CHAPTER XV.

The Back Trail.

“SORRY, Cowley, but you’ll have to wear those clear into headquarters. I wouldn’t trust you an inch without ’em, either.”

Denis smiled genially at the swindler, who grunted sheepishly.

With Smoking Duck, they were seated about the ruins of Cowley’s table, enjoying the repast of venison and coffee which Denis had prepared.

Ballard and his friends had departed to the foot of the lake. Convinced of their going, Denis had taken a plunge in the creek and freshened himself, then had set about getting a meal.

He ate amid due precautions, however. Cowley wore his irons. Smoking Duck, with his hands free to eat, sat in the corner across the room from Denis’ rifle.

“I heard what you said to them fellers,” said Cowley gruffly. “Mister, I take off my hat to ye. As I said, I’ll have to take my med’cine, an’ I’ll hold it agin’ ye for a while, too—but you’re some man, believe me! Any one who can lick Jim Cowley, an’ then pull off the stunt ye pulled off on them——”

“Forget it!” smiled Denis.

“Ye would ha’ shot, wouldn’t ye?”

“Maybe I would,” nodded Denis, keeping a wary eye on Smoking Duck.

Before he could say more he was startled by a shadow’ at the doorway. Catching at his rifle, he whirled—to see the grinning face of the half-breed, Napoleon McShayne.

Behind McShayne were two other figures. One was the Slave Indian whom Denis had encountered on the upper Hay River, old John Tadeteecha, the other was a Slave unknown to Denis. These last two paused outside, while Napoleon entered.

Before the “Whatcheer!” of greeting had been exchanged, Denis had swiftly leaped at a scheme which would relieve him of much labor and trouble. No more speech passed for a moment, Napoleon filling a pipe with whittled tobacco; then, seeing that Smoking Duck had finished his meal, Denis ordered him to stand up.

“Tie that fellow’s hands behind his back, Poleon!” he directed. “Tie ’em tight, and do the job well!”

When the scowling Petwanisip was safely secured, Denis ordered him and Cowley outside, following them promptly.

“Now’, Poleon,” he went on, “you go around to that left-hand lean-to, and you’ll find a very good bunch of fur. Haul it all out here. You go and help him. John; I expect you traded some of those furs yourself, didn’t you? Well, you’ll get no more whisky here. Hop along, all of you!”

The two Slave Indians grinned as if at some excellent joke, and followed Napoleon. The three broke into the fur cache, and presently began to haul forth bale after bale of fur. Most of the pelts were common, two or three bales being separately wrapped and proving to contain some dark marten and cross fox pelts of better promise.

Two of these better bales Denis handed over to Napoleon, as the pay which he had promised for assistance rendered. The second Slave gave his name as Tommy, and it proved that he had come to get some whisky in return for a few sorry muskrat pelts. Dennis addressed him straightly:

“Tommy, you clear out of here in a hurry! These pelts are going to stay here till your people come for them. Spread the word that whoever has traded to Cowley for whisky can come and get his furs back; that ought to be simple enough, because each fur is marked by the man who caught it. Don’t try any stealing, or you’ll go to jail. Run along now!”

Tommy departed toward the creek, wondering.

“You ain’t goin’ to hand back all them peltries!” groaned Cowley, seeing the fruits of his long illegal labors thus scattered. “You got to take ’em along, by law——”

“I’m the law in this case,” snapped Denis. “You shut up! John, you and Napoleon come here!”

The two stood before him, grinning vacuously.

“I have to take these two prisoners up the Hay to my father’s homestead—you know the place, John. Did you take that message to my father?”

Old John nodded his head, and reported that all was well at the homestead. Denis continued:

“Napoleon, I want you to paddle them up in your dugout. John and I will come with you in my canoe. I’ll have to go all the way without sleep, and I won’t be able to put in any work at the paddle. After we get there, my brother will want to take these men on to the Peace River, and will probably hire you to help him. You take us up, as I have said, and I’ll promise you good pay in goods and tobacco. How about it?”

Neither of the aborigines was anxious to work, but on the other hand, Denis represented the law to them, and it is not wise to refuse aid to the law.

Five minutes later, with the two prisoners safely barred in the smaller room, Denis rolled up and lay down across the door. They were to start up lake at sunset, and until that time he was going to make up sleep in anticipation of his long watch on the river trail, for he would not dare trust either Indian to guard the prisoners.

“By Jasper!” he thought sleepily. “I’ve made good for Ben, after all. But, believe me, I’ve changed my mind about going into the mounted. Yes, sir; I’m contented to remain a plain, unadorned American—this law-and-order business is just a bit too strenuous for Trooper Stewart, substitute!”

The End.

A RECORD-BREAKING BEET

A RED beet that weighs eight and one-half pounds was grown by Mrs. Peter Glatfelter, of Spring Grove, Pennsylvania. It is twenty-two inches long, and twice as many inches in circumference. She says she has not been able so far to find a pot large enough to boil it in.

Skates, Skis, and a Saphead

BY William Wallace Cook

DEEPLY steeped in gloom perfectly described the condition of young Nixon J. Peters. Loneliness and bitter regret pervaded his soul as he sat by himself on the rear seat of the flying sleigh and thought of what might have been. He had reason to believe that he was the best skater and ski jumper entered in the winter sports’ contests at Devil’s Lake, on the preceding afternoon, and yet he had lost both main events by an apparent failure to look well to his equipment at the last moment. Every one had expected that he would blunder somewhere, and so no one was greatly disappointed; that is, no one except Nixon J. Peters.

Almost at the take-off of the jump, one of Nixon’s skis had broken. He had taken a wild header, and landed in a snow bank with heels in the air. A big laugh had been the result. Also, he had cast a skate at the critical moment of the skating race, and the other contestants had slid past him, Porter Markham in the lead. This same Porter Markham, too, had won the ski jump. Now, Porter Markham was on the front seat of the sleigh, driving blithely, and exchanging jest and small talk with Hesther Morton, who sat beside him. Truly, Nixon J. Peters’ lines had fallen in hard places!

Nixon was “Nix” to those who knew him best. Often he suffered the crowning indignity of being referred to as the “Saphead.” He had heard the unlovely nickname applied to him many times while digging himself out of the snow bank. It had punctuated the merriment released by his sorry mishap. Hesther Morton had joined in the riot of laughter. Nixon knew this only too well, for she was the first person he had seen after digging the snow out of his eyes. For Hesther to be amused at his expense—well, that was something that hurt.

Then, while seeking, with dogged resolution, to retrieve himself on the steel runners, a strap had broken, and a skate had shot off across the glittering ice. Peters had slipped and slammed around on the course like a crazy curling stone, finally cutting the feet out from under a fat spectator, who called him Saphead right to his face! Ah, what a wind-up for a sorry afternoon! Peters clenched his hands in his bearskin gloves and crouched down on the rear seat in a fruitless effort to efface himself.

He was nineteen, and Porter Markham was twenty. They both worked for Uncle Silas Goddard, who had a ranch in Montana, and made a business of sending range horses into North Dakota to be halter broken and sold to the settlers. Goddard was “uncle” to all his men, in the sense that gives an avuncular character to every genial, middle-aged person who looks after the welfare of younger employees.

In the early summer, Uncle Silas had sent a hundred horses into North Dakota. Business had not been good, and late fall found half the horses still on hand. These horses were being wintered at the Morton ranch, on marsh hay, cut and stacked by Peters, Markham, and Reece Bailey, who had been sent by Uncle Silas to take care of the horse herd. When spring came, there was a promise of turning off every head of the stock at a good profit.

The winter, so far, had not been particularly lonely for the Montana men. The snows of December had been light, and it had been possible for the horses to paw out considerable forage in the hills. January, however, brought in a good fall of “the beautiful,” and it had been necessary to corral and shelter the animals and to go extensively into the feeding.

Reece Bailey, Uncle Si’s foreman, found time to play cribbage with Lance Morton, Hesther’s father; and Peters and Nixon acquired leisure for skating and skiing, popular sports at their home ranch in the Rockies. A river—it would have been a creek in a country of large streams—flowed through the Morton holdings, and its glassy surface offered a resistless invitation to the steel runners. As for the skiing, there were plain and hill for running, climbing, and glissading. While Bailey and Morton were busy at their eternal “fifteen-two, fifteen-four,” Peters and Markham were skating or skiing, often with Hesther, who was fond of both sports. The girl, if appearances were to be believed, was rather fond of Markham, also, but had few smiles to waste on Peters.

In his bashful, blundering way, Peters tried to make himself agreeable to Hesther. He was big and awkward, however, and had tow-colored hair, a slow wit, and few graces of speech or manner. His efforts to impress Hesther were overwhelmed by the never-failing persiflage and the rakish dress and carriage of handsome Porter Markham. Markham possessed a confidence in himself that was sublime, a confidence that shone brilliantly in contrast with the clumsy ineffectiveness of Nixon J. Peters.

Peters realized this, and nourished a bitter grudge against his physical and mental shortcomings. He used to dream of a fire at the ranch, in which he posed as a hero, and bore the fair Hesther to safety from the ranch house, through a furnace of flames. Then, in his visions, he pictured the girl as taking his hand and humbly asking his forgiveness for her failure to perceive his sterling qualities from the first. During such moments of illusion the Saphead was almost happy. But the ranch house never took fire, and the chance to prove himself a hero by rescuing Hesther Morton was denied by fate.

In mid-January, however, an opportunity presented itself, through the winter sports at Devil’s Lake. Markham and Peters entered themselves in the ski-jumping contest and skating race. They drove the fifty miles which separated Morton’s from the lake, and Hesther went with them, to see the “carnival of sports” and to spend a night or two with relatives in Devil’s Lake City. Again Peters had dreams; but now, on the homeward drive, every hope was shattered, and he longed for a period of blank obscurity and complete retirement.

He could have declared that one of his skis had been tampered with, and that one of his skate straps had been all but cut through with the point of a knife. Examination made him sure of both facts, yet it had not occurred to him to “sob.” He had blundered in not making certain of his skis and skates beforehand, so he could not see how any one but himself was at fault. As he crouched in the back seat of the sleigh he considered requesting Uncle Silas Goddard to recall him to the Montana headquarters. There, at least, he would be rid of Markham, and cut off forever from the demoralizing and disdainful eyes of Hesther.

Yes, he would go back to the home ranch, and he would do this in spite of something which he knew, and which was very important to his future. It was common knowledge that a place of preferment was to be given by Uncle Silas either to Peters or to Markham—a foremanship at a newer ranch, with a chance to acquire an interest in the horses and cattle. Reece Bailey was watching Peters and Markham, and on his report Uncle Silas would act. To retire from the North Dakota venture of the ranchowner now would cut Peters off entirely from promotion, and drop the plum in Porter Markham’s hand. But Peters, in the bitterness of his heart, was allowing nothing aside from his own peace of mind to influence him. Yes, he would ask Uncle Silas to recall him to Montana.

“You still there, Nix?” Markham suddenly asked, turning to look rearward.

Peters grunted.

“You’re so blamed quiet,” went on Markham, with a laugh, “that I reckoned you might have taken another header into the snow, back a ways on the trail.”

Hesther joined in the laugh, and, in spirit, poor Peters writhed.

The short day was closing, and the sun went down beyond the white horizon in cold glory. They were five miles from Morton’s, and Markham had driven the horses so hard that they were nearly fagged. They breathed wheezingly, and frost coated their heaving sides. The pace dragged, in spite of Markham’s relentless use of the whip.

“Anyhow,” spoke up Peters suddenly, “you might think of the team a little. Porter. They’re near tuckered.”

“Who’s doing this driving?” cried Markham, “I never yet had to ask a saphead for advice in handling horses.” And again the whip fell on the straining flanks.

Peters clenched his fists in the bearskin gloves. It occurred to him that he could lift Markham bodily out of the front seat, take his place, and do the driving himself; but he did not.

The horses struggled on, and in the falling dark the travelers topped a “rise” that gave them a dim view of the buildings of Morton’s ranch. A light showed in one of the ranch-house windows like a star, and toward it Markham drove, and presently halted at the door.

“Now that I’ve handled the reins all the way from Devil’s Lake, Nix,” remarked Markham, as he jumped out, and helped Hesther to alight, “I allow it’s up to you to take care of the team. Cold, Essie?”

“Not a bit,” the girl answered, and hurried toward the door. Markham followed her, and Peter drove on to the stable.

As he unhitched and brought the horses into the shelter, he was a little surprised to discover that there were no other animals in the place. The team was Morton’s, but Bailey’s cow horse, together with those of Peters and Markham, should have been in the stable; unless Bailey was out at the corral and shelter sheds, looking after the fifty range horses that were kept there.

Peters lighted a lantern, removed the harness from the horses, and, after putting hay in the mangers, began rubbing the animals down with an old gunny sack. He was hard at this when a call reached his ears from the house: “Peters! This way—on the jump!”

It was Markham’s voice, and there was a note of alarm in it that startled Peters. Lantern in hand, he hurried out of the stable and made his way to the house. Flinging the door wide, he crossed the threshold into the ranch-house sitting room.

“What’s wrong, Porter?” he asked.

The “cannon-ball” stove glowed with heat. That, and the bright oil lamp, dazzled Peters’ eyes for the moment, and he could not see what was going on in the room.

“Bailey has been hurt,” came the voice of Markham. “Every horse in the herd has been driven off by thieves—and they even took Bailey’s mount with the rest. Biggest outrage that ever happened in these parts! I’d like to know what the blamed country is coming to!”

The blur lifted from before Peters’ eyes. He saw Bailey, his face twisted with pain, lying on a couch. Mrs. Morton bent over him, bathing a wounded shoulder from a basin of hot water. Her husband was walking up and down, fuming and sputtering. Markham stood beside the couch, looking down at the foreman with a queer expression on his face. Hesther, all excited, was removing her wraps with shaking hands.

“Horses stolen!” gasped Peters, dazed by the weird calamity. “How could it happen? Is Bailey badly hurt?”

“Don’t stand there gawping!” fussed Morton. “Something has got to be done, and it’s up to you and Markham to do it. A gang of scoundrels from across the line made off with the stock; and it’s been no more than three hours since it happened. Take my team and get to Roscommon. The sheriff’s got to be notified. Bailey says the thieves are making for the north, and if you and Markham are quick a posse can get between the gang and the boundary line. For heaven’s sake, Peters, wake up!”

Peters shook himself, put down the lantern, and came to the side of the couch.

“Why don’t Markham wake up?” he asked. “Hasn’t he suggested anything yet?”

“Nothing to suggest,” Markham answered, flashing a sharp look at Peters. “It’s twenty miles to Roscommon, and no chance of getting there ahead of the thieves and the stolen stock. The only animals we can put our hands on are the two that brought us from Devil’s Lake, and they are done up. You know that, Peters.”

“What about using skates or skis?” inquired Peters. “By thunder, there _is_ a way of getting to Roscommon in time to help the sheriff head off the stolen stock!”

II.

There was a dominant, compelling note in the voice of Peters. It was so unexpected in its assertiveness that every one in the room was startled. His washed-out blue eyes fenced aggressively with the snapping black eyes of Markham.

“Skates or skis!” repeated Markham, his upper lip curling. “Why, it’s all of thirty miles to Roscommon, if you follow the crooks o’ the river! And how much would you figure it by skis, if you crossed Bear Butte instead of going around it? Talk sense, if you know how, Nix! Don’t forget the fellows who rustled our stock have three hours the lead.”

“How far will three hours of driving in this snow get the stolen herd?” returned Peters. “The thieves will have a tough job of it. They——”

Bailey twisted his flushed face from under the ministering hands of Mrs. Morton. “The varmints are goin’ north by the Long Knife Dry Wash,” he said, his voice shaking with the pain of his wound. “That’s only three miles west of Roscommon. If you boys could get word to the sheriff somehow, I reckon he might head off the raiders with a posse. But if you do anything, you’ll have to do it quick. Porter,” and his eyes swerved to Markham, “I’m lookin’ to you—Uncle Si Goddard is lookin’ to you. Nigh on to five thousand dollars’ wuth of horses are being pushed to’rds the border, and here I’m helpless to do a thing.”

“It don’t seem possible to do a thing, Reece,” returned Markham. “If we could round up a crowd of men in short order, and take after the thieves on fresh horses, like enough we might overhaul ’em. But where’s the riding stock? Why, Morton’s nearest neighbor is ten miles away!”

Peters flashed a disapproving glance at Markham, pulled off his bearskin gloves, and slumped down in a chair by the stove. From the pockets of his overcoat he took his skates, also a new strap he had secured in Devil’s Lake City. Quickly he replaced the broken strap with the new one.

“You going to try and get to Roscommon by river, Nix?” Morton inquired.

“I figure the chances are better that way than going over Bear Butte on skis,” Peters answered. “The river’s clean of snow, and mostly the ice is like a lookin’-glass. I’m going to do my best to get word to the sheriff and to start a Roscommon doctor this way to look after Bailey.”

“You’re locoed!” growled Markham. “It s all right to get a doctor for Reese, here, but there ain’t a chance to save the stock this side of the line. Let the raiders get it across the boundary, and then take the matter up with the Canadian Mounted Police. That’s my advice.”

“If you wait till the stock is out of this country,” put in the rancher, “there won’t be a chance.”

“Not a chance on earth,” agreed Bailey. “That outfit o’ thieves knowed exactly what they was about. Everything was cut and dried, and somebody sure tipped ’em off regardin’ the layout here. I’ll bet a thousand ag’inst a chink wash ticket that them bronks will be took care of across the line so’st they can’t be located by nobody. Them thieves picked a time when I was alone at the shelter sheds and Porter and Nix was to the winter sports at the lake. They dropped me out o’ my saddle without any whys or wherefores, and then made off with my mount and sent a man to the stable for Peters’ and Markham’s ridin’ horses. By the time I covered the mile back to the ranch house the stock was well on the way north. I—I——”

He broke off abruptly, clenching his teeth hard as a spasm of pain ran through his body.

“I’ll get another coat,” remarked Peters, rising from his chair and starting for the door that led to his room. “It won’t be possible to make any kind of time in a long overcoat like this.” He disappeared.

Markham came to the side of the couch. “If Peters has a chance, Reece,” said he, “he’ll make a bobble of some kind and spoil it all. That’s his way. I better go to Roscommon myself. Peters can use his skates, and take the river trail, and I’ll use my skis and go over the butte. I don’t think we have a ghost of a show to head off the stock, but it’s up to us to see what we can do.”

“That’s the talk!” exclaimed Morton approvingly. “The thieves had help from this ranch,” he added darkly, tossing a significant glance toward the door through which Peters had just passed, “and I haven’t got a whole lot of confidence in at least one man around here.”

“Peters is square,” Bailey averred. “Square as a die. He jest don’t seem to have the knack for puttin’ his idees across. The man that saves them bronks, Porter,” he added significantly, “is goin’ to make the biggest kind of a hit with Goddard.”

“If any one connects with the sheriff at Roscommon in time to save the bronks,” Markham returned, “it will be me.” He spoke with a confidence that thrilled every one in the room, and Hesther, if the red in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes were any indication, most of all. “I’ll be ready,” he finished, moving toward the door, “in about two shakes.”

“You must have some hot coffee before you start,” said Hesther, “and I’ll see that it is ready for you.”

Markham was back in the room before Peters had reappeared. He wore a leather coat, and the bottoms of his trousers were laced inside his high shoe tops. Trim and handsome he looked, and ready for a grueling night’s work. Hesther was just placing the coffee on the table, and she lifted her eyes to flash a glance of admiration at the young ski runner.

“I’ll be ready in a minute, Essie,” said Markham, with a nod and a smile.

Taking his skis from a corner of the room, he sat down, laid them across his knees, and proceeded to grease them well from a can which he had brought into the room and had placed on the stove. While he worked, Peters came lumbering in.

Peters had donned a ragged sweater, whose collar came up around his ears. Over this was buttoned a faded and threadbare coat. His old-fashioned skates were under his arm. From beneath the rim of his moth-eaten fur cap his tow hair showed in a sort of fringe. The cap had ear flaps, with strings at their ends. The flaps were loose, and the strings fluttered as he moved his head. His shoes were of cowhide, strong and serviceable, but not at all ornamental. He had tied the bottoms of his trousers to his ankles with pieces of cord.

The contrast between Peters and Markham was very striking. So far as appearances went, Markham had it “on” Peters by about a hundred to one.

“I’m going, too, Nix,” observed Markham, laying his skis to one side. “I’ll go over the butte, and I’ve got a month’s pay that says I beat you into Roscommon.”

“Maybe you will,” returned Peters, starting for the outside door.

There was more bitterness in Peters’ heart. He believed he understood the situation. Markham had won the ski jump and the skating race, and now he wanted to round off his triumphs by being first to carry the news of the horse thieving to the sheriff. Markham was planning a spectacular bit of work, for Uncle Si Goddard incidentally. Mainly, he was thinking of the effect of his night’s success on Hesther Morton.

“Wait, Nixon!” called Mrs. Morton. “Essie has got some hot coffee ready, and you must have a cup before you leave.”

The rancher’s wife was the only one who ever gave much thought to Peters. She considered him now, when the consideration and confidence of the others seemed to center wholly in Markham.

“Much obliged, Mrs. Morton,” Peters answered, “but I don’t reckon I’ll take the time. You see,” he added, as he laid a hand on the doorknob, “it’s a case where every minute counts.”

