Evening Star Newspaper, March 17, 1929, Page 92

‘A PAIR OF SKI B T the top of the ridge Jed Lawrence wavered, glanced over | his shoulder, and finally halted, | a gray form against a gray background, his gaunt attention centered upon a log cabin in the valley below. It lured him, that cabin. with the | smoke curling along the slab-boarded | Toof from the slanting tin chimney, | and dissolving in the whippings of the wind at the eaves. It held his tired| eyes, over which a shaking hand| brushed in frequent haphazard move- | ments, as if to free them from visions that would not be dispelled. It tugged at him—as_though it were human; this would be the last time Jed Law- rence would ever see that cabin, the Jast chance he would ever have to look into the face of the girl who lived there, to hear her voice. : After a long moment of indecision, he strove to press onward, forcing his tired limbs sgainst the pull of the grade as the ridge began to rise toward the filmy heights of the Continental Divide, | glowering from its veils of white against the leaden curtain of the sky. Dazedly he shook himself, a physical yeaction against a mental burden, and again he looked longingly toward the little structure in the valley. 5 “Wouldn't have time, anyway." he | mumbled. “I've got to beat the snow.” | He stared about him at the country | that lay beyond, the bare, twisted trees | writhing in the agonies of the timber- line struggle to live, the bluish expanses of the rockslide, where they rose, A Story of Faith and Love friend of mine. Brad sald something, and I called him a liar.” “Then it was Thornton he men- tioned!” “I ain't brought Thornton Luce's name in this, and I ain’t brought yours in it, and 1 ain't brought anybody's but Brad Master's and mine!” the man protested. “If you're going to keep on making up things—" He halted and scraped a booted foot against the knot- ted pine floor. “I didn’t mean to say that so rough-like,” he apologized. The | girl's grasp tightened upon his arm. “Just tell me what happened, Jed—I 't interrupt.” ‘Yeh—well, that's about all there was.” An anguished brain was striving to plece together a thing painfully vivid, yet fragmentary. “I called him a liar and a pretty low sort of a man to try to butt in when two folks—that is, when somebody was happy—and try to ruin something that wasn't any of his business. And he said I didn’t know what I was talking about, and that, if I took my friend’s part so strong, I must be just about as bad as he was, I guess those things all end up the same way. Anyway, the first thing I knowed, we were fighting. Both of us about the same size—only he had the best of me. Brad could box you know.” y “And nobody tried to stop you!" the girl exclaimed. “Oh, why will men stand about- asn't anybody else in the Jed answered. “Just him He halted, peering out l};i place, Mary, and me.” fluted with white toward the higher stretches; the hummocks of timber-line | spruce and juniper, crouched, as though | in humility, before the somber majesty | of the region that towered bevond. place aloof. ominous, brooding, \\_m\X its sporadic bursts of snow swelling | from its vicious peaks, its fields of dirty white where the glaciers creaked | on, year after year and age upon age, | its’ ferocity and yet its friendliness— for there lay safety from pursuit, and Jed Lawrence was a hunted man. Again he wavered, even as the faint light of hope came into his deadened eves. He glanced once more below, and his reserve suddenly breaking, covered his face with his hands. i It might as well be me that tells her,” he moaned. “She’s bound to know." | A hundred yards from the cabin he ipped hi :rgprceting had imself as if for an ordeal. | come from the doorway, | Where stood a young woman, laughing a welcome. Jed Lawrence went forward. | “Your paw ain't here?” he asked huskily. The girl's smile vanished. “No, he’s down at the mine.” Then | quickly: “What's the matter Jed— | you're so pale!” | Jed Lawrence came closer, and, with | trembling hand, braced himseif against the door. “T've killed a man!” he gasped. She took it as one would take a | blow; & hand raised to lips that had suddenly become white, her brown eyes widened with horror and revulsion. But only for an instant. For suddenly she was gripping convulsively at his shoulders. “You never, Jed!” she cried. “You never did any such thing—you never, you never!” “Yes, I did.” he answered, in a mono- tone. “That's why I asked you first if your paw was here. He'd have tried to hold ‘me.” He paused. then com- pleted his though: “Brad Masters is dead, down in his pool hall. My knife's in him—clean up to the hilt.” s ‘HE girl's fire vanished with the statement. She went into the cabin and sat huddled at the table. Jed Lawrence followed, halting across the cabin, as if afraid to ap- proach nearer, a dazed, slow-thinking man, unable to cope with the sorrow his confession had inflicted. This was & different Mary Preston from the one he had