Argosy All-Story Weekly, January 13, 1923 — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

WHEN the market had slumped, leaving the ranch to become a boarding home for indigent beasts of burden, pending the return of prosperity. His black mules were white elephants. 7 “Look at the vermin,” he would com- plain, waving his canes toward his pastures. ‘“ Look at ’em, eating me out of house and home, and I can’t even kill ’em for meat.” Still his dark cloud had one strand of silver lining. He said: ‘“ Thank the Lord they ain’t Belgian hares.” William, his eldest son, had been breaking a span of the brutes this morning. An edu- cated mule would bring more than an ig- norant one when the sun of good times shone again. Broad of shoulder and grin, Bill came to help Steve put up the horses for their noon feed. Said he: ‘‘ Are these the capitalists I heard about over at Frazer’s Sunday?” “What,” Steve asked, ‘“ were you doing at Frazer’s Sunday—or any other day?” The grinning Bill was enamored of Nell’s sister Janet, as Steve knew. It was neces- sary to scuffle a bit over this matter before they reverted to the visit of the city men. On Janet’s authority Bill could report that Danie} Frazer had hit into something rich with his busy rock hammer. No, not gold. Nobody could get excited over gold in those times. With the world’s yellow metal flooding America, a gold mine was as much of a liability as a mule ranch. “ What, then, Bill?” “ Platinum.” *~ “Goon! In these hills?” “ That’s what they all ask him—the Den- ver people he went to see last winter. They won’t even come look at it.” “You don’t suppose it’s just one of the old man’s dreams?” ‘Well, Janet and Nell are buying steam yachts and planning a tour of the world, Steve. And they’ve got a book about Paris.” ‘No place for girls like them,” Steve grunted. ‘‘ Wasn’t I there two days?” Mr. Lutwell continued to produce a poor impression upon Colorado public opinion when, filled with good ranch food, he came out from the house to resume his travels. A MAN’S BROKE. Xx “How much?” he inquired, pocketbook = = in hand, of Thomas Watkins, who leaned _ 2S on his two canes near by. aoe ‘ Says which?” ‘“ The honorarium, you know—the tax.” “Oh, yes, the tax.” The red face of Watkins went redder. ‘Hark ye. When you druv in here, did I stand and bang a danged gong like a danged waiter in a railway eating house? Or did I invite you like a reg’lar feller Christian to light down and take pot luck with me? I’m asking you.” The urbane Mr. Laird apologized hand- = somely. His chief, he said, was a pilgrim z and a stranger; he hailed from a greedy city where diners who left without settling for meals were pursued by mobs of citizens and — hunted by the police. “| gar!” the ranchman chuckled. ‘“‘ That very thing like to happened to me down in Denver one time. I like to got jailed. It’s all in what we’re used to, ain’t it?” ass He shook hands with his guests and asked them to drop in again, yet Lutwell was not mollified. When the stage was safely out of the ranch yard, the syndicate president vented his vexation in such words as: “Mules! Course he raises mules! Con- demned mule himself!” “ Forget it,” said Arthur Laird. old fellow’s. feet are full of gout.” An unfortunate remark was this, for gout suggested its next of kin, dyspepsia, and started Mr. Lutwell to raging against the criminality of setting corned beef and cab- bage before travelers afflicted with patholog- ical disturbances in the alimentary tract. Where were those tablets? CHAPTER IL, THE FRAZERS. HE Frazer homestead lay deep in a gorge walled by steep bare cliffs and wooded mountain slopes. The house, commodious for one in the wilds, stood on a rise of ground shaded by silver spruces, with South Boulton Creek foaming and = singing past, and a noble peak looking = down from the range, miles away up the ~ canon.