Before the good woman could answer, the door had closed behind Peters. Markham pulled up his shoulders in a shrug as he lifted the cup of steaming coffee.

“There’s Nixon’s first blunder,” he remarked. “He has a habit of going it blind, and without giving any preparation to the work ahead of him.”

“I hope he won’t meet with any accident,” murmured Mrs. Morton. “That boy’s got a good heart, even if he is a little odd.”

“He’ll always be a blunderer and a saphead,” grunted her husband. “If the stolen horses are recovered, it’ll be Markham who makes it possible.”

Markham did not tarry long over his coffee. Within a few moments after Peters left he was out in the nipping air. Hesther, a shawl over her head, stepped through the doorway to watch while he crossed the trampled snow around the ranch house and then knelt to thrust the toes of his shoes in the Bilgeri binding of the skis and to buckle the ankle straps. He arose presently, and, shouting a farewell to the girl, glided away over the snowy level gracefully, swiftly, with his ski stick biting into the snow and propelling him onward.

“He’s doing a man’s work this night,” murmured Hesther, “and he will win—just as he won at Devil’s Lake City carnival.” Then she went back into the house, to describe in detail how Peters had lost and Markham had won in the winter sports’ contests at the lake.

III.

Puyallup River had many twists and turns in the thirty miles which it covered between Morton’s Ranch and Roscommon. Passing within a stone’s throw of the ranch house, it flowed almost due north for six miles, then, entering the rough hill country, it doubled back on its course for three miles, rounded the base of Rawson’s Bluff, in a four-mile curve, came east by south around the base of Bear Butte, and then curved in a northwesterly direction for the last twelve miles that carried it through the outskirts of the county seat.

Markham, on his skis, could con a direct course to Roscommon, bisecting the river at three points, and finally climbing the butte for a long glissade into the town. That glissade, right into the edge of the settlement, measured ten miles of down grade. The slopes of Bear Butte were smooth, and directly under its crest the descent was steep. A mile of this, and then the course fell away more gently.

Markham, if he made good time to the eastern base of Bear Butte, would very likely reach that particular spot ahead of Peters, for he would have to travel only seven miles, while Peters was going sixteen. Where Markham would lose would be in climbing the butte; and where he would make up his loss would be in the long glissade down the opposite side.

At the river’s edge, Peters screwed the skates into his heels, pulled the straps tight, and buckled them, then put on his bearskin gloves and struck out. He was well away toward Rawson’s Bluff before Markham made his first crossing of the river, near the ranch house.

The ice was in splendid condition. A strong wind had swept it clean of loose snow, save here and there at the turns, where drifts had formed. Then a slight thaw, a few days before, had been followed by a tightening of the cold, and all rough spots had been smoothed away.

Markham, whose steel runners were the very last word in all-metal skates, excelled as a figure skater. He could cut all sorts of graceful figures on the ice, and, with Hesther Morton, would do a sort of waltz, which the girl seemed to consider rare sport. Peters, on the other hand, was not proficient at that sort of thing. He preferred straight skating, possibly because he realized that fancy capers were quite out of his line. The steel, wood, and leather with which he was shod seemed best adapted to straightaway work, anyhow.

Peters knew every foot of the river between the ranch and Roscommon. He had covered that long stretch of ice several times while getting himself in trim for the skating race at Devil’s Lake. There was “white ice” under the shelter of the bluff and the butte, caused by a fall of snow while the first crystals were forming. This had been full of air bubbles, and had been treacherous up to the time the severe frost had followed the thaw. After that the liquefied snow had congealed into a sound and superlative smoothness. There was not a spot to be feared on the entire course.

With long, steady, swinging strokes, Peters swept around the first turn and came south on the stretch which Markham was to cross in order to thread a seam through Rawson’s Bluff. But, although the moonlight was brilliant upon the sparkling snow crust, he could see nothing of his rival. It might be, he reasoned, that Markham had already effected his second crossing of the river, and was even then in the gash that cut through the bluff. Peters ground his teeth, and, with his runners ringing musically, passed like a gliding specter around the bluff’s base. Three miles farther, and he might obtain a view of Markham as he emerged from the shallow defile and pushed over the open levels toward the butte.

He was having queer thoughts about Markham. Why had the fellow protested against any attempt to reach Roscommon and notify the sheriff? Then, in the face of his protests, why had he determined to pit his skis against Peters’ skates—to accomplish the thing which he had averred could not be accomplished?

There was but one answer to this, according to Peters’ conclusions. Markham could not bear to think that Peters _might_ succeed, that he _might_ win favorable notice from Uncle Silas, and that he _might_ gain some credit in the eyes of Hesther Morton! Markham was not thinking of saving the horses; no, he was impressed with the idea of his own prestige and importance, and he could not take a chance of losing out to a “saphead.” That was all there was to it, so Peters believed.

A determination to win that race and save the stolen stock grew stronger and stronger in Peters’ breast. Here, after the miserable failures at Devil’s Lake, was a most unexpected opportunity to retrieve himself. It was his business to make the most of it.

Three straight miles lay ahead of him to the westward of the bluff. Coming down the stretch like the wind, he surveyed the shadowy opening of the swale, in the hope of catching a glimpse of Markham. But the ski runner was not in sight. In the distance, the sparkling crest of Bear Butte could be vaguely determined; yet, between the bluff and the butte no dusky figure could be seen toiling on the skis.

“He hasn’t cleared the bluff yet,” thought Peters exultantly. “I’m leading him, by ginger!”

The river, at the end of the three-mile stretch, described a curve like a gigantic horseshoe. In its first beginning, the stream had attempted to run west by south; meeting the rough country, its course had been deflected toward the northwest; then, striking the wide-spreading base of Bear Butte, it had followed northeast and east on its way around the huge uplift. On clearing the butte, the Puyallup struck off due northwest, and so, in a dozen miles, came to Roscommon.

Peters, although he had not timed himself, knew he had been making excellent speed. He was seventeen miles from the ranch, and coming rapidly under the shadow of the butte. Markham could scarcely climb the massive “rise” and glissade into Roscommon ahead of him. So far as he had been able to discover, Markham was not yet anywhere near Bear Butte, nor——

“Peters! I say, Peters!”

Peters was amazed. Above his ringing steel a sharp cry echoed in the frosty air. It was Markham’s voice, and calling his name. Peters dug into the ice with the heels of his runners and came to a quick halt.

“That you, Porter?” he called.

“Yes, Nix. I’m in hard luck. Stop a minute, will you?”

The voice came from a shadowy overhang at the butte’s foot. Peters skated toward the black cavity, and was met by the dusky figure of Markham, limping out of the darkness and across the ice. Markham had his skis under his arm.

“By George!” cried Peters. “You got here in a hurry! What’s wrong?”

“I fell from a six-foot bank, as I was crossing the river, and splintered one of my skis,” was the answer, “and I can’t go on with the wood runners. I reckon I’ll take your skates,” Markham added coolly.

Peters caught his breath. “I reckon you won’t,” he returned, with spirit. “I’m going on to Roscommon, start the sheriff and a posse for the dry wash, and get a doctor for Bailey. What do you take me for?”

“A saphead—just a plain, everyday saphead,” said Markham. “Down on the ice, Peters, and off with those skates! _Pronto_ is the word! There’s no time to lose!”

Markham had dropped the skis, and stripped a glove from his right hand. The bare hand was in the pocket of his leather coat. Suddenly, as the two stood facing each other, the hand emerged from the pocket with a short, ugly-looking bulldog revolver. Markham leveled the weapon, and the moonlight glinted frostily on the barrel.

Again Peters caught his breath. He was dazed, bewildered. To be threatened in that manner by one whom he had believed to be a friend—or, if not a friend, at least a fellow employee of Uncle Silas Goddard, with interests in common—was a decided shock.

“You crazy, Porter?” demanded Peters, when he could find his tongue.

“Hardly,” was the reply, with a husky, ill-omened laugh, “it will be a long time before you reach Roscommon, my laddybuck. Take off those skates, I tell you! I mean business, Peters!”

There was that in Markham’s words and manner which left no doubt of the fact that he meant business. Peters was wild with indignation and anger, but he was also helpless.

“What’ll Reece Bailey say to this, when I tell him?” he asked, dropping to the ice and working at the skate straps.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” was the response. “Throw the skates over here when you get ’em off. You had to butt into this deal with the fool suggestion of getting word to the sheriff, now, blame you, take your medicine!”

“You’re bound to win,” grunted Peters, “if you have to do it with a gun! You ain’t square, Markham. I may be a good deal of a saphead, but I found, when it was too late, that one of my skis and one of my skate straps had been tampered with at Devil’s Lake. You did that!”

“Why didn’t you tell Hesther about it?” jeered Markham; “or the judges of the contests? Didn’t you have nerve enough to put up a holler?” Peters gave the skates a shove across the ice.

Ten feet away, Markham sat down to screw the skates to his heels and adjust the straps. The revolver lay at his side, and he watched Peters sharply as he worked.

Peters, a desperate purpose forming in his mind, was awaiting the moment when he could spring to the attack. He was not to be conquered in that way. There was plenty of fight in him, and Markham would discover it to his cost.

Markham worked rapidly. The skates were on, and snugly buckled, and he was just rising when Peters went after him, with a short run and a slide. But if Peters was quick, Markham was a shade quicker.

_Crack!_

The revolver exploded in the air, and Peters’ left arm seemed suddenly to have been scorched with a hot iron. The shock caused him to lose his footing, and he fell in a sprawl on the slippery surface of the river.

“You would have it!” shouted Markham fiercely. “That’s something more for you to tell Bailey!”

The last words faded in mellow ring of sliding steel. Peters, sitting up on the ice, and clasping his numbed arm with his right hand, watched Markham slip from sight around the curve at the foot of Bear Butte.

IV.

Peters was thinking less of the pain in his arm than he was of the rascally work of Peter Markham. The fellow must be mad, to make such an attack! He had planned the whole thing, of course, and had armed himself before leaving Morton’s. Reaching the butte ahead of Peters, he had gone into hiding against the moment Peters should come skating down the river. Then, by way of making his treachery more contemptible, he had called to Peters for help, only to threaten him with a revolver and steal his skates.

“You bet I’ll tell Bailey!” muttered Peters. “I reckon this’ll cook your goose with Goddard, even if you do get to Roscommon in time to have the sheriff head off the bronks! What can a fellow make of a man like him, acting thataway?”

With difficulty, Peters removed his coat and shoved up the shirt and sweater sleeves. The wound was in the forearm, and was bleeding profusely. With a bandanna handkerchief he bound up the injury tightly, knotting the handkerchief corners with his fingers and his teeth; then, getting into his coat again, he began considering his next move.

It was twelve miles by river to Roscommon, and eighteen miles back to the ranch. Even if it was now useless for him to get to the town, in order to carry the news of the horse stealing to the sheriff, returning to Morton’s would have been a fierce pull on his strength, and he dared not attempt it. He would make his way to Roscommon. If he could reach the settlement before Markham left it, he would lodge a complaint against the treacherous scoundrel, and have him held in the town jail. Peters was burning for revenge. Yes, that is what he would do.

He got up, feeling a little dizzy and faint, and started down the river. His feet struck against Markham’s skis, and another idea came to him. Perhaps he could tinker up the splintered ski and use the runners. After the accident that had lost him the jump at Devil’s Lake, Peters had bought a little fine wire for the mending of his own broken runner. That wire was still in his trousers pocket, and it might be that he could use it in fixing Markham’s splintered ski.

Picking up both runners, and holding the damaged one between his knees, he struck a match and made a careful examination. The stout ash had been cracked under the binding mechanism. A few wraps of fine wire might yet make the runner serve. With his jack-knife, Peters dug a shallow groove across the ski’s bottom, and in this he imbedded the half dozen coils of wire that he wove over and over and made fast on the upper surface.

For himself, he had never fancied that Bilgeri binding. Although light, and well made, it was not nearly so strong or dependable as the Lilienfield binding, with which Peters’ own skis were equipped.

Peters’ work had been done at a tremendous disadvantage. He could work with one hand only, and in lieu of his other hand he made shift to use his teeth. The moon, although brilliant, left much to be desired in the matter of light for such fine and exacting labor, and sense of touch had to help him where that of sight failed. In the main, however, he did very well, all things considered, and when he had secured his feet in the bindings he arose on the ash runners with a feeling of exultation in his breast. Where was the stick? His search for it carried him to the overhang, and there he found, not only the ski stick, but two strips of gunny sacking, each heavily knotted in the middle.

Those strips of sacking rather puzzled Peters. Markham had brought them as an aid in getting up the steep eastern slope of the butte. But why had he prepared himself with them if his object was to waylay Peters and secure the skates?

“Markham always figures a matter out both ways,” Peters reflected. “He brought the gun to help corral the skates, but, if I happened to beat him to the butte, then he’d have to keep right on over the rise. If he couldn’t do one thing, then he was ready to do the other. What’s more, he splintered that ski a-purpose, and he didn’t do it until he knew I was behind him at the overhang. He didn’t want me to have a chance to use the ski, that’s all. It never occurred to him that I’d have something along to use in patchin’ up the runner. That’s once, anyhow, that a saphead fooled him.”

Peters shuffled his way to a point beyond the overhang, then paused to tie the strips of cloth around the skis, knot side down. This maneuver would help to keep him from sliding backward.

He flashed an upward look at the difficult grade he was to negotiate. If his heart failed him for a moment, because of his useless arm and the shock his whole body had suffered because of the wound, it only resulted in letting him get a firmer grip on his resolution and strength. The wound was nothing serious, being merely a clean gash through the fleshy part of the forearm. He would not allow it to endanger the success of his night’s exploit. Markham must be made to suffer for his lawlessness, and it was up to Peters to see that he did not escape.

The first easy slopes of the butte were taken just as one might travel over level ground—a forward movement, in long, gliding steps. The skis were merely advanced, never lifted. As the ascent stiffened, Peters turned out the ends of the runners slightly, in what is known as the “half fishbone step.” There was a trick in this, and Peters had long since acquired it. Steeper and steeper became the course as the snowy slope was climbed, and the full fishbone step was gradually brought into requisition.

For such a long ascent the work was extremely tiring, and Peters was forced to do a number of “serpentines,” tacking back and forth, and executing the difficult “about face” at each turn.

A good deal of time was required in making the climb, but Peters’ handicap of awkwardness had taught him how to be patient and doggedly resolute in carrying out his aims. He kept unflinchingly to his tiresome task, and in due course was rewarded by finding himself on the flat crest of Bear Butte, ready for the long glissade. By this time his sporting blood was aroused, and he looked forward with keen enjoyment to the breathlessly swift glide that lay ahead of him.

He rested a few moments, tucked the hand of his injured arm into the front of his coat, removed the knotted strips from the runners, took firm hold of the ski stick, and then let himself over the butte’s crest.

With skis so close together that they touched, the point of one leading the other by a foot, body not bent, but inclined forward, Peters was off down the steep slope like a bullet out of a gun.

He was at a disadvantage in not having both hands for use with the stick. Where it was necessary to brake, and avoid a small crevasse or a bowlder, Peters did it entirely with the skis, by executing the “telemark swing.” It was not often that he was confronted by such an emergency, but he was proficient in that method of dodging possible disaster, and unhesitatingly availed himself of it.

At lightning speed he shot down the butte, the air humming in his ears and snowy particles stinging his face. His exhilaration mounted higher and higher. In his delight over the coasting he forgot the stolen horses, the treachery of Markham, and the reprisal he was counting upon when he should reach Roscommon. His every faculty was called into play, and busied itself with the flying skis to the exclusion of everything else.

The slope flattened, and Peters’ speed lessened perceptibly, although he was still going at a rate comparable to that of a limited express train. On and on, mile after mile, his sensation was that of one falling through space. He scarcely realized that he had any connection whatever with the white-clad earth beneath him.

At last, in the distance, he saw a twinkling light, and a confused blur of buildings. Roscommon! The town jumped toward him as though crazily bent on fouling his course. He gave rather more attention to Roscommon than to the slope ahead of him, and suddenly he pitched into the air as the runners hit an obstacle. He fell with the skis braided around his neck, fell hard upon the cleared tracks of the Roscommon railroad yards, and so suddenly that he had no time to realize he had gone over the embankment at the side of the network of rails.

Instinctively he tried to lift himself, only to drop in an awkward huddle, with a blaze of shooting stars criss-crossing before his eyes. Then the bright lights faded, and Nixon J. Peters quietly went to sleep.

V.

When Peters awoke, he found himself on a bench in the railroad station. A local train was expected, and there had been men on the station platform when Peters shot over the railroad embankment and hit the tracks. Three or four of the men went forward to investigate the strange phenomenon, and they were the ones who had brought Peters into the waiting room. They had no more than laid him down, and stripped off his skis, when he opened his eyes.

“Sheriff gone to the dry wash yet?” he inquired faintly.

A man bent over him. “I’m Jordan, the sheriff,” said he. “What dry wash do you mean? Why should I go there?”

“Has—hasn’t Markham reached town?” went on Peters.

“Haven’t seen a thing of Markham. Oh!” Jordan exclaimed. “I know you now. You are Bailey’s man, Peters, from the Morton Ranch. Why were you sliding into town, at this time o’ night, on a pair of skis? Thunder! It was as much as your life was worth! You——”

“A gang of horse thieves ran off our horses—more’n fifty of ’em,” cut in Peters wildly. “It happened early in the evening. Get a posse, Jordan, and head off the gang at Long Knife Dry Wash. When Markham shows up, leave somebody in town to arrest him. He shot me in the arm. And send a doctor to Morton’s to look after Bailey. He’s wounded, too! I——”

Then Peters went to sleep again. When he next came to himself, and picked up the chain of events, he was in a bed in a room at the Roscommon House. Broad day looked in at the room windows, and Peters could gaze dreamily out at roofs covered with snow, and sparkling under the sun’s rays as though covered with diamonds. Hours had passed since he had had the brief awakening in the railroad station. Now he was in a comfortable bed, his left arm neatly bandaged, and Toynbee, the proprietor of the hotel, was sitting beside him.

“Did they get Markham, Toynbee?” asked Peters.

The landlord was reading a newspaper. He jumped in his chair as the unexpected words reached him from the bed.

“Oh, you’re back, eh?” said he. “You’ve been a long time on the road, although the doctor said we needn’t to mind. Get Markham? Well, I guess!” And Toynbee chuckled. “Jordan got him, and four others, along with the stolen horses. They were pushing through the dry wash when the sheriff and his party arrived there. You bet they got him, Peters, and red-handed at that. Big surprise to everybody. Why, Markham had put the whole thing up! He was back of the entire scheme! It has all come out. Markham won’t talk, but the rest of the gang feel different. Across the line there were men waiting to take the horses and rush ’em off where they’d never be found. Say! I guess you ought to have a medal for what you did last night! How are you feeling, anyhow?”

Peters was stunned. Porter Markham one of the horse thieves! Could Peters believe his ears? Markham had had a reason for driving the horses off their feet on the return from Devil’s Lake. With all the other stock taken from Morton’s, it had been Markham’s plan to make the sleigh team useless, so far as a drive of twenty miles to Roscommon, with news for the sheriff, was concerned; and Markham had protested against Peters’ plan of using skates in carrying an alarm to Roscommon; but when the method had been put into effect, in spite of him, Markham had taken to the skis and had waylaid Peters at the eastern foot of Bear Butte. In the light of recent events, the motive for that attack could be seen at an even more treacherous angle. Markham’s scheme was not to beat Peters to Roscommon with news for the sheriff, but to keep all knowledge of the robbery from the authorities until the stolen horses had been delivered across the line. Instead of making for the town, after securing Peters’ skates, Markham had followed the river bends beyond the town, to a point where he could join his rascally confederates with the horse herd.

“How do you feel, Peters?” repeated Toynbee, after waiting a long time for a reply.

“Mighty nigh locoed,” said Peters.

“No wonder! Say, you hit the railroad iron with your head when you went over the embankment. Any other head but yours would probably have been cracked.”

“You can’t crack a saphead,” commented Peters, but not in bitterness.

Next day, when Peters was thinking of getting out of his bed and helping drive the horses back to the ranch, no less a person than Uncle Silas Goddard walked into his room. Uncle Silas was an iron-gray man, big and broad, and with a regular heart under his ribs. He had received a telegram, signed Reece Bailey, per Morton, and had come to North Dakota by first train.

There were greetings, not those of a pleased employer for a worthy employee, but more in line with what one’s next of kin might say in circumstances altogether creditable. Bailey was “coming fine,” and would be on the job again in two or three weeks; and Peters, the doctor said, would be fit as a fiddle in seven days, at the outside. The horses were on the way back to Morton’s.

“What about Markham?” queried Peters.

Uncle Silas Goddard’s cheery face grew troubled. Well, Markham was only a boy, and a very foolish one. He had had a hard lesson. No stock had been lost, and Uncle Silas felt that he ought not to be too hard on Markham. He was going to let Markham go, on a promise to leave the country and make something of himself in other parts. Any one at all acquainted with Uncle Silas might have known he would do that very thing.

“As for you, Nixon,” the big ranchowner went on, “there’s a job waiting in Montana for a chap of your heft and disposition. But do you want to return to the home ranch?” he asked quizzically. “Miss Hesther Morton sends a very kindly message to you by me. She is sorry for a lot of things, she says, and hopes to see you right soon.”

