-mile road to the main highway, leading to Meeker and Glenwood in one direction and to Grand Junction in the other, stretched alfalfa fields from which was cut the winter hay supply for the stock. Orchard and garden supplied both winter and summer vege- tables and fruit and completed the little world which Beryl Brewster knew as home, and which, after the manner of one who had never known another, she loved. In the days of her father’s adven- turings with Larry Barr it had been wilderness, secluded, shut off. But now good roads and her car had made it anything else. Over the former she flashed to Meeker, site of the old fort, where the public library was. still housed in one of the original log struc- tures of the former settlement. Or she went on to Glenwood with its atmosphere of modern life, its hotels, its springs and baths, its cosmo- politan crowds. Failing to find in either what variety she craved, she stepped on the trains which ran in either direction and found herself after no. more than a trivial journey in Den- ver or Salt Lake. COMIC OOOKS (F@)