always known. The laughing brown eyes had become heavy and life- less; the prettily curved lips were | drawn. T never thought you'd take it this | way.” he said. The girl looked up. | “What'd you think I'd do, Jed?” she | asked, in innocent accusation. He shook his head. “I don't know. I mnever thought about it at all. I——" He stared out the open door as a sudden rise of the wind mioaned at the eaves, scattering before it the first swirling flakes of the | approaching storm. “I just figured you'd find out when they came after me, and somehow—if you had to know—I wanted to be the one to tell you.' “Why'd you ever do it, Jed?” “I'll never know that, Mary. I never will. Something must've just come over me.” Jed Lawrence broke off, caught his breath jerkily. “I never thought I'd ever—ever do anything like that. I don't even remember anything about it—I guess a fellow gets that way when he kills somebody. Not till I picked myself up off the floor and looked at him and seen my hunting- knife sticking in his side, clean up to the guard. We'd been fightin'.” “About what, Jed?” The man turned, his head lowered. “I'd called him a liar.” “Why?" | “He'd said somethin'—about some- | “But what did he say, Jed?" {*Oh, just something.” “People don't.” she hesitated at the | word, “don’t kill folks for just saying | something. Who was he talking | about?" | Jed Lawrence turned his gaze again | toward the open door. The snow was fiying more swiftly now. “T've got to be gettin’ on,” he mum- }1‘.?&. “This snow’s a wet one—it'll pile ast.” But the girl had risen, and moved a» step from the table. “I want to know!" she demanded “Who was Brad Masters talking about | ~what made you call him a liar?" i ‘The man shook his head. | “That's my business.” Brad was my | “And it's mine, too! friend.” i “Your friend?” A slight gasp ac- companied the words—as if this were a new blow, added to ones already over- | powering. “He couldn't've been your | friend, Mary!” | “So he said something about me, | then?” Her eyes narrowed. “Was that | it, Jed?” i T've said enough” came sullenly; from the doorway. { But the girl persisted. i “Or did he say it about Thornton?” The question turned him swddenly, to stare at her as if she had broken | through a wall he believed impregnable. | His answer was evasive. “There ain’t going to be anybody else mixed in this but me” he answered | doggedly excuses.” M+ arm “What happened, Jed?” she pleaded. “Won't you tell me?” He glanced out to where the moun- tains were beginning to fade in swirling white. “I don't know,” he answered at last. *“I'd stopped in there to get a sack of tobacco—figured on going over the ¥ange this afternoon, if the snow held off; the sky looked bad. Got to talking 1o Brad about the weather, how it Jooked like the snow was comin’' a lot earlier this year. Then—well, we just talked o' various things—and folks. Then somebody's name come up.” “Whose name?” demanded ¢ Preston, with a tense eagerness. “It don't make no difference. | . * RY PRESTON came slowly for- ward, and laid a hand on his Mary A the driving blasts of white, as thoug! striving to pierce them for a view of the lower country beyond. “I've got to be watchin’ the trail,” he explained. A | Then, as a question from the girl pull- | ed him back to his sujbect: “No, there wasn't nobody but Brad and me. He had the best of it—kept hitting me under the heart. I was getting pretty dizzy when I thought I heard the door {open behind me and started to 1ook | mine around to see if it was some friend of Brad's, comin’ to help him. But never got to look. Brad hit me again, | and I started to go down, and—-" “Then you——" "I guess so,” brokenly. “I must've done it said Jed Lawrence then. | Must've just done it without even know- ing it. I just remember kind of floun- dering around for a second or two, and the next thing I knew, I was getting up off the floor. There was Brad, all doubled up, and a streak of red on his clothes, at his side, you know. And my hunting knife in him. I called to him, and rubbed his wrists and temples and everything, but he didn't answer me.” “Jed!” She said it faintly, with her hands over her eyes. “It scared me, Mary,” he went on. “I just knelt there and trembled—beg- gin' him to open his eves. Then I heard somebody coming. and 1 jumped up and looked through the window. It was Thornton and a couple of fel- lows, laughin’ and talking as they turned off the street. And there I stood, Mary, with a murdered man, and my knife in_him—it came over me Just like that. I could see only Judge Parker looking down at me over his glasses—an’ mumblin’, like he did that time when he sentenced that Mexican for killin’* Of a sudden his voice broke. “I run, Mary—I couldn't help it! T went out through the back door and jumped on my horse and made it out of town. I pushed him as hard as I could go until I got to the bottom of the ridge; then I let him go and start- ed walking. I must've made it up here in less'n two