But Nixon J. Peters had seen another light. He recalled his saphead dreams of rescuing Hesther from a burning house, and the shamed red stained his cheeks to the tow-colored hair.

“Miss Morton, all at once, is wasting her consideration on the wrong party. Uncle Silas,” said Peters. “I’m for Montana as soon as you want me there.”

“Good!” exclaimed Uncle Silas, and clasped Peters’ hand with a fervor that suggested not only good will but hearty congratulations.

SOME INTERESTING FACTS

In Austria women are now employed as undertakers and gravediggers.

The ancients credited the raven with unusual longevity, but modern investigation shows that it is not warranted. The bird rarely lives more than seventy years.

United States government irrigation projects completed or under way represent an expense of eighty-five million dollars and involve the reclamation of more than two million five hundred thousand acres.

Geese are fattened for market in some parts of Europe by confining them in dark rooms, to which light is admitted at intervals, causing them to eat seven or eight meals a day.

Rabbit fur is said to be supplanting wool in felt-hat making in Australia, where thirty-two factories are in operation. The fur is considered much superior to the finest merino for this purpose, and millions of rabbit skins are used annually.

The Ottoman Empire is made up of Turkey in Europe—the strip of territory stretching across from the Black Sea to the Adriatic—Turkey in Asia, which includes Arabia, Syria, and Palestine, and provinces in the isles of Samos and Cyprus are also under the sultan’s rule.

The Municipal Building, New York, is the largest structure under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Public Buildings and Offices. It contains about one thousand offices and has about ten thousand visitors daily. It is the world’s largest building of its kind.

The Basket-Ball Boss

by Leslie W. Quirk

“THE deal can be closed at your earliest convenience. Very truly yours.... That’s all, Miss Ticknor. Bring in the letter just as soon as you write it, please.”

As the stenographer closed the door behind her, Freeman Judd spun his pivoted desk chair in a half circle, and, with hands clasped across his stomach, gazed thoughtfully at the calendar on the wall. For a full minute he sat this way without moving; then, whirling back again, he pressed the button at the side of his desk.

A freckle-faced, red-headed office boy answered.

“George,” said Mr. Judd, “I guess he’s waited long enough. Tell him to come in now.”

The office boy grinned appreciatively. A moment later the door opened to admit a dapper young man, who looked something as Freeman Judd must have looked twenty-five years before.

The embarrassment as father and son faced each other ended when Judd, senior, said brusquely, “Sit down, Vern; sit down! Chairs don’t cost anything in this office. What’s the matter now? What are you here for?”

The boy looked him frankly in the eyes. “Thompson Brothers fired me this morning.”

If his father was irritated, his face did not betray the fact. “As a business man,” he grunted, “you don’t seem to be much of a success.”

The boy swallowed. It was like downing a bitter dose of medicine. “You see, father,” he blurted out, “I’ve come to believe you were right and I was wrong. I want to start in the business here just the way I did four years ago.”

“Ah, you do!” Freeman Judd surveyed his son a little grimly. “Suppose we review this thing, Vern. You’re a rich man’s son. When you went to college, I gave you a good big allowance. I wanted you to have all the advantages that I had missed. What did you do there? Did you stick to anything? Did you learn one thing—one single thing—thoroughly?”

“Not a thing,” admitted Vernon Judd cheerfully, “unless you count basket-ball.”

“Basket-ball? H’m! I don’t see how that is going to help you make a success of life. Well, you graduated, though Heaven knows how, and came in here. Three months later you quit. Things were too slow for you. Your grandfather had left you a little legacy, and you wanted action.”

The younger Judd chuckled. “Didn’t I get it?”

“You did,” admitted his father, allowing his face the luxury of a smile; “you got the action and the Wall Street boys got your money. Since then you’ve tried a dozen things, never holding on to one of them longer than a month or six weeks. And now you breeze back and ask me to give you another chance.”

The boy leaned forward earnestly, his mouth tightening into the same lines of determination that marked his father’s.

“Dad, a week ago I took myself into my room and had a frank talk with myself. When I was through, I’d made up my mind to quit being a chump and to turn myself into something useful. I wasn’t fired from Thompson Brothers’ because I didn’t do my work, but because I wouldn’t stand for a piece of dirty office politics. I’ve found myself. This time I’ll stick it out. Do I get another chance, or not?”

Freeman Judd looked the boy over, much as though he were eying a horse. “Vern,” he said finally, “I never thought I’d do such a thing, but I’m inclined to give you another go at your old job. I know you’ve got the goods, and I believe at last——” A knock at the door stopped him. “Come in, Wallber.”

“Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Judd,” said the head clerk, as he entered, with an envelope in his hand, “but the man who brought this said it had to have an answer right away.”

As he made out the letterhead, the boy’s face became a shade paler. His father scanned the communication with a frown.

“Vern”—the voice had taken a harsher tone—“this is a statement from Flett & Son. They say you owe them one hundred and fifteen dollars for some evening clothes, and that if it isn’t paid they will be obliged to sue.”

“It’s a rotten trick, dad. I bought the stuff eight months ago; I’d have paid for it, too, if I hadn’t lost my jobs while I was laying aside the money. I haven’t been dodging them. I explained how it was. Anyhow, they hadn’t any business sending a bill to you. I’m over age and——”

His father stood up abruptly. “It’s legalized blackmail,” he snapped. “They think I’ll pay this rather than allow it to get into the papers. And they’re right.” He paced up and down the room without speaking. Suddenly he faced the boy. “Vern, I’ve changed my mind about you. I don’t want you in here until you can prove to me that you are able to get a job paying enough to live on, and to hold it for a reasonable time.”

“But, dad——”

His father held up an interrupting hand. “No use talking. I have decided. When you have learned to stand alone on your own two feet, then you may come in with Judd & Company—not before. Any more bills? No? All right; I’ll pay this one. Then I intend giving you an order on the cashier for thirty dollars. Take that and buy a railroad ticket that will land you the greatest distance from New York. I don’t care where you go; the only condition is that you finally land a job, and that you keep it for a full six months. That shall be the test. Understand? Six months in the same position.”

Vernon Judd nodded soberly.

“When you’ve shown you can do that, and have lived on what you earn without running bills, come back and you’ll find a desk waiting for you. If you can’t do it, I don’t want to see you again. Well?”

“That’s a fair proposition, dad. Six months at the same job on a living wage. I’ll do it.”

Freeman Judd sucked in his lower lip. “Here’s your order for the thirty dollars, then. And remember, Vern, nobody wants to see you win more than your old dad. Good-by. As you go through the outer office, tell Wallber I want to see him.”

II.

The round football struck the branch and descended, bouncing merrily upon the head of the innocent bystander.

“We didn’t mean to, mister,” apologized the small boy who had done the kicking.

“Don’t mind me. I’d rather get a crack on the head than not.” In spite of a stomach that lacked breakfast, Vernon Judd managed a smile as he tossed back the “association” football.

Hard knocks aplenty had toughened Vern since the day the train dropped him into the bustling Middle Western city, an unknown person, in an unfamiliar place; and, what was more, he was without trade or profession. For three days he had been an “extra” hotel porter; for a week, till the dull season set in, he had opened boxes in a department-store basement; and twice he had earned scraps of money by unloading trucks. But of continuous employment he had found none.

He squared his shoulders now at the cheering discovery that both factories had entrances within a hundred feet of where he was standing. Along the big shop on his right ran the sign. “Landon Sporting Goods—Used All Over the World”; across the street, equally large letters shouted. “Bloss Company—Perfection Sporting Goods—For Sale Everywhere.”

Both Landon and Bloss, the original owners, were dead; but for years the managers of the rival factories had waged an advertising war from Cairo, Illinois, to Cairo, Egypt. Basket-balls, baseballs, footballs, hockey sticks, bats, golf clubs, boxing gloves, and everything else for the athlete had been boosted and knocked by each side. And here the two competitors glowered at each other less than a stone’s throw apart. To Vern, who all his life had read their advertising and used their goods, it seemed like coming suddenly upon the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon Bonaparte.

The job hunter meditated. “Let’s see. The year we had the big championship team we used the Bloss basket-ball; the year after that we used the Landon. It wasn’t as good, and we weren’t as good. All right, Bloss, old boy, you’ll get the first chance.”

He entered boldly. A pugnacious office boy on the other side of a wooden railing stopped him.

“Whatcha want?” demanded the guardian of the gate suspiciously.

Hard experience had taught Vern that discretion is sometimes half the battle.

“I want to see the superintendent,” he answered evasively.

“Creighton? Lissen, if you wanta job I’ll save you a lot of time right off the bat by tellin’ you there ain’t none.”

“You tell Mr. Creighton that Mr. Judd—Mr. Vernon Judd, of New York—wants to see him,” insisted the caller, with as much haughtiness as a man without a thin dime can muster.

Reluctantly the office boy slouched toward the door marked “Private.”

“All right,” he said, emerging a minute later. “Go on in.”

Vern had no more than entered the room before he saw that his hopes were doomed to failure. He had counted upon finding the superintendent an athletic type of man, to whom his own experience in athletics might appeal. Instead, he was greeted by a frowning, cigar-chewing individual, who plainly had never taken an active part in any game except from the side lines.

“Well,” he snapped, as he thrust some papers under the desk blotter, “what do you want? A job?” His voice rasped like a file. “Can’t you see that sign out there? Go to the other entrance between seven and eight Thursday morning. Don’t take up my time.”

“I know I am taking up valuable time, Mr. Creighton,” Vern returned quietly, “but I think I’ve had valuable experience that might fit me for——”

“Haven’t a thing for you. No use talking.” The shrill voice rose higher. “Not a thing. Nothing at all. _Good_ morning!”

The young man found himself on the street again, with a sense of injustice rankling in his mind. As he stood there trying to soothe his temper before tackling the Landon people, his eye caught the end of a tiny tragedy.

He heard an excited little scream. He saw a white-sleeved arm thrust frantically from one of the second-story windows of the Landon factory. He watched a square of snowy linen float out on a passing gust of wind. For a second it seemed that it would escape the clutches of the waiting tree and come safely to the ground; but just at the critical moment the breeze died, dropping the white handkerchief, like an opened parachute, across a network of autumn foliage. There it rested, twenty feet or more above the sidewalk and a dozen from the girl at the window.

Vern looked up. The instinct of mere politeness that had first urged him to offer assistance tautened into enthusiasm. He told himself the girl was more charming than any girl he had ever seen.

“I’ll get it,” he called encouragingly, though without the slightest idea in the world how he might bring about that end.

“If you will, please,” she begged. “It’s a bit of real Irish lace, and I haven’t any business owning it—let alone losing it.”

As he stared at the girl and the handkerchief, the inspiration came.

“Here, buddie,” he said, “lend me your football for a minute.”

Obediently the small boy tossed it over. It was round, but slightly smaller and not as heavy as the basket-ball to which he had been accustomed. Also, the handkerchief was much higher than any basket for which he had tried in a game.

He poised it carefully, swinging it up and down in his two hands to gauge the weight. Then, with a quick flirt of his arms, he shot it up and over.

It curved in a long arc and plumped squarely into the middle of the white patch in the tree. The twigs bent. The handkerchief fluttered down into his waiting hands.

As he stood there brushing the dust from the fragile fabric, the girl from Landon’s hurried out to him. “I want to thank you,” she said gratefully.

He looked at her. Risking the chance of being thought impudent, he said boldly, “And I want to know you. My name is Judd—Vernon Judd.”

She stared straight into his eyes for a moment, and was apparently satisfied with what she saw there. “I—I don’t think it will be difficult,” she said, almost in a whisper, and turned away, confused and blushing.

“Say, young fella!” Vern turned to the new speaker, who proved to be Creighton, the disagreeable superintendent of the Bloss factory, his face now stretching into a smile. “Say! I saw you make that basket-ball throw. Where did you ever play? What! You mean you were the center of that champ team, the 1911 five that were never licked? Listen!” He put his hand ingratiatingly upon the boy’s arm. “We have a basket-ball team in this factory that’s a world-beater, and we need a new man for center. Lemme see you throw again, to make sure that other toss wasn’t a lucky accident. Hey, Murph!”

A carrot-topped head popped out of the window over the entrance. “Get the big wastebasket, Murph, and hold it out there. I wanta see this guy make a throw. Come on, you; I’ll give you three chances, because it’s a hard shot.”

For once in his life, Vern felt nervous. The skill that had made him star of a star team seemed to have oozed quite away.

“Try!” the girl whispered. “You can do it. I know you can.”

Again he poised the ball and threw. Then, holding his breath, he watched it wing its curved path through the air—up, over, down; down, fair, and true, into the mouth of the waiting wicker basket.

“Yea, bo!” shouted the enthusiastic Murphy. “He can thread the needle all right.”

“Look here, my man!” Superintendent Creighton caught Vern’s coat lapel. “If I give you a job in the stock room at ten a week, will you get out and play on our basket-ball team this winter?”

“Will I?” asked Vern. “Try me and see.”

The girl from Landon’s extended her hand to him. “Here’s wishing you good luck,” she said, “till——”

“Till when?”

“Till the Bloss five meets the Landon five—till your team plays ours.”

III.

The “big five” from the Bloss Company lined up for the last minute of the final practice before the championship game of the season.

“Fast now!” jerked Captain “Red” Murphy as he tossed the ball to “Curly” Clark, who shot it to Clif Sefton, who underhanded it to Felber, who dribbled it a moment and then bounced it to Vernon Judd, who completed the circuit and play by landing it neatly and accurately in the basket.

“Attaboy!” Red growled. “Now the same thing on the other side, fellows—and lots of pep!”

Three times in succession, from three different and difficult angles. Vern had the pleasure of seeing his throws drop safely inside the iron-rimmed net.

“Good enough!” admitted Red. “We’ll show those Landon counterfeits how to play to-morrow night. Now just a minute.” He gathered the four regulars and the two substitutes about him. “Boys, you all know we’ve had the best season ever, and you all know this mix-up with Landon is going to be our biggest and most important game—and our hardest. We want to win a little worse than we want to go on living.” He turned to Vernon Judd. “But maybe you don’t understand what I mean, Judd. Of course, you’ve only been working here for five months and you——”

“Pretty nearly six,” corrected Vern. He had been marking them off on the calendar in his room.

“Well, anyhow, unless you’ve been through a basket-ball season with the sporting-goods teams, you can’t know how much it means to everybody in this place to beat the Landon bunch. We’ve got to do it, understand? Everybody that works here feels the same as college fellows feel about their team. But that ain’t all. This game gets into every sporting page of every big newspaper in the country. That means big advertising for the winners. And advertising—sport-page stuff in news—means better business, and better business means more money to all of us—oh, not a lot, maybe, but every little bit helps. Get me?”

“I think I understand, Murph.”

“Don’t do no harm to tell you, anyhow. The people we work for want us to win; the people we work with want us to win; we want to win ourselves, the same as all real players do. And, Vern”—he put his hand affectionately upon the young fellow’s jersey—“if you shoot baskets Saturday night the way you did just now, we will win—sure!”

As Vernon Judd left the factory’s model gymnasium, where the team had been holding its final practice, his body tingled from the rough-towel rub that followed the shower; but he also tingled internally from sheer pleasure and the joy of living. He had made good. Coming into the Bloss works practically a nobody, by merit alone he had won friendship and respect, as well as a place on a cracking good basket-ball five. Best of all, for the first time in his life, he was really interested in the business of earning a living.

Life as a whole had changed for him. Hard work in his department had brought him a boost in the pay envelope, and his spare moments were busied with a correspondence course in advertising. He wished his father could see him jump out of bed before the winter sun rose, to hurry to a job that had become a pleasure.

He was so busy patting himself on the back that only chance prevented his colliding with a footfarer bound the other way.

“Hazel Wayne!” he blurted, as his surprised glance showed him the girl from Landon’s whose acquaintance he had made through the rescue of the lace handkerchief.

Her face was pale and troubled. His quick eye noted that she was holding her library book almost ostentatiously.

“Practicing hard, Vern?” she queried, with a nervous little laugh, “Do you really think you’re going to beat us Saturday?”

“Sure of it, Hazel. You’d better order your mourning suit right now.” As he turned to walk with her toward the corner where the Weldon Park cars passed, it became growingly evident that she was ill at ease.

“What’s the matter, Hazel?” he asked finally. “If you don’t like something I’ve said or done, tell me what it was and I’ll apologize.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said, in a low voice, “no, there—there’s nothing like that.”

“But something’s wrong. What is it? We’ve been pretty good friends for over five months now. Surely you can tell me.”

Still she was silent.

“Is it Creighton?” he asked lightly. “Haven’t you changed your mind about him yet? Do you still think he’s a ‘low-down——’”

“Ss-s-sh!” She put her hand over his mouth. “Don’t—don’t ever repeat what I said about him—not to anybody.”

The Weldon Park car was bowling nearer.

“What’s wrong, Hazel?” he asked, leaning closer. “Tell me.”

It was plain she was struggling with herself. Twice she opened her mouth as though to speak. “No,” she said firmly, in the end. “I—I haven’t anything to say—nothing at all—except to wish you luck to-morrow night. That’s all.”

Thirty seconds later, as Vern watched the car whirl around the corner into Moneta Avenue, his face bore a puzzled twist that was still in evidence after a brisk walk had brought him back to the factory entrance.

“Hello, Billy!” he greeted the night watchman. “I left some correspondence-school stuff in my locker. I see there’s a light in the supe’s office, so it will be O. K. to pass me in.”

With a grunt of assent, old Billy led the way to the coat room and watched Vern take the leaflets from the locker shelf. Partly deaf, the watchman did not heed the fragment of conversation that floated down the corridor from Creighton’s open door.

“It’s all right,” the superintendent was saying. “Monday night ends it. I tell you, I’ve worked three months getting things fixed so I can tangle the factory into a dozen knots just before I——”

The voice trailed away into a confidential whispering that Vern could not catch.

Vaguely the words disquieted him. Was it possible that Creighton was all Hazel Wayne had said? How could she know? Hazel had never worked in the Bloss factory. Her job was in the Landon cashier’s office, and her father and brother were employed in the Landon leather-working department. Probably her distrust of Creighton was a woman’s whim, sprung of the natural bitterness resulting from his successful management of the rival factory. But the boy’s suspicions were not allayed at the sight of the superintendent’s startled face when he met Vern at the outer door.

“What the devil are you doing here?” demanded Creighton, with a worried glance at his late visitor, now turning to trudge up the street.

Vern’s answer seemed to reassure him a little.

“Come back,” he said abruptly. “Come into my office. I meant to have a little talk with you to-morrow, but we might as well thresh it out now.”

They sat down, facing each other.

“Judd,” said the superintendent, “you like your job, don’t you?”

Vern responded with all the enthusiasm he could muster. Creighton cocked his cigar in the corner of his mouth.

“You’ve done well here. You’re getting fifteen a week now, and you are in line to get more”—he paused—“if you can keep your mouth shut and obey orders.”

The tone of the talk was objectionable, but Vernon Judd’s six months were too nearly at an end for him to object. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly, “I want to advance, of course.”

Creighton leaned forward. “Judd,” he confided, “there’s one way for you to hang on to your job—and only one way.” The change in his voice was startling.

“What do you mean?”

The superintendent’s heavy eyebrows contracted in a sinister line. “The Bloss basket-ball team must lose to-morrow night. You’ve got to let Landon win. Understand? You—not the team, but _you_—must see that the game goes to them.”

Vern could hardly believe he had heard correctly. “Let Landon win! You mean I—I must throw the game?”

“Exactly! I’m glad you understand. You know how to do it, of course, and you can do it alone, because you make more baskets than all the rest of them put together. Get hurt; pretend you’ve injured your arm. I don’t care how you do it. But throw the game. Remember, I am your boss; I am the boss of the Bloss basket-ball team. If you expect to hold your job here, throw—that—game!”

Vern tried to think quickly. “But—don’t you want——”

“No, I don’t!” Creighton stood up, glaring fiercely. “No! No! I want the Blosses to lose that game. Never mind why! That’s none of your business. You want to hold your job. All right. Throw that game. If you don’t, the first thing I’ll do the following Monday morning will be to fire you.”

“But I haven’t done anything to warrant——”

“Bah! What are you doing here this time of night? Do you think the police will lake your word before they take mine? You’ve got folks somewhere. How will they like it when they hear you’ve been hauled into a police station for being a petty thief? I can do it all right, and I will—if you don’t throw that game. Think it over. Don’t try to double cross me, because it can’t be done. That’s all.”

Uneasy and troubled, Vernon Judd spent his trip to the boarding house trying to figure out a solution for the mystery. What was the tangled undercurrent? Was Creighton doing all this simply to win a few dollars by betting? The notion was ridiculous. Then what was the answer?

On the table in the front hall of the boarding house lay a note from his father that thickened his difficulties. It had come by the late mail. It ran:

DEAR VERN: Glad to learn from your letter that you’ve been doing so well. As long as you have held out over five months already, I am going to make this the test. Win or lose this Bloss job—that is the deciding factor in our wager as to the stuff of which you are made. There is no reason why you should be fired from Bloss & Company, and you must not let yourself be fired. Stay with them till the six months are up—or don’t come back.

FREEMAN JUDD.

Vern crumpled the letter in his hand. A pretty mess he had gotten into! All his notions of honesty and sportsmanship recoiled at the thought of throwing the game. Yet if he did not——

“_Br-r-r-r!_” It was the boarding-house telephone that roused him from his reverie.

“Hello! Excuse me for disturbing you, but I must speak to Mr. Judd.... Oh, is this you, Vern? This is Hazel Wayne speaking. I must see you now. I did have something to tell you before, but I couldn’t make myself say it. I’ve come all the way back to tell it to you now. I am at Baker’s Drug Store, just a block from your house. You’ll come right over, Vern, won’t you?”

He buttoned his overcoat and plunged out into the snowy night air. Hazel was waiting for him just outside the store, and as he appeared she hurried toward him.

“Vern, I had to see you to-night. I hadn’t been to the library when I met you before. I’d been waiting to talk to you after you finished your basket-ball practice. But I was—afraid.”

“What is it?” he asked gently. “You needn’t be afraid to tell anything to me, Hazel.”

She winked back one tear, but another rolled down her cheek. “Vern, you mustn’t think the—the wrong way about me, but that basket-ball game to-morrow night is a matter of life and death—almost. And your team mustn’t win. You must let the Landon five beat you, because——Oh, I can’t tell you why, but you must do it—you must. For my sake, Vern!”

She put both hands in his; then, before he could stop her, she was plunging blindly toward the car. He watched her as she stood a moment on the platform, shoulders shaking and a handkerchief to her eyes.

Boss, father, and girl all urging him to betray his trust! If he tried—if his team won—he would lose his job, his chance to make something of himself in the bigger business world, and the friendship of Hazel Wayne.

For the first time since he had known her, he realized that she was necessary to his future happiness.

IV.

As the referee’s whistle sent the Bloss and Landon basket-ball teams scurrying to their positions the following evening, Hazel Wayne leaned forward, with a quick intake of breath. The game was about to begin. Whatever the outcome might mean to the workers and friends of the two factories, it meant infinitely more to her. She told herself that the Landon five would win, that it must win; but she could not stifle the fear in her heart.

“We’ll beat them,” said the girl at her right, a fellow worker in the Landon executive offices; “yes, we’ll beat them if——”

“——if Vern Judd doesn’t score too many baskets against us,” finished another Landon worker. “They say he’s a wonder.”

They both nodded sagely. The fear in Hazel Wayne’s heart became a hysterical laugh. Of course! And Vern wouldn’t try too hard, after what she had told him; surely he wouldn’t!

“Ready, Landon?” asked the referee. “Ready, Bloss?” He shot the ball high into the air, piped a shrill blast on his whistle as it began to descend, and the great game was on.

The two opposing centers leaped for the yellow ball. But Vernon Judd was the quicker and the surer. His right hand slapped it, shooting it unerringly to Captain Murphy. The thud hurt Hazel Wayne like a blow.

Dully, despairingly, she watched Murphy catch the ball and pass it to Clark, who shot it clear across the court to Felber. By this time Judd was racing up the middle, practically unguarded. As the ball came to him in a long, driving throw, he dropped it to the floor, tapped it closer to the basket, and then, with a pretty toss, looped it upward and forward, scoring the goal. At the end of the first minute, the score stood: Bloss, 2; Landon, 0.

Huddled forward in her balcony seat at the other end of the gymnasium, Hazel Wayne allowed her breath to escape with a gasp. He was trying, then; he was playing his best. Perhaps, though, this was only a flash, to allay suspicions. She would wait a little while before she condemned him.

Again the opposing centers leaped for the ball; again Vern shot it to a member of his team. This time, however, a lanky Landon youth intercepted the throw from Murphy to Clark, and the ball bounced out of bounds.

It was Bloss’ throw-in, and Felber, left guard, picked it up. Captain Murphy called a quick signal, dodged under the arm of the player who was covering him, and took the throw in the extreme left-hand corner of the court, in Landon territory. The other three players shifted to the boundary lines. Vernon Judd, dodging free, sped down the middle of the unprotected court.

Hazel Wayne watched him with fascinated eyes. She knew the play; it was the old crisscross forward pass. Why didn’t the Landon boys cover Vern? Must he assume the entire responsibility for the failure at the end? For she told herself positively that he would fail, that he had done all they might reasonably expect of him.

Murphy threw, gauging ball and player to a nicety. Ten feet beyond the center Vern caught it while running at full speed. Then, with a single bewildering movement, he lifted it high above his head and shot another basket with clean precision.

The score was now: Bloss, 4; Landon, 0. The Bloss adherents raised the rafters with their mad cheering. In the little balcony at the other end, Hazel Wayne leaned back with clenched hands.

“He doesn’t care enough for me to do what I asked,” she told herself bitterly; and she forced herself to smile and nod when the girl at her right expressed the hope that something would happen to Vern Judd before the game was done. She wished something would—almost! Not a serious hurt, of course, but——

By the time the ball was in play again, the Landon team seemed to have found itself. It reasoned rightly that if the other four Bloss players were to act as “feeders” to Judd, counting on him to shoot the baskets, the thing to do was to corner and pocket and guard him so closely that he would have no opportunity for unhampered throwing. So effectively did they carry out this campaign that for ten minutes or more he was hopelessly entangled in the mesh of opposing players.

They went farther. The Bloss star now began to bear the brunt of every attack. His arm was hacked on throws. He was tripped and fouled in all the artistic ways that could escape the eyes of the official. Twice he went to the floor with a crash, and once he was tumbled headfirst out of bounds.

But Hazel Wayne, watching the game with the eye of an expert, dared hope there was another reason for Vernon Judd’s sudden eclipse. And when the Bloss rooters began to move uneasily as he failed to score goals, and shrunk back when he should have charged, and submitted tamely to an opponent’s making a pass when he should have scrimmaged for a toss-up, she grew more and more convinced that he was no longer doing his best.

A little later, the referee caught a Landon player fouling him, and Vern took the ball for a free throw. Poising it carefully, he shot it high in the air, a good five feet to one side of the basket. The Bloss sympathizers, mouths open to cheer the scoring point, allowed them to close with dumb amazement. It wasn’t even a good try.

“Now watch us!” bragged the girl by Hazel’s side. “I heard this afternoon that Vern Judd had sold out, and I guess he has.”

Hazel looked at her with troubled eyes. All at once she felt cold and sick, as if something terrible had happened.

“It looks that way,” agreed the girl on her left. “Well, every man has his price. Sometimes it’s money, sometimes business politics, and sometimes a woman. I wonder——” And she glanced at Hazel out of the tail of her eye.

“He—he wouldn’t sell out,” Hazel told the girl weakly. “He isn’t that kind.”

The other laughed meaningly. “Isn’t he? Oh, I don’t——Look! Look! What do you think now?”

Vern had been clear for once. The ball came to him waist-high—and he dropped it! Like a flash, the captain of the Landon five caught it up and shot it half the length of the court to another player near the boundary line. He passed it to a third, who scored a neat goal on a side diagonal pass that gave him the ball directly in front of the basket.

The score was now: Bloss, 4; Landon, 2.

“A goal at last,” said one of the girls, sighing, “thanks to Mr. Judd.”

“It was an accident,” defended Hazel, angry without reason. “Anybody is apt to drop the ball now and then.”

Both teams scored again from the field before the end of the first half, and, during the last minute, Landon crept closer on a palpable body-check and free throw. When the whistle blew, the score was: Bloss, 6; Landon, 5.

The teams changed goals. The Bloss basket was now at the balcony end, where Hazel Wayne could lean forward and look straight down into it.

On the toss-up that began the second half, Vern’s attempt to whack the ball was so weak that it brought a hiss or two from the spectators. Worse still, it made them watch him suspiciously after that. When he failed twice on free throws, and Murphy took his place after the next foul, the crowd began to mutter.

“What do you think now about the little angel named Vern Judd?” triumphantly demanded the girl on Hazel’s right.

“I—I don’t want to talk, please!” said Hazel. She couldn’t think; she couldn’t understand her own emotions or the wonderful metamorphosis of her desires. Something had changed her whole point of view. The integrity of Vernon Judd meant more to her, all at once, than anything else in the world. Indignant at first that he should play so well when she had asked him not to, she was now praying that he would yet do his best, that he would strive to win like a clean sportsman, that he would forget everything save his own honesty and good name. If he wasn’t that kind——She dared not complete the thought.

The game wore on, with varying fortunes. Players from first one team and then the other rushed the ball up and down the court in zigzagging passes, tapping, tossing, dribbling, shooting it from man to man, looping it for the basket, scrambling for it when it missed, and trotting back to their positions when a goal was scored.

Eventually the Landon five began to assume the upper hand. There was no denying that its center outclassed Vern—or, at least, the Vern who was playing to-night. He could throw better, he could block better with his arm, he could bat the ball better on the toss-up. Because of these advantages, Landon finally assumed the lead by the slender margin of a single point in the 9-8 score.

“If I could only talk to him for a minute!” Hazel whispered to herself, watching the player fail in encounter after encounter. “If I could tell him to forget me, and play—play! I must have been mad to ask him to sacrifice himself for me!”

She watched, with staring eyes, as he whacked clumsily at the ball.

“Vern!” she called appealingly. “Vern!”

But he couldn’t hear her, of course. The whole gymnasium was a Babel of confused shouts. She could only lean forward, with her hands clutching the balcony rail, and follow him with her eyes; gloating when he broke free or handled the ball, wincing when opponents crashed into him, and telling herself always that if the opportunity offered he would prove his true character yet.

Some official at the side of the court made an announcement. Hazel could not hear what he said, and she turned to a man behind her for the information.

“It’s the usual warning that there are only three minutes more to play,” he explained.

Three minutes! Why, it couldn’t be possible. There must be some hideous mistake! Only three minutes before the game ended—and Landon one point ahead! That meant, unless some miracle took place, Bloss was beaten—beaten because a girl had asked a man to forget honor for her sake.

She had no watch. Yet she must time the game to its bitter end. The torture of waiting constantly for the final whistle, without knowing what moment it might come, was too great a strain to bear. Already her heart was pounding——

With a sudden inspiration, she dropped the finger tips of her right hand upon the pulse of the other wrist. The normal heartbeat was a little over seventy, wasn’t it? That meant practically a surge of the artery for every second.

She began to count—one, two, three, four, five, and so on up to the end of the first minute. Out on the floor, the ten players were scurrying here and there like frightened ants, apparently without aim or purpose, but in reality dodging and running with preconceived plans. But neither team scored again. Nor did Vern stand out conspicuously in the playing.

The second minute measured itself by her pulse beats. Now and then, during some tense moment, her fingers pressed so hard that she lost the steady throb-throb of the wrist. But she knew within a second or two when the final minute of play began.

The antlike players shifted toward the Bloss goal. They were almost constantly within throwing distance now, and one accurate toss would win. A dozen times the chance seemed to have come, but always there was some blocking Landon opponent.

“Fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four,” Hazel went on mechanically. Then, with a convulsive start, she realized what the figures meant. They were the final grains of sand in the hourglass. Her finger tips shook free of the wrist, and it was three seconds before they pressed the pulse again.

“Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty,” she resumed her counting, and lost the next beat as her heart stopped with the shock of apprehensive fear. Then she laughed with nervous relief. Sixty pulse beats weren’t quite a minute; there were from ten to fifteen still to record before the final whistle.

The ten players bunched just below the balcony, in front of the Bloss goal. As if realizing that the game depended upon their work during the next few seconds, they roused themselves above their natural speed and skill.

“Five fighting to prevent another basket,” Hazel told herself, “and four fighting just as hard to make it—no, five! Five! He is trying! I know he is! Oh, he must be!” But she could not be quite sure.

She saw Captain Murphy whisper something to him. Vern nodded. Then, so suddenly that she could hardly follow the play, the Bloss team scattered. The ball catapulted to the side of the court, where the whacking arm of Felber drove it back and toward the other end. Murphy caught it, whirled completely around to throw off the guard hovering near him, started a dribble, and finally made the pass straight toward the Landon goal.

Hazel raised her eyes in wonderment. Nearly halfway down the court Vern was sprinting. A warning cry from the captain made him turn on his heel and throw up his hands. But he was an instant too late. Clean and hard, with the crack of a gun, the ball caught him full in the face, staggering him backward.

He stood there, blinking like one who has suddenly lost his sight. The ball was in his hands. From all angles the Landon five rushed toward him. His own players shouted for the ball. His test had come, Hazel told herself breathlessly. Then, as he made no move, she stopped breathing altogether.

Her eyes were blurring with tears. She lifted her handkerchief to dry them, and saw that it was the square of Irish lace he had rescued the day they first met.

“Vern!” she called, putting all the breath of her full lungs into the cry. “Vern!”

He lifted his head. His eyes were winking rapidly, and he had difficulty in seeing her at all.

“Vern!” she called again. Leaning far out over the protecting rail of the balcony, she allowed her handkerchief to flutter down toward the basket below. It settled on the little ledge where the bracket of the iron rim met the wall.

There must have come to Vernon Judd the memory of that other time when he had arched a ball up and over and down upon Hazel Wayne’s Irish lace handkerchief. Perhaps the recollection brought confidence in his ability to do it again. Now, with a swinging, overhand-loop shot, he hurled the yellow basket-ball at the white target.

Like a winging swallow it rose till it reached the apex of its arc; then it sped downward to the backing board just behind the basket. The rebound drove it against the front rim. It bounded back again, brushed the handkerchief caressingly, and finally toppled gently into the netting for a goal. Almost on the instant, the final whistle shrilled.

The game was ended. The Bloss five had won by a score of 10-9.

V.

Judging by the expression on his face, Vernon Judd was about as elated over scoring the winning basket for the Bloss team as a criminal in court would be over receiving a stiff sentence.

“And that’s just what it amounts to,” he told himself, marching glumly off the playing court. “My sentence is that I be fired in disgrace from the factory, lose my six-month test to prove my right to a desk with Judd & Co., and sacrifice whatever chance I had of winning—her.”

Somebody slapped him on the shoulder. He looked up irritably, only to discover that it was his father.

“Why, dad,” he greeted, “what in the dickens are you doing out here?”

“In town on business,” explained Freeman Judd cryptically. “I heard there was a basket-ball game to-night, and I figured I could find you here. Quite a game, eh?”

Vern clenched his hands. “A bigger, more important one than you think, dad.” It was hard to go on and explain that his job at the factory hinged upon the outcome, but he managed it bravely.

His father heard him to the end, without interrupting. Once or twice he frowned a little, as if there were some worry on his mind, but he offered no comment. When the boy was quite done, he looked at him steadily.

“You played to win?” he asked.

“Of course. You see, I——”

“All right. I wanted to be sure, Vern. Now, about this job proposition of ours. You won’t stick out your six months with Bloss, you say. Too bad you came so close, my boy, but you know I never budge an inch. A bargain’s a bargain with me.”

Looking up quickly, Vern fancied he detected a twinkle in his father’s eyes. But when he searched for it again it was gone.

“I’m not asking you to go back on your proposition,” he said. “I don’t know exactly——”

“Vern!”

It was Hazel Wayne’s voice. He whirled quickly, and took the hand she extended.

“I want to congratulate you, with all my heart,” she said. “I’m glad you won, Vern.”

He was glad, too—now. It was the first thrill of the victory, but it was well worth while. Some day, he promised himself, he would make Hazel understand how much it had hurt him to win against her wishes.

“You don’t know how ashamed of myself I felt!” she rushed on. “You see, Creighton met me yesterday and told me he was coming over to Landon’s as superintendent and——”

“Creighton! At Landon’s!” exclaimed Vern in astonishment. A new hope sprang up in his heart. “When?”

“Next Tuesday, he said.”

“Oh!” The hope withered and died. On the intervening Monday Creighton would discharge him. “Go on, Hazel!”

“Well,” continued the girl, “he explained that as he had already signed his contract and was the Landon manager, he wanted the Landon people to have the winning basket-ball team this season. If you didn’t try too hard, Vern, that would be possible, he thought. I—I was to ask you not to.”

“But—why?”

“Because if I refused—if Bloss won—I was to lose my job. Father’s and brother Ben’s depended upon the game, too. Tuesday we’ll all be out of work. I don’t know how we’ll manage to live, but”—she smiled at him through her tears—“but I’m glad you won, Vern. It nearly killed me when I thought you weren’t trying honestly to win.”

“I was, Hazel. I know a lot of people didn’t think so, but I was.” He touched his arm gingerly. “Early in the game I bruised the biceps in my right arm in a nasty tumble. My whole arm got sore and stiff. I wanted to drop out and make way for a substitute, but Murph wouldn’t listen. And then, at the end, just before I scored that last goal, the ball hit me an awful whack in the face. It stunned me and blinded me. But I heard you call, and I caught a glimpse of your white handkerchief dropping. I remembered that other day—the first day I ever saw you—and I know absolutely I could shoot the basket. You really won the——”

“Listen, Hazel Wayne!” The voice was Creighton’s; his face was convulsed with rage. “Listen to me, young lady! You double-crossed me to-night, but you’ll pay for it. Out you go Tuesday, along with your old man and your kid brother—the whole kit and parcel of you. And I’ll see to it that you never get another job in this town.” He turned to Vern. “As for you, you young whippersnapper, I don’t have to wait till Tuesday. You’re fired! Understand? Fired! Just as soon as I can swear out a warrant——”

Freeman Judd stepped forward leisurely. “Just a moment,” he interrupted. “You can’t fire this young man.”

“Why not? I’m superintendent of the Bloss Company.”

“Wrong!” The elder Judd spat out the word with evident enjoyment. “You _were_ superintendent. But you can’t fire anybody now because you were fired yourself this afternoon at a meeting of the board of directors.”

“It’s a lie!” blustered Creighton. His eyes gleamed slyly. “If it ain’t a lie, though, I don’t care. I’ll be superintendent of the Landon works next week, and the Bloss Company will find——”

“Wrong again!” Freeman Judd stepped closer. “At five this afternoon the final papers were signed whereby the two concerns come under the same management and ownership. If it’s of any interest to you, I am the man who is merging them. I kicked you out of Bloss’ to-day after reading the reports of an expert accountant and a detective who’ve been checking you up for several weeks; I’ll make sure you stay out of Landon’s. So, Mr. Creighton, you see, you won’t be able to fire anybody from either factory.”

Creighton did not wait to argue. With a sudden leap, he lost himself in the crowd that was making for the outer door.

“Shall I go after him, dad?” asked Vern, his fingers working hungrily.

“No need,” smiled Freeman Judd. “He’ll run across some plain-clothes men just outside. Misappropriation of funds, malicious damage of property, and other charges to answer in court.”

Somebody plucked at Vern’s coat sleeve, and he looked down into Hazel’s startled eyes.

“Is he your father?” she asked, pointing.

“Why, yes! Let me introduce——”

“But he’s just bought both factories,” she said, “and he must be very rich, and—and I thought you were poor, working in the Bloss stockroom. I suppose now——”

“If dad’s new superintendent is willing, I’ll stick to my same job,” promised Vern; “at least, till I’ve been there a full six mouths. How about it, dad?”

“Vern, I’m going to like you better.”

“Thanks, dad. A little later, if you think I measure up, I want a desk job, with more money.” He looked into Hazel Wayne’s eyes once more. “Because, to tell the truth, I’m thinking about getting married as soon as the girl says ‘yes.’”

Hazel Wayne said “Oh!” But she meant “Yes.”

* * * * *

WISEHEAD: “All food when it is being thoroughly masticated contains the germs of tuberculosis.”

Do-tell: “No!”

Wisehead: “Yes, it does; because it’s in the last stages of consumption.”

Clem Frobisher’s Man-sized Job

By Allan Hawkwood

THE scenario writer and partner to Clem Frobisher let out a whoop in response to Clem’s proposal:

“Ed, let’s take a vacation. I’m getting tired of making films. Let’s go back to San Pedro, hire the old boat, and go fishing.”

“Wow! Say, cap’n, I had that notion myself! Do you mean it?”

“You bet I mean it!” Clem rose, and strode up and down, frowning. “I can be cooped up only so long, Ed; then something has to bust. Now that we’ve finished that big five-reel film, I’m going to get back to salt water for a few days.”

“Say, I can smell them fish now!” exclaimed Ed, in ecstasy. “An’ the engine-room oil an’ the ol’ bilge-water stink——Oh, golly! When do we go?”

“Catch a Pedro car, after lunch, charter the old _Sadie_, and off with us! Are you game?”

“Game?” The lanky Iowan grinned. “Say, cap’n, I’m so game that—that I’m growin’ horns right now!”

The Frobisher Producing Company, with Clem as its head, and Ed Davis as partner and scenario writer, had been established in Easthampton for some months. Further, it had made good, largely because of Clem Frobisher’s distinctive ability.

Before getting into the motion-picture business, Clem had run a fishing launch out of San Pedro, Ed being his engineer and chum. He had finally awakened to the fact that, despite his splendid body and brawn, he was backward in education; that ahead of him lay nothing but endless years of fishing and taking out tourists after tuna; and that, if he so chose, he could make something more of himself than this.

Clem had chosen promptly, had sold his launch to old Captain Saunders, and had started in to make the fight. Hampered financially, and by lack of prior education, he had, none the less, flung himself into the work with all his dogged, pugnacious will power. Ed Davis had accompanied him, largely for friendship’s sake, but also with the dream of getting rich by writing plays.

Events had favored the chums. Ed had been victimized by a fraudulent motion-picture concern, whereupon Clem had pitched in and fought the owners; the result had been that he and Ed Davis owned the film company. Since that time the chums had worked it up, until now it was really a well-established business, with a golden future.