hours, Mary.” * k% % 'HERE was no answer, save the sob- bing of the girl. Jed Lawrence began to fumble with the buttons of his sheepskin. “I've got to go. Mary,” he said at last. “This snow'll be deep enough to slow me up pretty soon, and I've got to keep ahead of 'em. They've found out by this time—with my name on my knife. Besides, folks must've seen me rldlg’ out of town.” “You're not going to run away, Jed?” S i “I've already run, Mary. I'm goin® on up to my cabin—got snow shoes there. Once I get started over the range, they’ll never have a chance of heading me off. I know that country.” ‘But Jed—Jed!" Her voice was pleading. “You ain't going to run nwnly, luae & criminal!” “I've done & criminal thi 't 12" Py ing, ain't I? “But vou ain’t told all of it. I know you ain’t told all of it! There's lu'l:'le- thh’lg behind all this, Jed, that you won't tell me—and I've got to know!” He strove to break from her, but the hands of Mary Preston had become of great strength, clutching at his :krms, at the folds of his heavy sheep- “Jed—you can't go! I won't let g'u!!y I dwr.;n'o. iIt won't! You've .m.yfi E and face it—we’ll fin vay, I Yol fust tellor T & VA Jed. ']‘ie flung his arm free from her grasp. tin’ up that talk to a murderer!” “But you're not, Jed! not—there'’s something you told, and I'm going to know it.” last vestige of reserve vanished in a surge of emotion that sent her, to her tiptoes, her arms tightly clasped about his neck. “You're no murderer, Jed— you couldn't be! I wouldn't believe it if a thousand people said they saw you! You're going to stay and face it out; I'll :ln for you; we’ll make out some=~ ow—0? He gaped for an instant in wonder: then, almost roughly, his big hands went upward to tear their embrace. “What’s come over you, Mary?” he gasped. “Carryin’ on this way? What éll’\l '.yl':homwn'd hear you talkin' like 1" “Thornton!” Mary Preston faced him with flashing eves. What do I care about Thornton?" “What do you care about him?" asked Jed Lawrence amazedly. —after you two fixing up to get mar- ried?” “He told you that?” “Why, sure: he told me all about it.” “And you believed him? Is that why you haven't been to see me, Jed? Is it? Is that why you've acted so queer and stayed out of my way? I want to know!" “Why, sure, Mary. It wasn't nothin’ but natural that you'd care about him, ver me. Him-—he's got education and looks and clothes- " “And lies and sneaking ways and—" lary!” rom- ands were pounding now, one into the other. “I didn't tell him anything of the kind “I ain't trying to offer DO} T told him I didn’t want him—that I wanted somebody else, and that I | had a right to him. And he laughed at me and said you'd never step in | front of him——" Me, Mary?” Yes, ycu! Following him about like a dog, doing everything that he told ! you to do, believing everything that he said to you, standing in the background {50 that he could always be out in front. | And I told him that there was some- | thing back somewhere that would come out 1 him some of these days, and I'd find out what it was. And break that out and—and speak for yourself.” | Jed Lawrence moved toward the door. l “T thought it was him, Mary," said. | more now—TI've raised the bars on tl Brad, down tgere in town with my somethin’ | whirled, his big hands the firing sq knife in him—— And more!” Now I ou've gone crazy, Mary. You, put- | 1 know you're | haven't | Her | her arms from | “Why, Mary | faith of yours so that you could come he “There ain't no use talkin’ any | clenched before him. nobody in this here thing but me! goin’ away, where they won't find me: Tll get out of them snowfields by a pass I know, and I'll be gone where nobody'll ever strike my trail. You | keep still about it—understand that? | You ain't in this, and I ain't goin' to tin’ a life over? Huh? mebody that ain’t got no to reach for his knife gittin' licked! You,"—he eer—"thinkin’ about a fool like me!” He glanced over his shoul- der. “Snowin’ harder. Got to be get- | tin’ on before the big slide fills up.” Then, curtly: “S'long, Mary. Forget | I've been here!" | e e | THE sound of her voice mingled with the crashing of the door as he jerked it shut behind him, and his big form, bent against the blast of white, swung again for the ridge. Half-way to the backbone he faltered, looked over nis shoulder, raised a booted foot to the next jutting boulder, as if to go on- ward, then whirled with sudden re- solve. “You go back!" he shouted to the dim form of the woman, faintly visible through the drifting white as it swept downward into the valley. me—you go back there!