Naturally, therefore, they were both ready for a vacation. Clem quite forgot that a man, and particularly a young man, can never entirely get away from his past.

In the old days, Clem had had a reputation along the Pedro water front.

He had never been a hanger-on at bars, or a pool-room loafer; but nature, combined with hard work at sea, had endowed him with a vigorous body and an inclination to use his fists. Along the water front he had been thrown in contact with fishermen, bucko mates, and ordinary seamen of all nations, and when it came to fighting, Clem Frobisher’s name was one to conjure with.

He had been whipped, of course. Yet he was locally known as the toughest young fellow to whip and the best fellow to stand beside in a scrap in all San Pedro; and it must be admitted that he did his best to justify the reputation. Not that he ever sought a fight, or forced one on the other chap, but when the fight came to him he went into it on the jump.

Clem had thought these old days gone forever; but, as he and Ed Davis climbed aboard their San Pedro car that afternoon Fate was waiting for them with a big stick.

II.

“If Cap’n Saunders ain’t here,” said Ed Davis, “we’ll get another boat?”

Clem nodded. Together they were walking up a side street of San Pedro to the little cottage where Captain Ezra Saunders, a retired veteran of many seas and seasons, was living on the income furnished him by two or three fishing boats, which were run by his son Tom, a young fellow a year or two older than Clem.

As they turned in at the gate of the vine-shaded cottage, however, they knew that the captain was at home from the foghorn voice which bellowed forth:

“Howdy, Clem!”

Ezra Saunders was a remarkable old man—though he was scarce sixty years of age. He was crippled by rheumatism, and had lost a leg at the knee from a shark bite, while his right arm had been paralyzed on his last voyage—when he had brought the schooner _Mary Connors_ through a thousand miles of typhoon and had saved the lives of twenty men.

With all this, however, Clem had never seen the old man in gloomy mood. Ever was Captain Saunders smiling, optimistic, cheerful. As he and Ed Davis shook hands, and stepped up to the porch, where easy-chairs awaited them, the skipper bellowed to his wife, and Mrs. Saunders also came forth, to fold each of the visitors in a warm embrace.

“Well, well!” she exclaimed, wiping a tear from her ruddy cheeks. “Clem, if you ain’t become a real city man! Say! Wouldn’t your mother ha’ been proud of you now!”

“I hope so,” and Clem’s brown eyes saddened a trifle. Since his mother’s death Mrs. Saunders had been the only mother he had known—and that had been twelve summers past. Then he looked up, with his old cheerful smile. “I do believe you’re getting thin!”

“Nonsense, you vagabond!” Mrs. Saunders, who weighed two hundred, and knew it, laughed through her welcoming tears. “Don’t you flatter me, now! You boys ain’t goin’ to run right off, I hope? I been makin’ pies to-day, and it seems to me you two rapscallions used to like Ma Saunders’ pies right well before you got stuck up an’ citified.”

“Nothin’ stuck up about me, ’cept my collar,” said Ed Davis, grinning. “I been hankering for your pies, ma, ever since we left Pedro. You bet we’re goin’ to stay a while! How’s Tom? Everybody well?”

Mrs. Saunders’ ruddy face seemed to assume a slightly less cheerful expression.

“Yes,” she said, turning to the door. “Tom’s well. You folks set and talk while I see to them pies. They’re in the oven now.”

The door slammed. Clem looked at the captain’s white-whiskered face and frowned.

“What’s the matter, cap’n?” he asked directly. “You’re looking kind of peaked around the gills. Rheumatism bad again?”

“No-o, I reckon not.” Captain Saunders stroked his beard, and summoned up the ghost of his olden-days smile. “I’m hungerin’ for salt water, I reckon.”

“First time I ever knew you to lie to me, cap’n,” said Clem quietly.

Captain Saunders flushed. He looked at Ed Davis, and then met Clem’s accusing brown eyes. With fumbling fingers he began to fill his pipe.

“Got a match, Clem?” he asked, with a little quaver in his voice.

Silently Clem produced the article in question. It began to seem as though something were very wrong, indeed. Ed Davis sat watching and listening, his grin gone. When the old skipper had lighted the pipe he leaned back and looked at Clem again.

“Well, Clem, I—I guess it was the first time. I ain’t much used to lies. But sometimes lies has to come.”

“Not between us, cap’n,” and Clem’s strong, bronzed face lightened. “What’s the trouble?”

“You,” said the old man, puffing out a huge cloud of smoke.

“I! What do you mean?”

Captain Saunders sighed. His weather-beaten face was set in lines of sadness.

“Clem, you allus been a mighty good boy, and I know it better’n most people. But when it comes to a scrap, you got a reputation around here like a downeast mate. I don’t blame you none, o’ course.”

“Go on,” urged Clem as the skipper paused. He wondered what was coming next.

“Well, Tom allus did admire you a heap, Clem, but since you been gone to the city Tom’s kind o’ got the notion that he’s stepped into your fightin’ boots, and he’s gone around handin’ out some fine lickin’s. For a fact, Tom can light like a streak.”

“I guess he came by it honestly,” was the reply, and Clem smiled slightly as he eyed the old skipper’s broad shoulders.

“Well, mebbe so. But—say, Clem, you know Tom’s a good boy, don’t you?”

“You bet he is!” said Clem, frowning.

Inwardly, he commented otherwise. While he knew Tom Saunders pretty well, he also knew that Tom had companions who were not of the old Saunders strain.

“To tell the truth, Clem, Tom’s been gettin’ kind o’ out o’ hand.” The skipper sighed again. “He’s been comin’ home drunk every once in a while, if you want it straight. He’s tryin’ to be cock o’ the walk around here, like you used to be—but he ain’t doing it your way, Clem.”

Clem Frobisher felt as though a cold hand had touched him and had sent a shiver through him.

He was not responsible, of course; and, very likely, Tom Saunders was no worse than the average young fellow. But that was far from the point.

Clem loved the honest, simple, manly old skipper, and he loved Mrs. Saunders. Sooner than hurt them in any way he would have cut off his right hand.

Yet he knew that he had hurt them grievously, if unintentionally. He knew that Tom Saunders, misled by the wrong sort of friends, was heaping sorrow’s upon these kindly old parents of his largely by aspiring to walk in the tracks of Clem Frobisher. And Ezra Saunders had hit the nail on the head by saying that Tom was not doing it Clem’s way.

“He’s running the boats all right, I suppose?” queried Clem, with sinking heart.

“Oh, he ’tends to ’em well enough—nothin’ extra. Clem, I wish to thunder these was the ol’ days! I’d ship that boy A. B. under the toughest, hardest pair o’ bucko mates ever stepped, an’ I’d ship him around the Horn! When he got back, by glory, he’d either be dead or—or different! And”—the skipper sighed heavily—“I dunno’s I’d give a durn which way it come out. I b’lieve it’s breakin’ Ma Saunders’ heart—I do so!”

Suddenly Ed Davis leaned forward, his lean frame quivering with eagerness. For five minutes he spoke rapidly, excitedly, earnestly. Clem and the skipper listened in amazement, that changed, on Clem’s part, to narrow-eyed calculation, and finally to swift resolve.

“That’s enough!” he broke in suddenly. “Cap’n, we’ll go out on a fishin’ trip in the old _Sadie_, after supper to-night. If Tom ain’t—hasn’t—come home, I’ll find him. And I promise you this, on my word of honor: If I don’t change his lookout on life I’ll never show my face here again!”

The old skipper gazed at Clem with dewy eyes.

“Clem,” he said brokenly, “Clem, mebbe ye can. But, lad, it’s a man-sized job! I reckon you’ve bit off more’n ye can chew—but Heaven bless ye, lad!”

“And now for ma’s pies!” said Ed Davis, with a grin.

III.

Clem Frobisher and his chum waved farewell to the old folks and walked toward Beacon Street. The California evening was just closing down in all its swiftness.

“Ed, you go ’tend to the boat,” directed Clem, at the next corner. “Have her gas tank full, and make sure the batteries are working right. I’ll bring Tom.”

“Mebbe I’d better go along with you,” volunteered Ed.

“Maybe you’d better obey orders!” snapped Clem, his square-hewn face set in hard, determined lines. “Here! Take my coat with you!”

Peeling to his flannel shirt, he tossed his coat to Ed and turned away. The other looked after him with a sour grin.

“Want all the fun yourself, eh? All right, cap’n. You ain’t goin’ to shake _me_!”

Ed Davis followed his partner—at a very respectful distance.

Clem strode along in the gathering dusk. Crossing Beacon Street, he headed for a large pool room, where he was pretty certain to find his quarry.

“So he didn’t come home for supper—hasn’t come home all day!” he muttered savagely. “Huh! Claims to be walking in _my_ shoes, does he? Huh!”

Clem turned in at the pool-room entrance, where a noisy phonograph was grinding out ragtime. About the rear of the place he saw a dozen young fellows grouped about a pool table, with a cloud of tobacco smoke hanging over them. With a curt nod to the proprietor, Clem strode back past the tables.

He soon picked out Tom Saunders, a big-boned, rather handsome fellow, three inches taller than Clem, and built along the same lines as the old skipper. But Tom’s strong, even powerful, face was marred by the undeniable touch of liquor, and a cigarette trailed smoke between his fingers. His companions laughed uproariously at his jokes, and gave him an acclamation, which he seemed to enjoy hugely.

“Clem Frobisher, by golly!”

As the cry went up from the assembled fellows, all of whom knew Clem, Tom Saunders turned and came forward, cue in hand, with a quick smile of delight. He stretched out a big hand toward Clem.

“Hello, cap’n! Say, you old chump, where you been hidin’? I——”

Under Clem’s steady, scornful gaze, his words of greeting faded. His hand fell to his side. He stared in blank amazement, while a portentous silence fell upon the others.

Then Clem made a sudden movement and plucked the cigarette from Tom’s fingers. He tossed it into the corner.

“Tom,” he said quietly, “I hear that you claim to be filling my shoes. How about it?”

“Hey?” Tom Saunders laid aside his billiard cue, still staring. “What you mean?”

“You heard me!” snarled Clem, watching the other with grim intentness.

“Say, what’s eatin’ you?” demanded Tom, in frowning wonder. “Ain’t we allus been mighty good friends? What the devil are you talkin’ about?”

“I’m talking about you,” said Clem, as he took a forward step. “Tom, you used to be a prince of a fellow. You’re some scrapping guy, too. Well, I been hearing a lot about you to-day. I hear, for one thing, that you’re doing a lot o’ talking about fillin’ Clem Frobisher’s shoes. I’m telling you right here that my shoes never left tracks in a saloon! Get that?”

“Say, what’s the matter with you?” said Tom, with a scowl, seeing beyond all doubt that his former hero was bent on trouble. “Do you want to start somethin’?”

“When I get ready. I’ll start it quick enough,” snapped Clem. “Ed Davis came over with me, and we’re going out in the _Sadie_ to-night, Tom, on a three-days’ trip—maybe longer. I want you to come along.”

Tom was puzzled by this invitation, and was also half mollified.

“Why, Clem, I’d like to—darned if I wouldn’t! But we got a big kelly game comin’ off to-night—dollar a corner——”

“And your dad’s house rent is owing,” said Clem quietly. “Will you come or not?”

“Don’t see how I can——”

Like a flash, Clem’s right shot out. It drove fair and square to the big fellow’s jaw. Tom went staggering back, and his friends surged forward at Clem with a snarl of rage. Gripping the pool table behind him, Tom Saunders turned on them hotly.

“Git back, you flatfoots! Keep out o’ this!”

“Bully for you, Tom!” said Clem approvingly. Then, as Tom turned, Clem was in, with a leap, and the row began.

And, as a water-front row, it was historic. Tom Saunders was no bluffer. He had size and brawn, he took punishment like a punching bag, and he had a kick like a mule. When he started in to fight he usually demolished everything in sight.

But from the start it was evident that he had no chance.

Clem Frobisher in action was a whirlwind. If he lacked size, he had a savage earnestness which won half his battles. He went into a scrap heart and soul and body, for, if he had to fight, he wanted no halfway measures. He was not a halfway man.

The battle was short, sharp, and furious. Foolishly, Tom drove for Clem’s face and jaw, but Clem fought otherwise. He was out for blood, figuratively speaking.

Taking a smack that brought a black eye, without a wince, he broke through the other’s guard and slammed his fists into Tom’s body time and again. Never had any one seen him go into a fight with such savage, deadly fury. Within thirty seconds, Tom Saunders was backed into a corner, mouthing oaths and lashing out half at random, while Clem’s terrible right and left swings pounded over his heart and stomach.

Unexpectedly, Clem shot up a swift uppercut that rocked Tom’s head back. The other’s arms flew up, and Clem’s right bored into the solar plexus. It was almost a finishing blow. Tom emitted a gasp, and flung out his arms to save himself from going down. Clem swung down his arm for the knock-out.

At that instant, the rage of Tom’s followers broke all bounds. One of them came in, swinging a billiard cue, and aimed a blow that would have resulted in the penitentiary had it landed. But it did not land.

As the cue flashed up behind Clem, a lean figure came from nowhere, apparently, and placed a blow under the fellow’s ear that landed the would-be murderer under a table and kept him there. Then Clem heard his chum’s voice ringing behind him:

“You fellers better scatter quick! There’s two cops headed this way!”

Clem’s arm shot out. Tom Saunders groaned and collapsed. The others were hastily streaming out the back entrance; and Clem, gripping his late opponent’s collar, turned to Ed Davis with a panting gasp of relief.

“Good boy, Ed! Pick up his feet, now—move fast!”

And, as the police entered by the front door, they vanished into the alley at the rear, carrying the unconscious Tom Saunders between them.

IV.

“Shanghaied him, by thunder!”

Ed Davis grinned down at the sleeping Tom. The _Sadie_ was dancing to the lilting ground swells, at dawn, far out beyond Catalina Island.

“Below there!” rang the voice of Clem, on deck above. “Ed, rouse that fellow up, or I’ll do it myself!”

Ed, who was about to turn in, after standing watch all night, shrugged his shoulders and grinned. Then he caught the sleeping Tom Saunders by the leg, hauled him roughly out of the bunk, and, planting two stinging blows, sent him up the tiny companionway with a kick.

Furious, half awake, cursing, Saunders gained his balance on the deck and stared at the ocean in blank bewilderment. Clem, at the wheel, let out a roar.

“Wake up, you slob! Take one o’ them buckets and a broom, an’ wash down the decks!”

Tom stared at the pilot house, saw Clem’s battered features, and comprehended at last. His heavy face contracted in anger.

“By thunder, I’ll make you sweat for this!” he burst forth, and came on the run.

Clem slipped a loop over the wheel and met Tom halfway. Nor did he waste any time or sympathy, for he was a captain, and his crew was in mutiny. Before Tom could get within fighting distance, Clem smashed him across the head with the butt end of a gaff. He reeled back, caught at the rail, and clung there weakly.

“I’ve a word to say to you, Tom Saunders,” remarked Clem quietly, watching him for signs of further trouble. “You think you’re something of a boss scrapper, and a deuce of a sporty chap. You’re not. You’re a cheap, low-down drunken loafer!

“You keep away from your old father and mother as much as you can, and you loaf around the water front, gambling and fighting and drinking. Well, you’re going to get your fill o’ fighting this trip, believe me! You’re going to realize that you got a blamed sight better home than any pool room will furnish——”

Tom, partly recovered from that stunning blow, leaped in again.

Clem raised the gaff, then dropped it. He saw that Tom was a glutton for punishment, and determined to administer it. Yet he admired deeply the dogged courage of the other.

Cool, confident, smiling, for a good ten minutes he smashed Tom Saunders about the deck. At the end of that time Tom collapsed, both eyes pulling, and his face hammered black and blue. Clem caught up a canvas bucket, trailed it over the side, and sluiced Tom with cold salt water until Tom sat up, gasping and half drowned.

“If you’ve had enough, get busy and clean them decks!” snapped Clem.

Tom had not had enough, as his curses showed, but he set to work cleaning the decks. During breakfast, he eyed Clem in sullen silence, and after breakfast Clem set him to work cleaning out the fish boxes and untangling lines and leaders.

Shortly afterward, Clem caught sight of a flock of gulls far to the south, and headed the _Sadie_ for them. Where the gulls were there were yellowtail, and skipjack also. Calling Tom, he put him to work at the outriggers.

These were long ten-foot poles, set into sockets just abaft the pilot house, and projecting over the rails. From each pole were set out three hundred-yard lines, the outermost of which bore automatic strikers, the others bearing hooks and minnows.

Five minutes later they got the first strike, and then the fun waxed fast and furious. Clem let out a yell for Ed Davis, and they began to haul in fifteen and twenty-pound yellowtail as fast as the trolling lines could be drawn taut. As Clem and Tom hauled in the fighting, darting, leaping fish, Ed gaffed them.

By noon they had over twenty, with a few barracuda and skipjacks. Then Clem hauled about for San Clemente, looped the wheel, and settled down with the others to lunch.

“When you get the dishes washed up, Tom,” said Ed Davis, “you’d better clean one of them barracuda for supper. Then give that cabin a good cleaning and then——”

“Say, you fellers are almighty fresh!” said Tom Saunders, feeling his black-and-blue eyes tenderly. “How long is this thing goin’ to last?”

“Until we get ready to quit,” said Davis, grinning pleasantly. “Your proud spirit needs a whole lot o’ chastening, friend Tom.”

“Well, what’s the idea? What have I ever done to you guys?”

“Nothing,” broke in Clem coldly. “But you’re becoming a pretty worthless sort of citizen, Tom. If I had a father and mother like yours, I’d try and make something of myself, instead of hanging around——”

“Yes, you’re a beaut!” sneered Tom. “’Cause you’re a city guy, now, you’re all stuck up, hey?”

“I don’t think you quite understand.” Clem smiled slightly. “You’re out of proportion with the real facts of life, Tom. Your outlook is warped. Instead of seeing things as they are, you see them from the viewpoint of your pool-room and saloon friends. Well, when we get back to Pedro you’ll have forgotten all your dreams of being a tough fighter and gambler and drinker. You’re really such a splendid chap at bottom, Tom——”

With a snarl of fury, Tom Saunders leaped to his feet. Unobserved, he had worked himself into position by the rack holding the fish gaffs. With the rapidity of lightning, he seized one of the ten-foot poles and made a vicious lunge for Clem.

Clem ducked. The curved, sharp, unbarbed steel missed his shoulder by a hair’s breadth and tore through his flannel shirt. It would have gone through his flesh quite as easily.

Before Tom could extricate the weapon Ed Davis was on him in one leap.

Let it be understood that it was contrary to the natures both of Davis and of Clem Frobisher to treat any one with the brutality which they were displaying toward Tom Saunders. Yet it was not brutality. They were both thinking, not of Tom, but of the two old people in the vine-wreathed cottage.

Ed had mapped out a course, Clem had approved it, as had Captain Ezra Saunders, and now the two partners were following it rigidly. If it turned out badly, Tom would get no more than he deserved; if it turned out well, so much the better.

Blinded though he was, however, Tom gave the lanky Iowan the fight of his life. It was full seven minutes before Ed had his opponent on the deck, and even then Tom still lashed out blindly at the figure sitting on his chest. Not until Clem doused him anew with bucket after bucket of water did he give in.

“All right,” he mumbled, rising unsteadily. “All right! You guys wait till I can see, that’s all!”

“There’s no waiting aboard this hooker!” snapped Clem. “You get for’ard and clean that fish, and do it right, see?”

“I’ll do nothin’ o’ the sort!” returned Tom through his split lips. “You can beat me up all you want—I ain’t goin’ to stir a foot.” A volley of oaths escaped him.

Clem, his lips tight clenched, inspected him for a moment, then turned to Ed.

“Get that bit of line out o’ the locker aft, Ed—the rope’s end that’s tarred. Go after this guy, and give him a taste of deep-sea sailors’ life.”

For the rest of the afternoon Tom Saunders worked like a horse. A bit of thin rope, tarred into a stiff club, is a wonderfully effective inducement, when properly applied. Poor Tom made close acquaintance with it.

“We’ll be off San Clemente at dawn, Ed,” said Clem that evening. He and Ed Davis were eating fried barracuda while Tom conned the helm. “It’ll be watch and watch all night, and we’ll have to keep him awake and working till he drops.”

“Haze him, eh?”

“Haze him until he’s darned near dead!” And Clem compressed his lips. “Ed, it’s an awful thing to do—but by golly it’s a whole lot more awful to think o’ him breakin’ poor old Ma Saunders’ heart!”

“We’ll break _him_!” said Ed, nodding as he spoke. “We’ll kill or cure, Clem—and I ain’t right sure which it’ll be.”

Neither was Clem, unfortunately.

V.

Dawn came upon the sea—and fog.

The _Sadie_ was somewhere off San Clemente, that desolate, rocky, almost unknown island. The dense fog hid everything from view.

Clem, who would be on duty until eight o’clock, was seated beside the pilot house, cutting off yellowtail heads to use as bait for jewfish. The _Sadie_ lay motionless on the oily waters, swinging listlessly to the swell of the channel. Up in the bows was a huddled, miserable figure—Tom Saunders, asleep at last.

That had been a terrible night for the shanghaied man.

Kept awake and at work, kept scrubbing, painting, untangling lines, oiling the engines, driven to the work and kept at it by boot and fist and rope’s end, Tom had finally given way.

When Clem took the deck, at four o’clock, the sight of Tom smote his heart. Yet he drove him relentlessly. An hour later the end had come.

Sobbing, praying, pleading, Tom had crept to him, begging for sleep, begging for release from the torture. Even then Clem had steeled himself, and had renewed his driving, but not for long. He had not the heart.

Tom Saunders had been broken at last—had promised everything and anything, had wept and prayed anew. At six o’clock, Clem had told him to sleep, and he had dropped in a pitiable heap where he stood.

“It’s a mean job,” thought Clem, as he baited the huge hooks on his line. “But he’s had an hour’s rest now, so we’ll try him out. Besides, he can stand a lot more—and it’s necessary. Kill or cure!”

Accordingly, he awakened poor Tom by repeated sluices of water, thrust a rod into his hand, bade him angle for a jewfish, and baited his own line. Somewhat to Clem’s surprise, Tom said nothing whatever, and did not rebel; but he sat on the rail, shivering, and gazed miserably at the water.

A moment later, just as Clem was unreeling his line, he saw Tom start to his feet, and heard the buzz of the automatic drag.

“Got one?” he cried. Tom merely nodded.

A glance showed Clem that the jewfish was running out ahead of the launch, and he leaped to the engines.

“I’ll give her half speed!” he exclaimed swiftly. “Reel up as we get over him.”

He noted that the fog seemed to have thickened rather than diminished.

With the _Sadie_ running slowly ahead, Clem regained the deck to find Tom reeling in his line, the stubby, powerful rod bent almost double. The jewfish, for all its great size, is not a wonderful fighter; none the less, it was a good ten minutes before Tom got the fish close to the surface.

Yet he seemed not a whit excited. He reeled mechanically; his hands were blue with cold; he seemed broken in spirit. Clem watched him with some anxiety, wondering if the hazing had been carried too far.

“Here!” he exclaimed suddenly, as the line came in. “Take this gaff, and bring him up, Tom! I’ll hold him at the surface!”

Clem thought he saw tears on the other’s cheeks.

The exchange was made. Tom took the gaff and stood on the rail, clinging to a stay, bending over the water. Clem, taking the rod, was astonished. The fish must be a four-hundred-pounder at least, he decided. Then, peering over the side as he forced the jewfish up, he saw the great oval mass below. The surface water broke into a mass of foam.

Tom lunged with the gaff—lunged again—missed both times. Then, with a muttered word of exasperation, he leaned far over and caught the fish squarely.

He did not lift quickly enough, however, to get the fish out of water. There was a surge and a swirl beneath, and a short cry broke from Tom.

“Give me a hand——”

Before Clem could move, he saw Tom, hanging grimly to the gaff, drawn out by the fish’s wide, circling sweep. In a flash, the dogged San Pedro boy had his hold broken, had lost his balance—and was overboard.

“By golly, he’s too cold and stiff to swim!” thought Clem swiftly. He lifted his voice in a ringing shout:

“Ed! Ed! On deck! Man overboard!”

With the words, he caught up the life preserver hanging at the rail and tossed it over the side. Then, his coat off, he leaped after it, in wild fear lest his own driving tyranny had been carried so far that Tom would have no strength left.

In that desperate fear, he came to the surface almost beside the struggling figure of Tom Saunders. A few yards away was floating the round life buoy. Catching Tom by the collar, Clem gained the preserver in a few strokes, and bobbed Tom up inside it.

“Get your arms over the sides—that’s right! Now take a turn of the line about your arms. Good!”

Satisfied that Tom was sure to float, Clem turned on his side and sent a glance around for the _Sadie_. With a shock, he remembered that her engines were set at half speed.

She was gone in the fog!

Stilling the momentary panic that seized him, Clem lifted his voice in a shout. He knew that Ed Davis would be on deck by this time, but at sight of the swirls of fog, that hid the water ten feet away, his heart sank.

“How you makin’ it, Tom?”

“All right,” said the other mechanically. “I lost the fish, I guess.”

“I guess you did.” Clem chuckled. “Can you give a yell?”

Tom emitted a feeble cry, that betrayed his weakness more than words could have done. A wave broke over them, and Clem took his weight off the preserver, allowing it to float higher. It could not well sustain them both.

Also, there was a choppy sea running—the island current cutting up the long, easy ground swell. It was hard swimming, and the water was cold.

“What on earth’s the matter with Ed?” exclaimed Clem anxiously. “We ought to hear the horn——Ah! There it is! Thank goodness!”

Muffled, but unmistakable, the blast of the _Sadie’s_ foghorn pierced its way to them. Clem shouted again and again. Ed was on the job!

“It don’t seem to be gettin’ much closer,” muttered Tom.

Clem listened. No—it was not growing closer. It was hard to tell from which direction the sound came, but certainly the launch was receding from them. Resting once more on the life preserver, Clem bellowed for all he was worth.

“Better quit yellin’,” mumbled Tom. “It’ll tire you out quicker’n any——”

The rest was lost in a splutter as a wave lapped over them. Clem again released the life buoy, which lifted Tom well above the water.

Ridding himself of his clothes, Clem swam more easily, but he felt the chill of the water keenly. Owing to the choppy back lash of the waves, it was impossible to float. He had to swim continually to hold himself up.

“Hang on to the cork, ye blamed fool!” said Tom.

“I will, if I need to. I’m all right.”

The horn was sounding no longer!

Clem knew that their situation was desperate in the extreme. Which way the island lay, no one could tell. They were in a spot reached only by an occasional fishing boat. The fog would not lift before noon. Unless Ed Davis found them by chance, they could not both last—the preserver would only keep one man up.

Clem found himself becoming weakened by that continual struggle.

How long he swam beside Tom, he never knew. It seemed like days. He swam now on his side, now on his back. Change position as he might, however, he could not get away from the choppy, short seas. The sound of the foghorn came to them no more, and Clem forbore to shout, knowing the effort useless unless Ed Davis came close by them.

“How are you, Tom?” he said, resting on the preserver. A wave broke over them. Clem hastily drew away, yet with an inward groan.

“All right,” responded Tom, lying nobly. “Catch on here.”

Clem smiled a little. The faintness of the other’s voice had told him all he wanted to know. Tom was incapable of any exertion.

“And I’m responsible for Tom’s condition,” was the thought that drove into Clem’s heart with paralyzing truth. He called up his reserve strength and breasted the waves, but the effort wasted him alarmingly. His limbs were stiff, numbed. He prayed for the _Sadie_, but she came not.

“Tom,” said Clem, as he turned, swimming beside the buoy and watching Tom’s white, stern-clenched face, “we’ve hazed you pretty hard this trip, but it was for your own good. Ed and I came to Pedro, and found——” A wave plunged over him. Clem fought it down, gasping.

“We found your dad ten years older than he was a month or two ago. Ma didn’t say much, but she was pretty hard hit—and it was your fault, Tom. You’ve been running with the wrong crowd, and because you’re a good deal above them in every way they’ve toadied to you and got you on the down grade to their level. Ed and I——”

Again a great quantity of green water curled over him. The crest swallowed him. Desperate, Clem lost his head, and flurried wildly, frantically, wasting precious strength. When he emerged, half strangled, his own danger frightened him into coolness.

“Grab hold o’ the buoy, you fool!” growled Tom weakly.

“Shut up!” gasped Clem. “Listen! I want you to understand why we acted as we did, Tom. Your drinking and loafing and general cussedness has darned near wrecked your——”

Once more a smother of water dragged him down. He fought against the wild impulse to grab the buoy, but he struggled up to find Tom’s hand on his arm.

“Git aboard here——”

“Quit!” snarled Clem, flinging back and breaking the other’s hold. He gazed at Tom with desperate, convulsed features. He knew he could not last long. His strength was going fast. “We can’t, both hang on there, you idiot! It—it won’t hold—more’n one—and——”

“Then I’ll drop!” And Tom tried to heave himself up and release the lashing about his arms. He failed, through very stiffness and weakness.

“No, you won’t—you go back home and—tell ma that—that——” Clem went under, fought frantically, felt the terrible weakness overpower him. Then he caught a breath of blessed air again. “So long—cut out—the booze——”

With a groan, Clem found his strength gone. He seemed to collapse utterly. He felt the water close over him, choking, strangling, smothering—and then he knew nothing more.

A moment afterward the _Sadie_ poked her nose out of the fog, almost above Tom.

VI.

“Golly! I thought I was gone——”

Clem opened his eyes and stared.

He found himself in the cabin of the _Sadie_. Above him was standing Ed Davis; and Clem, feeling himself almost naked, knew that his chum had been working over him.

“You were blamed near gone!” exclaimed Ed anxiously. “I got the water out of you, though. How do you feel?”

“Tired. Where’s Tom?”

“Up above. He’s all right—kind o’ went to pieces when I got you aboard.”

Ed heaped blankets about Clem. Then he continued swiftly:

“I got some coffee on the fire now. Say! Do you know what that cuss done?”

“Who—Tom?”

“Yep! I found him hangin’ on to your collar—both o’ you danged near drowned, by thunder! He made me haul you up first, too! Say, what happened? I ain’t understood yet how you come overboard——”

“Get the coffee,” muttered Clem, closing his eyes. “Talk later.”

With a mutter of self-accusation, Ed rushed away.

Clem lay in a coma of exhaustion. He felt a gradual warmth steal through him, and realized that he was safe enough; but he was too weary to move. A moment later he caught a step at his side, and opened his eyes, thinking that Ed had returned.

Instead, however, he saw Tom Saunders. The big fellow, staring at Clem with wild eyes, lowered himself to the edge of the bunk. He was white and shaken. As he met the gaze of Clem he broke down, and lowered his face in his arms, sobbing unrestrainedly.

Clem wondered, but was too weak to speak for the moment. At length Tom lifted his head.

“Thank Heaven, you’re safe!” he mumbled. “Say, Clem. I——”

“Thanks, old man,” broke in Clem, putting out a hand. “Ed told me how you held me up—it was fine work——”

“Oh, shut your blamed mouth!” growled Tom, sitting up. “I got somethin’ to say—you shut up till I get through!”

Clem watched him, waiting in puzzled silence.

“You know what you said when—when you was goin’ down?” blurted out Tom. “About ma and dad—and what you——”

“I know,” said Clem. “Well?”

Tom’s white face flushed slightly.

“Clem, it’s darned hard to explain—but just then, when you went down, an’ I seen how you was givin’ up so’s I could go back—it kind o’ made me realize that you’d meant every darned word o’ what you said. I hadn’t thought of it that way before—but it came to me all of a heap—well, I can’t say any more, Clem—only I want to tell you that I’ve been a darned fool, and——”

“Say, you two guys better drink this coffee in a hurry,” broke in the voice of Ed Davis, who had paused for a moment behind Tom, listening.

He came forward with two steaming cups of coffee, handed one to Tom, and helped Clem to put down the hot fluid in the other. With a sigh of increasing comfort, Clem fell back in the bunk and smiled faintly, his hand touching that of Tom.

“Ed,” he said, “head the old hooker for Pedro, full speed! When we get in to-night——”

“When we get in to-night,” broke in Ed, with a wide grin, “do you know what I’m goin’ to do?”

“What?” asked Clem, with a smile.

“I’m goin’ to eat one o’ Ma Saunders’ pies—all by myself.”

“And I’ll be there to help,” said Tom.

In his handgrip and in his eyes there was that which told Clem more than words could say. Tom Saunders was headed home.

ENTOMBED MINERS RESCUED

THE nine miners who had been entombed for a week in the Foster Tunnel of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, at Coaldale, Pennsylvania, were taken out alive. Though the men had crouched in water most of the time, and had subsisted partly on wax, they were able to walk to the ambulance.

Eleven miners were entombed when water and culm broke into the tunnel. Two who were nearer the mouth of the tunnel were saved after a few hours. Gangs, working in relays of four hours, dug through the fallen coal and rock in order to make an opening through which the other nine could be rescued.

The Shock

By Grant Trask Reeves

WHEN “Rube” Reynolds crawled out of bed and began to dress, it was near to noontime. Within his head, to all feeling, a gigantic, throbbing trip hammer was seemingly striving to pound its way through his skull with regular, painful thumps. His lips felt parched and drawn, and a sickish, bitter taste stayed upon his tongue, as if his mouth was crammed with coarse, moldy earth, and by no means of futile gulping could he swallow the stuff.

Out of the confused muddle of his brain flashed a thought of morning practice.

“Guess’ll have to skip breakfast to get out to the field on time,” he thought.

But a glance at his watch, lying upon the bureau, made him aware that haste was useless; for probably at that moment his fellow members of the Sox were leaving the ball park for their homes and boarding places. Again he had missed a morning session on the home grounds of the Sox, and he sullenly wondered what Manager Kineally would say.

Slowly he continued to don his clothes. At times the bed, the chairs, and other articles of furniture seemed to be dancing and whirling weirdly about the room; and when he leaned forward to lace his shoes, his throbbing head pained as though it would burst.

Moving to the bureau he pulled out a lower drawer and brought forth a bottle partially filled with a brownish liquid. To his lips he tipped it, and for several seconds his Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively to a gurgling accompaniment.

Barely at the halfway mark, between twenty and thirty years, Reynolds had already reached the stage where a morning drink seemed a necessity. He lowered the bottle, its contents emptied by half, to the bureau top; and an artificial sense of buoyancy pervaded his being. The throbbing pain in his head was deadened to a dull ache, and the burning flavor of the liquor upon his tongue had washed away the moldy taste.

He dully pondered as to what had taken place on the previous evening, but his remembrances of events occurring after eleven o’clock or thereabouts on the night before were decidedly limited. Some one had escorted him to the front door of his lodging house; he had dizzily ascended the stairs and managed to open the door of his room—that was all he could recall.

A gentle tapping on the door broke in upon his thoughts.

“What is it?” he grunted.

“Mr. Kineally wishes to see you,” was the reply. The voice belonged to his landlady.

Reynolds hesitated momentarily. He was tempted to have the landlady say that he was not at home. But what was the use! Kineally would “bawl him out” later; so why not have it over with!

“All right! Send him up!” Reynolds answered.

He had hardly time to whisk the bottle from the bureau to its place in the drawer when an imperative rapping threatened the door panel.

“Come in!” he called.

As the door swung inward a big, brawny form filled the doorway, almost from casing to casing. The square-jawed visage of Owen Kineally, with its twinkling eyes and smiling lips, had appeared on sporting pages the country over; but now the smile was missing. His eyebrows were puckered forward, as Reynolds had sometimes seen them when Kineally took a parting shot at a nearsighted, obstinate umpire.

The big manager remained standing, his gaze upon the ball player.

“G’ morning!” Reynolds greeted, as he continued the knotting of his scarf.

“Good _afternoon_!” retorted the manager. And he added: “You’re fined fifty dollars.”

Reynolds whirled about.

“What for?” he demanded, his voice raised to nearly a shout.

“For not showing up at morning practice, and for drunkenness last night. You’re half drunk now.”

“You’re a——” Reynolds hesitated to speak the word.

His lips were curled back in an ugly snarl, and he glared rebelliously into the steady, piercing eyes of the manager. Silently they faced each other—Reynolds, the tiger; Kineally, the lion. Both were equally tall, though the manager was stockier than his black-eyed, dark-complexioned pitcher. Kineally removed his panama and combed his fingers through his reddish-brown hair.

“Your face is as flushed as if you had a fever,” he said. “Your eyes are bloodshot, and late hours have smooched half-moons of charcoal under them, so’s any one could tell that you are traveling straight plumb to the dogs!”

Reynolds muttered inarticulately.

“Yes, that’s where you’re bound!” continued the manager. “I’m not old enough to be your father, but I’ve been kicking around in this world for some fifteen or sixteen years longer than you have, and I’ve had plenty of chance to learn that a pitcher, or any other ball player, can’t work as battery mate with Old Demon Booze and last long in the diamond game.

“You were the best pitcher on my staff last year, and you twirled your team into a championship; but now you’re a-hitting the toboggan just as fast as any one can. When you are sober and in good physical condition there isn’t a better man ever toed the slab than you are; and that’s why I haven’t traded you during the past month. I hoped you’d wake up and cut out the booze and the gang of high-living sports you are traveling with; but if you don’t get your eyes open and quit drinking before we start on the Western trip, I’ll try to make a deal with some other club, and trade you before the other managers get wise to the fact that you are drinking yourself out of the game.”

Reynolds mumbled something.

“What?” Kineally asked.

“I guess some o’ those other managers’d be glad to get me,” Reynolds repeated.

“Yes, until they found that you were a souse,” Kineally added; “and then they’d shunt you back to the minors in double-quick. You’d probably last a year or two in the bushes, and then some little one-horse minor-league outfit would give you your unconditional release; and you’d be a has-been, while you were yet a kid. Some future, eh?”

Reynolds slouched against the bureau, his hands deep in his pockets. A sullen, defiant expression distorted his features.

Kineally wiped a handkerchief across his forehead.

“I’ll be hanged if I know why I’ve stood for your drinking and violation of training rules as long as I have!” he exclaimed. “I reckon it’s because I remember what a likable, clean young duffer you were when I first bought you from that little bush league up-country.”

As he paused, the manager happened to glance past the ball player at a picture standing on the bureau. It was the photograph of a girl, in her early twenties; and the face—the expression of the eyes—the mouth and chin—portrayed that rare combination of beauty of character as well as of feature.

The manager pointed toward the picture.

“To ask a personal question, Rube,” he began; “is she your sister?”

Following the direction of Kineally’s extended finger, Reynolds shook his head.

Kineally’s eyes gleamed his satisfaction. Another avenue of appeal was open!

“Then she must be your sweetheart, for I know that you’re not married,” he stated; and he added earnestly: “I suppose you hope to be married some day?”

Reynolds failed to reply. His liquor-inflamed brain was busy mobilizing the little devils of rage and rebellion. What right had Kineally to catechize him, he angrily pondered. Who gave the manager a license to butt into his private life?

“Why don’t you quit the booze and go straight, for her sake if not your own?” the manager inquired, after an interval. “You can hardly expect a decent girl, like the original of that picture must be, to marry a drunken sot, such as continuing your present pace will make you.”

Drunken sot! No decent girl would marry him! Even through his liquor-soaked brain, Reynolds realized that the words rang true; but their very truth was like the red rag fluttered before the bull.

“You’re a liar!” he rasped. And he sprang toward the manager, one fist lunging forward as he leaped. Though heavily built, Kineally was quick on his feet. Swiftly he side-stepped and parried the blow. Reynolds whirled about and rushed a second time. Again and again his fists struck out, and Kineally took blow after blow on his hands and arms, turning them all aside. Obsessed by his whisky-stimulated wrath, Reynolds forgot all his knowledge of boxing. His one thought was to beat down the big man before him, who so steadily blocked the punches, and kept forcing him backward without striking a blow.

Back, step by step, they went, until Reynolds stumbled. Instantly the manager closed in, grasping the pitcher’s wrists and endeavoring to force him down into a chair. Back and forth they struggled, reeling about the room, until, with a crash, they brought up against the bureau. With a sudden twist, Reynolds wrenched one hand free from the manager’s viselike grip. The pitcher reached behind him and groped over the bureau top; and an instant afterward something flashed through the air, thudding dully against the manager’s head.

Reynolds heard a gasp, and the fingers about his wrist relaxed. The manager’s knees buckled forward, and he crumpled backward on the rug—a motionless heap.

Breathing heavily, Reynolds stood above the inert form, a heavy brass ash tray still grasped in his fist. Particles of blood dotted its edge. For a moment, brute satisfaction was reflected from his face. Then his expression changed to that of alarm. Why did Kineally lie so still? Why was the fallen man’s face so pale? Dropping to his knees, Reynolds pressed a hand against the manager’s shirt front. The pitcher’s hand was trembling, and his own heart pounding furiously, as he fumbled anxiously about on the manager’s breast. He could feel no action, and a crimson stain, like red ink on a sheet of blotting paper, was spreading, with ragged circumference, upon the manager’s hair.

The pitcher grasped the manager’s shoulders and shook the deathlike form.

“Kineally! Kineally! Owen Kineally!” he cried.

He jumped to his feet and seized the water pitcher, pouring all of the stale fluid it contained over the manager’s face; but the eyes remained closed; the form still.

Slowly Reynolds backed away from the prostrate man.

“Heavens!” he whispered. “He—he’s dead! I’m a murderer!”

And with the words came another thought. He had killed Kineally! They would arrest him! Into his vision flashed the picture of a chair with straps on its arms, legs, and back, and a few solemn spectators gathered about. No, they mustn’t catch him! He must get away!

Moving hurriedly about, and ever averting his gaze from the form on the floor, he donned a few garments for street wear. Ready to leave, he spied the picture upon the bureau. He snatched it up and turned it over. Penned on its back in a feminine hand was: “From Dora to Bob.”

Hastily tucking it into his inside pocket, he opened the door and stepped into the hall. His nerveless fingers swung the door shut, and he trod softly down the stairs.

* * * * *

When the evening train coughed into Farmhill station, Reynolds, clad in a dark suit, and with his cloth hat pulled far down over his eyes, swung off on the side farthest from the station, and making a detour to avoid the well-lighted section of the town, he struck out into the country.

Once during his flight, while changing trains at a junction, he had heard one diminutive newsboy mention the name “Reynolds” to another grimy-faced little urchin, and Rube had stolen a sidelong glance at the bunch of papers folded beneath the boy’s arm. The paper, being folded in the middle, prevented him from reading the whole of the big black headline, but on the side of the sheet near to him he spelled out: “M-U-R-D——”

As he tramped along in the soft dust of the country road, with the frogs and insects peeping and shrilling strange noises out of the dusk of the night, his thoughts rose in rebellion. It wasn’t murder! Murder was something fearful—something repulsive, and he hadn’t intended to—to kill Kineally. He had struck in self-defense! He strove to convince himself that such had been the case, but every frog—every insect kept shrilling: “Murder—murder—it was murder!”

Not until he reached the Whately farm did he realize that it would be impossible for him to see Dora that night. The chimes of a church in a distant town were sounding the curfew hour, when he paused by the stone wall encircling that part of the Whately farm. Why he had returned to Farmhill, he did not know. Something had seemed to draw him to that little town in the valley; and he wanted to see Dora just once more before disappearing to some far corner of the world, where no one would know him, where no one could find him.

For a moment he thought of boldly entering the house, but he quickly dismissed the idea. They must have read the papers and knew of his crime. Noel Whately and his wife had always liked young Bob Reynolds; and Dora—he knew that Dora’s regard was more than friendship for him, but he hesitated to thrust himself, branded as a criminal, into that family circle.

He easily vaulted the stone wall and moved around the house to the barn. As he picked his way across the barn-yard, another thought came to him. What folly his return to Farmhill was! It would only make more painful the breaking of the ties!

“I mustn’t see her!” he whispered to himself.

But no train left the town until early morning, so he resolved to stay in the barn until nearly daylight, and then return to the station.

As he neared the barn, a prolonged sniff caused him to start and crouch near to the ground. Then he remembered. It was Wolf, the dog—the companion, who had accompanied Dora and him on their tramps across the fields, and on their fishing trips to the lake.

“Wolf!” he called softly.

The big collie came bounding through the darkness.

“Still, Wolf! Be still, boy!” he commanded.

To his relief, the dog recognized him and refrained from barking. Two paws pressed against his knee, and the animal whined joyously.

“Go back, Wolf!” he ordered, as he patted and fondled the collie.

Reluctantly, the dog turned toward his kennel, and Reynolds slid open the door of the barn. A restless horse tramped in his stall and a frightened rat scuttled across the floor, as he felt about in the darkness and found the ladder leading upward. Nimbly he ascended to the loft, and, creeping far over to the wall, he stretched himself upon the odorous hay.

He closed his eyes, but sleep would not come. He faintly heard the clock in the farmhouse striking the hour. After an age of sleeplessness, it tinkled again. The smell of the sun-dried grass brought remembrances of his boyhood, and he thought of the plans he and Dora had made for the future. Then he remembered the “good fellows” of the city, with their invitations to “have another,” and their shallow praise. He groaned in despair. He had severed himself from all of the real joys of life, and now he was but a hunted thing—to prowl forever from place to place, in his efforts to escape the relentless hand of the law.

As he lay there, an almost uncontrollable desire to scratch a match, that he might relieve the awful blackness, possessed him.

“I can’t,” he reflected. “It might set fire to the place.”

Suddenly he sat up, gasping, with a whistling intaking of breath. What had he heard! Again they came! The faint strains of music were permeating the loft, as if some stringed instrument was being played close by. He dug his fingers into his ears, hoping that the sounds might be the product of his imagination. But no! As he removed his fingers, they continued; a strange, weird tune, unlike anything he had ever heard before.

Again he jammed his fingers into his ears to shut out the sounds. Had his crime driven him mad? Was he haunted, he wondered fearfully. With unsteady, trembling legs, he made his way to the ladder and lowered himself downward. He crouched in an unoccupied stall and waited. A rat squeaked beside him, but he failed to move. He was listening for that fearsome music; and whenever he closed his eyes, the white face of Kineally would spring before his vision.

Of what avail was his freedom if this continued, he thought. Ideas of giving himself up entered his mind; but he remembered the high-backed chair with its straps and its horrible death-dealing wires. What a death! No! He couldn’t surrender himself! But still, if he was to be forever haunted, why, maybe it would be better. Maybe it——

With a start, Reynolds awoke—not from sound sleep, but from one of the fitful dozes, into which he had lapsed just before the gray light of morning began to lighten the barn. With an ejaculation of self-rebuke, he sprang up and stood, blinking, in the shaft of sunlight which blazed through a cobwebby, dusty window. He, who had intended to depart before sunrise, had overslept. He could hear persons moving about in the farmhouse, as well as the occasional rattling of crockery and the sputter of grease in a frying pan.

Then footsteps sounded outside of the barn, and before he could turn—could dart to cover—the door slid back, and a girl stood before him. Her face, crowned by a wavy mass of fine-spun, fair hair, was the flesh-and-blood likeness of that portrayed by the picture he carried in his pocket. She wore neither hat nor bonnet, and a dotted bungalow apron covered her from shoulders to ankles. She stared in amazement, her brows puckering as she noted the rumpled condition of his clothing—his drawn features and his bloodshot eyes.

“Why, Bob!” she exclaimed perplexedly. “What—why—how——”

As she paused, he moved forward a step, his nails biting into the palms of his clenched fists. Oh, how he longed to take her in his arms and tell her the whole miserable story! Little beads of moisture surged into his eyes; and in a moment she was close to him, resting her hands on his shoulders.

“Tell me, Bob!” she said anxiously. “Tell me what is the matter. Why didn’t you come to the house? Why are your clothes all mussed up?”

Choking back his emotions, he hesitatingly placed his hands on her arms.

“D—don’t you know?” he inquired brokenly.

“Know what?” she demanded.

“I—I——” He hesitated to say the words. “Heavens, Dora, you must have read last night’s paper! Don’t you know that I’m a—a murderer? Oh, Dora, I’m a murderer!”

Her fingers clinched convulsively through his coat and pinched into his shoulders.

“I’ve killed a man—the man who was giving me a chance!” he groaned. “All because of the cursed drink!” And, with his head bowed on her shoulder, he poured forth the story of his fight with Kineally—of his trip to Farmhill—and of his night in the barn. Then his arms relaxed and he gently tried to push her away.

“Don’t touch me, girl!” he told her. “I’m a murderer—not fit to touch!”

Her arms slipped about his neck, and she held him closer.

“I won’t leave you—I won’t!” she cried. “Oh, Bob! don’t you know that I love you? We’ll go somewhere together.”

“No!” he protested. “Why, Dora, I’m haunted. I lay up there in the loft last night and heard music—that dreadful, unearthly music; and Kin—his face kept coming before me out of the darkness. No; I’m going to give myself up and have it over with.”

With the passion and entreaty of one who loved, she argued, but he steadily persisted in his resolve. He gently drew her arms from about his neck. She made one final appeal.

“Wait, Bob!” she pleaded. “Let me go into the house and get last night’s paper. I’m sure that there wasn’t any—any murder headline on it.” And she darted from the stable.

Her mother, busy in the kitchen, glanced up in surprise at the flushed cheeks and excited eyes of the girl.

“What in the world——” she began, but Dora interrupted.

“Where is last night’s paper, mother?” she asked.

“On the sitting-room table, I think,” Mrs. Whately replied.

Dora hurried from the room. The paper was not on the sitting-room table, and she searched frantically about the room. Finally she found it, half hidden under a pillow on the lounge, where her father had left it the evening before. Spreading out the first page, she read:

MURDOCK TESTIFIES.

Iron King Goes Before Congressional Committee.

Nowhere on the page was Reynolds’ name mentioned. She hurriedly rustled over page after page, until at last, on one of the sporting pages, she discovered a small paragraph commenting on his poor pitching of the day previous. Paper in hand, she sped back to the barn. Reynolds was not in sight.

“Bob!” she called softly; but received no answer.

Into the loft she climbed, but he was not there. As she stood on the hay, she became aware of a peculiar sound. Music! That was what it resembled, and across her mind flashed the words of Bob. For some seconds she listened in bewilderment, and then the little wrinkles of perplexity cleared from her forehead. She climbed higher upon the hay, until she reached a tiny window, far up near the roof. Over its opening were stretched several taut elastics—the work of her little brother. With each gust of breeze they vibrated and twanged, making sounds not unlike the music of a harp or a zither.

Descending from the loft, she hurried out of the barn. The man whom she loved must have taken advantage of her absence to hasten away, she reasoned, that he might carry out his resolve to surrender himself to the authorities. So down the dusty road she hurried, determined to overtake him ere he should reach the town.

* * * * *

A great gray touring car hummed its way along the country road, a continuous cloud of dust, like rising smoke, trailing in its wake. A big, burly man, with tanned features, and whose eyes were obscured by masking goggles, gripped the wheel; while beside him sat another man, not so big, but with a bristling black mustache and keen piercing eyes.

“Remember, Mac!” the big man was saying; “if we find him I don’t want the newspaper men or anybody else to ever hear a word of this. I called on you for help because you are a friend of mine as well as a police inspector, trained in the ways of tracing men.”

“Don’t you worry, Owen!” the other replied. “Never a word will get out. Nine times out of ten a young fellow who has committed a crime, or thinks he has, will risk a trip to his home or old surroundings. If we don’t find the boy somewhere about Farmhill, we’ll change our tactics. He must have landed quite a crack on your skull,” he added.

“He surely did,” the big man agreed. “I was unconscious for a half hour or more; and I guess your idea, that he imagined he’d finished me, and was thus frightened into running away, is right.”

The man with the wiry mustache nodded and tightly gripped the side of the car as they jounced over a particularly high bump in the road.

“But if the experience proves to be the shock necessary to break the boy away from the drink and that gang he was traveling with,” continued the big man; “why, I’ll be mighty thankful that he struck the blow. He’s not only a wonderful pitcher, but I like him. He—look, Mac, look! So help me, John Rogers! Look ahead, there!”

Appearing around a bend in the roadway, from behind the trees of the roadside, a solitary figure was tramping toward them.

Stopping the engine and jamming his foot against the brake pedal, the big man jerked the car to an abrupt stop beside the young fellow, who had turned out and halted by the edge of the road, waiting for the automobile to pass.

“Rube!” the big man cried, pushing his goggles up on his forehead and springing from the car.

The man by the roadside stood as if paralyzed. He stared wildly at the big man who had leaped from the automobile.

“K—Kineally!” came from between his lips in a throaty whisper. “Kineally! Owen Kineally!”

He slowly—fearfully extended a hand as if to touch the big manager—to make sure that he was a reality and not the fantasy of a haunted mind.

The big man quickly reached forth and firmly grasped the hand.

“It’s me, all right, Rube!” he assured, with the flicker of a smile. “It takes a mighty hard wallop to put a tough old geezer like me down for good.”

Drawing free his hand, the young fellow dropped upon one knee in the dusty, sun-scorched grass of the roadside, and burying his face in his arm, he gave vent to his pent-up emotions, his body shaking with convulsive, boyish sobs of relief. The bareheaded girl, who had appeared around the bend of the road and was hurrying toward them, was unnoticed by Kineally and the inspector.

“I—I’m glad! I’m glad!” the kneeling man choked out. “I’m going to stay here away from the drink, and so help me, Heaven, I’ll never touch another drop!”

The big man rested a hand on the young fellow’s shoulder.

“No, I don’t think you will drink any more, boy!” he said. “But,” he continued, “you are coming back with me, and I’ll make you the greatest pitcher in the game, and you and _the girl_ can marry and be happy.”

Before the young fellow could reply, the girl was beside them, her eyes aglow and her bosom rising and falling rapidly as she breathed. Many a picture of Owen Kineally had smiled at her from among the pages of newspapers, and she recognized the big man standing over Reynolds. Unmindful of the others, she dropped to her knees beside the man she loved, and with her arms about his neck, she murmured: “Oh, but I’m happy, Bob! I’m so happy!!”

UNIQUE NAMES FOR CREEKS

THAT Iowa is a farming State is reflected in the names of many of the streams that flow through it.

To begin with, there is a Farm Creek, so that Farmer’s Creek has a place. Then there is a Chicken Creek, a Duck Creek, a Goose Creek, and a number of Turkey Creeks, as well as Pigeon Creek. There are Fox, Hawk, and Rat Creeks to make way with the domestic animals, and some Crow Creeks, while there is also a Fly Creek and Mosquito Creek to worry the summer boarders. Milk and Cold Water Creeks are present, likewise a Hog Run and a Mud Creek, so that Bacon Creek is not strange.

It seems natural that with a Bee Creek and a Bee Branch there should also be a Honey Creek. There are a couple of Cherry Creeks, a Crabapple Creek, and plenty of Plum Creeks, and, for wild animals, there are Bear, Beaver, Buck, Crane, Deer, Doe, Elk, Otter, Panther, Raccoon, Skunk, and Wolf Creeks.

With a Keg Creek there is a Whisky Creek and a Whisky Rum. Finally, there is Purgatory Creek.

Cap’n Dan’s Son

BY Bernard Teevan

THE old sailor, Cap’n Dan, sat on the edge of the deck house of the sloop _Agnes T._, watching the fleet coming in from the day’s work at “dragraking.” The “handrakers” were already in, the contents of their baskets emptied into his, and piled up neatly in the hold, their scores tallied up in the little leather-covered notebook that was Cap’n Dan’s daybook, ledger, journal, and everything else known to the practice of accounts.

The handrakers had all brought in a good day’s catch. If the dragrakers did as well, the _Agnes T._ would have a heavy load to carry to the city, and the money to meet the note which would soon be due would be ready when the time came to pay it.

Cap’n Dan cast an eye aloft at the empty bushel basket which had been hoisted at the masthead to let every one know the _Agnes T._ was ready to buy clams. Then he looked out toward the mouth of the harbor, where the first of the fleet of dragrakers was coming in around the point. In that instant the expression of his face altered, and his troubled glance changed to one of pride and pleasure.

The cut of the head of the mainsail told him that, as usual, it was the _Victorine_ that was leading the fleet, outpointing and outfooting the _Ranger_, _Nautilus_, and the _Dashaway_, to say nothing of the other sloops less famed for their speed. Parental pride shone clear in his gray eyes, for was not the _Victorine_ his own boat, and was not his only son, Young Dan, sailing her?

Young Dan, at twenty-one, had already won the reputation of being the smartest boatman in Lockport. The way he would carry on sail was, in the words of the clammers, “a caution.” Me was the light of his father’s eye, and Cap’n Dan had begun to lean rather heavily on his son.

He was looking forward to the time when Dan’s already keen business ability would be sufficiently recognized to have the dealers up in the market place the same reliance on his word as they had for so many years placed on the father’s. Then he could step aside and take a rest, that rest so many men look forward to before the great rest comes.

When Young Dan caught sight of his father he arose from his seat on the wheel box and swung his arm in salutation. Then he gave the wheel a couple of turns, shot the _Victorine_ up in the wind, and laid her alongside the _Agnes T._ as if the sloop were a fast horse, that a skillful driver had stopped at a carriage block.

“What luck, Dannie?” called his father. “I see you wasn’t the last one in.”

“Had a bully day, dad. Struck a fresh bed off West P’int, and got a jim-dandy load. Goin’ to send any to market to-night?” Then, casting back to his father’s allusion to his beating the other boats, he added dryly: “Oh, yes, there’s some go in the old _Victorine_ yet. Them fellers make me tired with their talk about beatin’ her.”

“Just as soon as we c’n git the _Agnes T._ loaded, Dan, I want you to start for the market. Dolan telegraphed me to-day they wanted all I could send ’em, and as soon as I could get ’em off.”

As the boy had stepped aboard the sloop by this time, the captain added, in a whisper: “You know that Voorhees note falls due day after to-morrow, and I need the money to meet it.”

Dan nodded his head, and some of the gravity that had settled down again on his father’s face was reflected on his own. Then he started in on the heavy task of transferring his day’s catch from the deck of the _Victorine_ to the hold of the market boat.

While he and the three men who made up the working crew were hard at this, the remaining boats of the fleet were coming up, one by one, and ranging themselves on either side of the market boat. With jibs hauled down, and mainsails slatting in the breeze, they all lay head to the wind, while their crews passed basket after basket down into the hold of the _Agnes T._, to the accompaniment of loud interchanges of talk and chaff.

Before the sun had vanished in the west, the loading was accomplished, the sloops had pushed off, one by one, and worked away to their anchorages for the night, and Young Dan and Jim Humphreys, who comprised his crew, had hoisted the mainsail on the _Agnes T._

His father hauled his skiff alongside as Young Dan and Humphreys went forward to get in the anchor, and, as the pawls clinked against the ratchets, with that sound which is so musical to a seaman’s ears, Cap’n Dan picked up the oars and started to pull toward the shore.

“Be careful, Dannie,” he called across the water. It was the usual warning and farewell. “Don’t carry that tops’l after dark. It begins to look squally off to wind’ard.”

“All right, father!” yelled Young Dan, as the anchor broke from the ground and he ran aft to the wheel. “We’ve got to get these clams to market, you know.”

He spun the wheel over as Humphreys hoisted the jib, and the sloop filled away, with her bowsprit pointing out toward the mouth of the harbor.

By the time the _Agnes T._ had cleared the point, Young Dan found that the wind had freshened considerably, and was now coming out of the northwest in such vigorous puffs that carrying the topsail was out of the question. Humphreys suggested turning in a reef, but Young Dan said he guessed that wasn’t necessary just yet. He asked Jim to take the wheel while he went below to put on his coat. When he had taken his place again, Humphreys dropped down into the cabin, lit the fire, and put the kettle on for tea.

Young Dan ate his evening meal as he sat at the wheel, and before it was finished the increasing force of the wind made steering with one hand and holding his teacup in the other a rather difficult business. When it was finished, and Humphreys had cleared away the dishes, he came up on deck and settled down in the lee of the deck house, with his coat collar turned up around his ears.

“Gee, Dannie, but it’s blowin’!” he commented. “And ain’t she a-travelin’, though? Do you want me to get out the lights?”

“Oh, never mind ’em,” replied Young Dan, with the sailor’s too common disregard of the use of side lights. “We can light ’em up when we get around the fort. Come and take the wheel, will you, Jim? I want to fix that jib. She’s slattin’ round there, and ain’t half drawin’.”

Jim uncoiled himself from his corner, in the lee of the house, and took the wheel as Young Dan went forward. They were off Coffin’s Beach by this time, and Jim could see the summer hotels lifting their huge bulks up against the dark-blue sky, studded with stars that twinkled with unusual brilliancy in the frosty night air.

As the sloop was running dead before the wind, the mainsail was doing all the work, and the jib was slatting to and fro, and not doing what the young skipper thought it should. That was how his passion for carrying sail showed itself, and that was the cause of the tragedy that followed.

Picking up the long oar lying along the rail, he took a turn of the sheet around it at the clew of the jib, and boomed the sail out to port, where it caught the full strength of the wind. As it bellied out, causing the sloop to fairly jump through the water, Young Dan watched it for a moment, and then called out to his companion:

“How’s that, Tim? Ain’t she a-pullin’?”

Before Humphreys could make a reply, he heard a crash, and the wheel was jerked out of his hands.

To his horror, he saw the mast break off just under the hounds. With the topmast and all the gear, it fell to the deck, striking Young Dan, and burying him beneath the wreckage.

The shock of the accident stunned Humphreys for a moment. Then he jumped forward along the tossing deck to drag his companion’s body out from under the splintered spars, sails, and rigging.

The jib was lying in a tangled heap, and the mainsail was hanging broad off to leeward, dipping down into the seas as the sloop rolled, and coming up with a jerk, as if it meant to pluck the cleats and blocks and traveler clear from their fastenings.

Humphreys caught hold of Young Dan’s feet, and, gently as he could, pulled him out from beneath the piled-up gear. Stricken as he was by the shock of the catastrophe, terror caught a fresh grip on him as he saw the boy’s face.

Ashy white, he lay with his eyes closed as if in death. Across his forehead a great cut ran, with the blood slowly and steadily oozing out, and down through his hair, already matted with the thick stream.

Humphreys sickened at the sight, and tried to turn his head away. For the moment he was panic-stricken, then he shook himself together, and half carried, half dragged the body of the boy down into the cabin and stretched him gently on the blankets in the berth. Then he jumped on deck again.

For the time one idea possessed him: He must get a doctor for Dannie. He never thought to let the anchor go, never thought to light a signal lamp. He wanted to get a doctor at once, and he knew there were two or three doctors at the quarantine station over by the fort.

Humphreys had lost his head, in the desire to carry out this plan of action. He tumbled the skiff overboard, shipped the oars, and, hatless, and without taking time to pull off his coat, he began to row to the government reservation, where the one thing needed, a doctor, was to be found.

No one knows how long it took him to pull across the mile of water, nor how long it was before he rushed, breathless, up to the doctor’s door. Without even sinking down into the chair the kindly health officer pushed over to him, he stammered out the story of the tragedy that had been enacted out in the bay, on the deck of the _Agnes T._

Before Jim had finished his tale, the health officer called to one of his assistants to ring up the boat and let the captain know they were going out. Then he busied himself putting some instruments into a black bag, and, before Jim had completely recovered his wind, he was in danger of losing it again as he followed the doctor and his assistant down the path to the landing, where the little white tug, with its tall, yellow stack, was moored.

As they went along, the health officer asked Humphreys for the address of the injured boy’s father.

“We’ll send him a telegram,” he said. “Then he’ll probably come out to look for the sloop, too. You say she had no lights burning? Hum! That makes it so much harder to find her.”

They stopped at the office of the press association, down at the pier, and the operator sent the message to Lockport, following it with a brief story of the accident to the main office up in the city. Then they stepped aboard the tug, the lines were cast off, and the search for the _Agnes T._ began.

What that night was to Humphreys, and to Cap’n Dan, who, on receipt of the telegram, had hired the only tug in Lockport and started out to find his son, only they could tell. Calculating on the direction of the wind, and the set of the tides, the two tugs cruised about until the day began to break along the eastern horizon.

Working gradually to the eastward, backward and forward on long stretches, the tugs gradually, as if by a common instinct, drew together. By the time the dawn had broken, and Humphrey could make out the other tug, he told the health officer she was from Lockport, and that probably Cap’n Dan was aboard her.

He stepped outside the pilot house, with a pair of binoculars in his hand, and, as he did so, he noticed a man do the same thing on the other boat.

Putting the glasses to his eyes, a glance told him that it was Young Dan’s father. Humphreys swung his arm over his head, and then saw the captain turn and speak to the man in the pilot house. A moment later, just as the tug headed for the health officer’s boat, the captain of the latter, who had been scanning the horizon, gave a start, and cried out: “There she is!” Pointing off to the eastward, he twirled the spokes over, gave a pull on the jingle bell, and whistled down the tube to the engineer to “give her all the steam she could carry.”

The eyes of every one on the two boats turned in the direction in which the quarantine tug was headed, and then the sound of the jingle bell on the Lockport boat came across the water.

Head and head, they raced to the eastward, smoke pouring from their funnels, and a broad wave of foaming water piled up before their bows. The light was now strong enough for them to make out the _Agnes T._, aground on the long, sandy beach at the eastern end of the harbor.

As she lay with her bow buried in the sand, and listed over by the weight of the outswung boom and the wreck of the topmast, the sloop made a tragic picture in itself. The cold, gray light of the dawn fell down and around the _Agnes T._, making her stand out against the steel-blue water and the pale sand hills, looming large against this background until her proportions seemed gigantic.

The mainsail hung idly down from the gaff, that had been held just below the break in the mast by the jamming of the hoops. The main sheet trailed overboard in long, tangled loops, the shrouds and halyards drooped in picturesque confusion. Jib and mainsail were gray with the night dew and the reflected light.

The little waves rolled up and broke along her sides and spent their tiny force upon the beach. So they were doing yesterday, when Young Dan was living; so they were doing to-day, when the boy was lying stretched out in the berth, a ghastly, solitary tenant.

As the two tugs came nearer and nearer to her, the Lockport boat gradually drew ahead of the health officer’s tug. They could see Cap’n Dan go aft with one of his best men and stand by the painter of the skiff that was towing astern. Humphrey noticed a couple of men standing on the beach, near the wrecked sloop, and through the glasses he made them out to be patrols from the life-saving station.

He could also see a big power boat coming down from the village that lay inside the point, still farther to the eastward, and he wondered if her business lay with the _Agnes T._ The leading tug slowed down as she reached a point in the channel, off the wreck. Cap’n Dan and the man near him dropped over into the skiff and pulled like madmen for the sloop.

Just as they came alongside of her, the power boat swung up by the wreck, and a man standing up in the bow called to the captain:

“Keep off that boat! There’s a dead man aboard of her, and I’m the coroner. I warn you——” His words trailed off into silence as he caught sight of Cap’n Dan’s face.

Even the crass spirit of a jack-in-office could not resist the mute protest he saw in every line of it. Stern, rigid, a very mask of immobility, given a dignity that made it noble by its grief and suffering, the father’s face awed everything into silence.

Moving as in a trance, Cap’n Dan climbed over the rail of the sloop and stepped down into the cabin.

As he disappeared from sight, the spell of silence laid on the coroner was broken, and he began to mutter protests against “violations of the law,” and declaring “he’d stop this thing right now, before it went any further.”

Presently Cap’n Dan emerged from the cabin, carrying the limp body of his son in his arms. As he stepped into the cockpit, the coroner’s voice was hushed.

The father straightened himself up with a dignity that made the movement noble, and faced the official with eyes that looked across the boy’s body.

Between the time he had gone down into the cabin and came out of it, twenty years seemed to have been added to his age. In his grief, he looked like some old chieftain who had given up the life of his favorite son in his country’s cause, and was now bearing the body home to his castle to mourn over it.

A little shadow of deeper pain passed across his face as he looked at the intruder on his woe, and then he said simply:

“He is my son.”

At the sound of his voice, and the look in his face, the coroner recoiled from the captain as if he had been struck. The man in the skiff uncovered his head. He thought Young Dan was dead.

The captain, still holding the boy in his arms, stepped down into the skiff and held him close to his breast as the man at the oars pulled slowly toward the tug. By this time the health officer’s boat had come up to the skiff, and the doctor, leaning over the rail, said quietly: “Let me see him, captain.”

Cap’n Dan looked up at the doctor.

“He’s dead,” he said, almost in a whisper.

“Won’t you let us see him? There may be a chance,” the doctor pleaded.

Then Cap’n Dan held his son out to the two doctors, who laid him down on a blanket on the deck.

There was a moment of silence as the two worked over the body; then, with an exclamation of satisfaction, one of the doctors sprang to his feet.

“I thought so!” he cried. “I thought he was still breathing! He’s badly hurt, but the poor lad is not dead!”

Cap’n Dan stood as if turned to stone. A great tear rolled down his face, but he said nothing. He watched with indescribable pathos as the surgeons brought their skill into play, and finally, when Young Dan began to babble an incoherent string of words, he drew one weather-beaten hand across his eyes, as if in a daze.

A while later, Young Dan sighed and looked into his father’s face.

“Was I in time, dad?” he whispered softly.

Cap’n Dan smiled down at him, and lied so bravely that the recording angel must have stopped to mend his pen just then, and forgot to mark it down against him.

“Plenty, Dannie, plenty,” he replied.

And then he leaned still farther down and kissed him.

ODD BITS OF NEWS

JAMES CARROL, of Tacoma, Washington, drove a motor car weighing one and one-half tons down a wooden staircase of seven hundred steps.

* * * * *

Truman C. Allen, of Oquawka, Illinois, has not taken a drink of water in forty years. His sole drinks are coffee at breakfast and tea at supper.

* * * * *

Conrad Dubosiki, a twenty-one-year-old Russian giant, who is working on the farm of J. Polokof, in Lebanon, Connecticut, is seven feet two inches tall.

* * * * *

Mrs. Joseph Cummings, of Bernardston, Massachusetts, has a thoughtful hen which has laid an egg with a “C,” which is taken to stand for Cummings, plainly marked on one end.

* * * * *

Mrs. A. A. Morse, of Lewiston, Maine, brought from Durham a specimen of a tree resembling hemlock, which bears red berries the size of huckleberries. Botanists of the neighborhood are at a loss as to the name of the tree.

* * * * *

Alderman Henry A. Lewis, of Bridgeport. Connecticut, is said to own a cat which is part Angora and the rest just plain cat, and which is so strictly vegetarian that it refuses to eat meat or any delicacy covered with meat gravy, but relishes corn on the cob, turnips, cold potatoes, and watermelon rinds.

* * * * *

Charles H. Heeps, of Oxford, Massachusetts, one Thursday evening recently bought an acre of land; Friday morning he bought some lumber, and had it on the ground at eight o’clock, and with the help of his wife, who held the uprights, he finished a two-room house, fifteen feet by twenty, and moved his furniture into the building by Saturday night.

* * * * *

W. A. Rauls, judge of the probate court of Jasper County, South Carolina, has lived successively in three counties without ever having moved out of his house. At first the house was in Beaufort County; then Hampton County was formed, and the judge’s house was included; and finally Jasper County was created, and the house was in this area.

Applause

_Edited by Burt L. Standish_

“YOU want me to be a crook?”

Grant Seward’s jaw squared, as he shot this from between his set teeth, and there was a dangerous flash in his dark eyes.

“I wouldn’t put it that way, Grant.”

“There isn’t any other way. You don’t call it _straight_—do you?”

This was what Grant Seward replied to his unscrupulous employer, when the scoundrel wanted him to cheat the customers by filling up the five-gallon Beaver Spring water bottles with ordinary river water. There were other frauds suggested by the rascally storekeeper, too, which Grant spurned.

The upshot of it is that Grant Seward finds himself in the business of cutting ice on the St. Lawrence River, among the Thousand Islands, with the thermometer near the bottom of the tube, and winds that threaten to saw his ears off, even through his thick cap.

Besides battling with the ice and an arctic temperature, rather than be a party to the groceryman’s mean trickery, Grant has to fight several human enemies, who have a habit of “hitting below the belt.” You will read all this and much more in the new novelette,

A BATTLE BELOW ZERO,

BY WELDON W. BRODERICK

to be published in the next issue. The story is full of thrilling adventures, with some novel and narrow escapes for this thoroughly American hero. He strikes all his own blows fairly and squarely, giving the other fellow always a fair show—often when he hardly deserves it. I can promise the novelette to be one of the breeziest, most convincing, and absorbing that has ever come from this author’s facile pen.

There have been many calls from readers for more stories from Cornelius Shea. In a recent issue, you were promised that this call would be answered. It has been, for Shea has just completed a serial which he has entitled

THE LOST PLACER

and it carries an appeal to every reader of fiction who has a drop of red blood in his veins. The first chapters of this serial begin in the next issue, and depict Western life in a manner that has made Shea famous as a writer of stories dealing with stirring doings on the borderland.

In the opinion of many, Leslie W. Quirk is the best writer of sport stories in this country. Certainly it is true that he is an authority on all sports, and you feel when you read his description of a contest of any kind that the author knows what he is writing about, that he has been right down there himself, and has not just sat up in the grand stand, or read about it the next day in the morning paper. Not only does Quirk know all sports, but he knows how to tell about them in a most interesting manner. His plot is always a good one, and he draws his characters so well that they “stick.”

THE YELLOW MORNING-GLORY

which you will find in the next issue, is, in my humble opinion, the best running story that Quirk has ever written. It is quite a long story, but, take my word for it, you will wish that he had made it twice as long.

There is a particularly well-assorted and well-written collection of short stories in the next issue. Let me hear what you think of my selection, and which of the stories you like best, and, what is of more importance, why?

FROM OUR HONORARY EDITORS

FOR THE EDITOR: I have read TIPTOP for many years, and, though the name has grown to mean more to me and my whole family than I can tell, I agree with you in that the name “TIPTOP SEMI-MONTHLY” is too unwieldy and suggests too much the old five-cent-weekly form of publication, which is now obsolete. So let us all cry long live WIDE-AWAKE!

BARTON HEDGES. Buffalo, N. Y.

GLAD IT DID

FOR THE EDITOR: I am greatly pleased with your magazine, and think it is a fine publication. I have been taking it since its first issue, and took the weekly for twelve years. Of course, as an old reader, I prefer the Merriwell stories, and would like a novelette of that family every other issue. The cover on the November 10th issue was fine. Have yet to strike a poor issue. “From Hank to Geo” is great! So are the stories about Clem Frobisher. Can’t we have another animal story by Harold de Polo? Every lover of nature likes them. Excuse this long letter, but it had to come. Will close now.

RALPH SMITH. Lawrence, Mass.

OF INTEREST TO ALL

You readers, gentle and otherwise, certainly were weak on fish, but, oh you birds! Here are the names of the five readers whose letters showed the greatest amount of ingenuity in solving the “Concealed Birds” puzzle in the October 25th issue: Miss Irene Evans, Grassmere, Washington; J. E. Price, 89 Academy Street, Malone, New York; Frank Chalfaut, 404 North Marion Street, Bluffton, Indiana; F. Gleason, 5702 Ayala Street, Oakland, California; and F. R. Rudderham, U. S. S. _Georgia_, Care Postmaster, New York, N. Y.

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Those who sent in correct answers to the puzzle are:

A. Stanley Bowles, Geo. Conner, G. S. Tuttle, Frank Lonsford, Mrs. H. L. Drake, John Verner, Thos. L. Welch, Theodore Blake, Shaw Livermore, G. H. Brunner, M. Case, H. English, Gerald Garsch, A. Martin, F. W. Kramer, E. E. Crompton, Thos. W. Bond, C. H. Lenze, E. Walter, G. E. Missing, J. A. Winkler, G. A. Marsh, Chas. E. Drummond, Ross Merrick, H. N. Jennings, Earl Seckel, Russel Hardy, Albert Muench, E. G. Smith, Forrest Forsyth, John R. Jordon, Myron Bilderbeck, G. C. Matheson, Jas. K. Darling, Ivan McCune, R. Hovel, Edwin Beggerow, Frank H. Bartz, Murray Weems, Jr., R. Ford, Roscoe R. Keeney, F. H. Bice, H. Johnson, J. M. Keley, C. E. Shipley, H. Goodwin, E. A. Collins, Guy Greeman, Wallace J. Geck, J. W. Covert, Miss Lora Clarke, Miss C. E. McComas, Wm. A. Mullen, Lawrence Mody, J. T. Thompson, C. L. Harrer, B. Elkin, M. Steinberg, J. F. Travers, C. F. Jones, Geo. Pregrin, C. J. Butts, Myron A. Jenkins, R. Khugler, Sam Powell, C. L. Barton, Neil Parsons, H. Page, Coy Williams, P. H. Riel, Clarence H. Clay, O. Deutschmann, J. Burke, Clifton Alford, R. Altmeyer, James Mossburger, Harold Nelson, Chas. Smith, Anton Paterson, O. W. Slusser, C. Kilburn, Mrs. O. D. Rhea, Walter E. Goodwin, Mrs. A. J. Nurse, Milond Nellans, E. W. Inyart, Miss Mabel Mullikin, Harold Thune, W. Culbert, H. E. Davis, Harold Stonehill, N. Woledehoff, G. L. Fowler, R. W. Older, Geo. H. Hogan, F. Quantmeyer, H. L. Wickey, Alden Bermingham, W. E. Outman, Herbert Reine, C. Noethling, J. S. Riddle, H. A. Bridenbecker, Frank Spoon, L. R. Cantwell, Chas. Schnell, U. G. Figley, Vernon Beightol, Theodore Phillips, Clifford Johnson, C. W. Gillman, D. A. Gardner, Rollin W. Cowles, J. F. Howell, S. Melvin, J. W. Schroeder, Vernon Headapohl, Otto A. Lohmeyer, Jr., Frank Mora, Harold A. MacNain, I. M. King, T. M. Poyle, Hy. Bokarny, F. W. Brooks, Paul Malloy, Elbert Bedwell, Carl Shoemaker, Frank Branson, S. S. Reilley, W. E. Quigley, C. M. Haller, R. W. Lawrence, C. Ingwersen, Roger Saldarine, Ray Barriger, Chas. Duffy, James McNamara, W. Verschooe, James Shortell, S. E. Wood, F. E. Cowley, Jr., Mrs. Carle F. Williams, T. Hayes, A. C. Smith, T. F. Chesebrough, Andrew de Comsey, E. J. Kohler, E. F. Johnson, R. Anderson, Miss Winifred Whitham, C. Murphy, Howard Holiday, Wilmer Taylor, Carlo Izzi, Miss Elizabeth Greer, Miss Marion Reaves, E. O. Hayden, N. Hatlestad, Phil. Thomas, Carl Cohn, John L. Foley, R. C. Vallmore, and Miss Edith Whipple.

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Here is the answer to the puzzle, which was entitled “Concealed Birds.”

1. Robin. 2. Turkey. 3. Magpie. 4. Harpy. 5. Hawk. 6. Crane. 7. Crow. 8. Tern. 9. Kite. 10. Chickadee. 11. Linnet. 12. Curlew. 13. Loon. 14. Hornbill.

But don’t get discouraged, for, once again you have an opportunity to secure a free subscription to WIDE-AWAKE MAGAZINE for a year.

One year’s subscription to WIDE-AWAKE MAGAZINE will be given to each of the five readers whose letters indicate that the writers exercised the greatest amount of ingenuity in arriving at the correct solution of the following puzzle. These letters should not be over one hundred words in length, and will not be judged from the standards of penmanship and grammar. The answers must be received by January 24th.

To inform our correspondents as to whether they worked out the puzzle to a proper conclusion, we will print the names of all those who send in correct answers.

How are you on sports? What, every one of you has his right hand up! Well, then, try this:

SPORTS PUZZLE

This sports puzzle consists in guessing the names of certain games, or sports, as shown in the following example:

The initials of all nouns in the sentence given below, when placed in their proper order, form the name of a sport. One letter, however, is omitted. This letter must be supplied.

The _u_ndercurrent washed away the _t_restle, the only _s_afeguard against the _q_uicksands surrounding the _i_sland.

The initials of all the nouns in the order in which they appear in the above sentence are U T S Q I. Arranging them in proper sequence, the result will be: QUITS. Supplying the missing letter, O, the name is Quoits, a well-known sport.

In like manner, the name of a popular game, or sport, is contained in each of the following sentences:

1. The farmer had a good output of tomatoes, beats, and lettuce; but his onions, beside the apples he produced, were the most profitable of what he sold.

2. Landscapes, lighthouses, armories, and drawings of houses filled the book, and afforded considerable amusement.

3. The crow circled the edge of a thicket, soaring over the rocks, and landed on the crest of a little knoll.

4. Life in the summertime, when amusement supplants tedious lessons, is most enjoyable, with its appeal for bathing and boating.

5. Elks, skunks, otters, lions, and rabbits are some of the animals whose cages we visited.

6. Each section of the notebook contained entries of special interest at the time it was exposed.

7. The foul gave the apparent losers the game.

8. The eyes of the listeners stared out of their sockets, as the lecturer continued his account of the thrilling adventures depicted in “Bandits’ Trails and Blood.”

9. The song of the canary was carried across the courtyard, to the room occupied by the old studious ecclesiastic.

10. Quinine is the best remedy for a cold, although it is a widespread opinion that other things can be used to bring about the same end.

YOUNGEST UNIVERSITY STUDENT

STUDENTS and faculty of the University of Chicago are expecting much of Benjamin Perk, of Indianapolis, thirteen years and four months old, who has registered as a freshman. Perk was graduated last spring from the Indianapolis Manual Training High School, and was awarded a scholarship at the university. He is enrolled in the junior college of philosophy.

Perk follows in the footsteps of Harold Fishbein, who came from Indianapolis a year ago at the age of fifteen and has continued his remarkable record at the university. Perk is the youngest student ever matriculated at Chicago.

Are You Too Fat?

Reducing Outfit Sent Free

With permission it will be my pleasure to mail two very important free gifts to every over-fleshy reader of this publication (male or female) who writes a postal to me. If you, reader, are putting on fat or are excessively fleshy at the present time, then you certainly must have this free outfit, because it includes absolutely everything necessary to give you an immediate demonstration of what the very latest and greatest (1915) health and Nature methods are so marvelously accomplishing for stubborn obesity cases. One of these free gifts is a neatly bound copy of my world-famed “new-thought” Treatise, telling in easy language the simple things you can do for yourself, and much you must NOT do when reducing. No other book is like it—every person over-weight should study it. The other gift is surely going to please and surprise you. It is a complete, ready-to-use testing package of my wonderful reducing materials, the like of which you have never seen before. They are delightful to use and are meeting with tremendous favor. Your own doctor could not possibly object to my healthful preparations. He will tell you it may be positively dangerous to use old-fashioned methods of starvation, excessive sweating and continuous strong purging of the bowels with drastic, poisonous cathartics. How can a weak heart stand this enormous strain? Why take such chances when my absolutely safe, health-giving method is ready for you and waiting? There is no delay. It starts at once. I purpose it to put the system in vigorous health, to vitalize weakened organs and strengthen the heart by perfectly reducing every pound of superfluous flesh on all parts of the body, double chins, large stomachs, fat hips, etc. You will never know until you try it. Remember, just a postal request will bring all to you absolutely free by return mail, in a plain wrapper. You can then judge by actual results, and may order more of the reducing preparations later if you need them.

=CAUTION! My Method is being widely imitated. None genuine unless coming from my laboratory.=

Please write your address plainly.

=F. T. BROUGH, M. D., 51 Brough Building, 20 East 22nd St., NEW YORK=

_IN THE NEXT ISSUE_

THE OPENING CHAPTERS OF A SERIAL BY

CORNELIUS SHEA

ENTITLED

THE LOST PLACER

For years Cornelius Shea has been one of the most popular authors of stories of adventure in the West. Mr. Shea wrote a serial for you, “The Kid From Bar B,” which we published during the early summer months. At that time you were asked if you wanted more stories by Mr. Shea. We received a flood of replies in answer to this question, and all of the letters spoke most highly of Mr. Shea’s work, and requested more of it.

Mr. Shea says that “THE LOST PLACER” is a far better story than “The Kid From Bar B.” We agree with him. What do you say?

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Transcriber’s Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

Page 25, “familiarty” changed to “familiarity” (told of his familiarity)

Page 58, “McShane” changed to “McShayne” (arranged with McShayne)

Page 79, “Rosmommon” changed to “Roscommon” (you reach Roscommon)

Page 87, “gold” changed to “golf” (golf clubs, boxing)

Page 94, “Venon” changed to “Vernon” (reason for Vernon)

Page 100, “vagabone” changed to “vagabond” (Nonsense, you vagabond!)