™ It was the quality of his tone rather |1 to b Who'm I | strove to | | than the words: she turned, as if | answer to an unalterable decree. Jed | Lawrence, from his position upon the | heights, watched the form of her | gradually recede. At last, faintly audible | | above the shrilling of the wind, there " sounded the banging of a heavy door as Mary Preston forced it tight against the shrieking storm. Jed Lawrence pressed forward, up over the edge of the ridge and onward, | toward the white desert of the Con- | tinental Divide. Once he halted, hold- | ing his hands before him, as if studving | them for the carmine stains of guilt. | “Killed morn'n Brad, that knife o he mumbled drearily. Doggedly he pushed on. Afternoon had come now—far in the heights of the drift- | laden divide was a cabin that must be | reached, where there were snow-shoes | and provisions and a rifle. | “He'd always told me I never had a chance!” he muttered. “How should I | know difterent?" | _ Suddenly his brain cleared. revealing |things that he had never realized | before—his blind devotion to a man ! who had come into his life five years | before, and who, by the constant as- | sociation of a winter in the hills, en- | deared himself to this big, slow-think- | ing man. Jed, because he had fol- lowed nothing in his life but the straight course, had thought of only |a straight course for others. He had had a feeling of inferiority before Thornton Luce, who had traveled, who i could speak familiarly of strange places, | who read and talked of books as though they were his intimate friends, who coul? meet others without embarrass- ment. . Now Jed had learned that there had been lies and stealth—deception, where he had given unfaltering faith. He halted, and brushed again, dizzily, at his eyes. Then slowlirl he shook.his head. There was nothing to do about it now—except to go away, to lose himself where no one would ever know. “Folks forget after while,” he mut- tered. “There'll be somebody else show up—a lot better'n I'll ever be. An that's an end to it!” * ok ok x VTWO hours later a gasping. man | % brushed away the snow at the edfie of a jutting rock and pulled himself over its edge and sank for a moment to rest. Below him, visible for an in- stant in a lifting of the storm, the tumbled serrations of the mountain |country displayed themselves. Jed | Lawrence looked out over the scene before making the final ascent to his cabin, there to outfit himself for the Jjourney that would lead him to safety. One last glance strayed at random, for a time, then suddenly centered. “Moving!” he said, and raised his hands above his ?lunnn( eyes. Long moments passed, while, far in the lower hills, the black, slowly progressing dot Plssed from a ridge into a draw, lost tself behind the jutting rocks, then re- appeared—a dot that twisted about the projecting peaks and jetties of stone, even as he had twisted, or that dipped into the lower stretches, following & trail not yet erased. Jed Lawrence suddenly rose with an exclamation of fear. “Moving!” he exclaimed again. “On my trail!” ‘Hls big form bent aganst the newly rising wind. A hundred yards, and he BY WILL ROGERS. ELL, all I know is just what 1 read in the papers. Of course as I write this about all we are reading in the papers is about Mexico. We got Hoover all set now for four years. After that he will have to hustle for himself. There is an option clause in his Contract, but we will look him over carefully before we exercise it. But he is starting out pretty good. The night he was inaugurated why Mexico broke out. So this aint going to be one of those “Let Nature take its course” Administrations, And Calvin is just settled down up there in Massachusetts. He has wanted solitude and it looks like he will get it. Just think of having a breakfast in the morning and not having to feed some Senator. But the thing I want to take my text from today is “Mexico.” Now it was just a little over a year ago that I was down there for weeks, and it looks like every fellow that I met and got well ac- quainted with down there is now mixed on the other. Now take General Escobar, he is the Leader that is operating in the North East. T have been his Guest at his home 1in Mexico City. He is one of their most popular Generals. He is the one that took me to the Bull Fight. He got a great kick out of it for everytime the bull was anywhere near the Horse I would bury my head down on my arms and look down at the floor. (We were sitting in the front row and there was elbows were resting on.) Then he would it got to be the laugh of everybody around there. Party were kinder around the circle al- most facing us and Calles got to Kid- ding me about not looking up. They had pictures in the Mexico Papers the next day of “American Comedian en- Jjoying Mexican Bull Fight,” and all you could see was the top of a hat buried on a couple of folded arms on the railing. and General Escobar laughing and pointing to me. I could stand part of it for there is some very clever things done in the ring. But when it come to the horses I sure couldent go that, and say by the way the most famous fighter Bull from his Horse and don’t get his horse hit at all. He has splendidly reigned horses, and he gives a great | exhibition. I think he was to be in Mexico this winter. Now that is worth seeing cause that is real work. But lets get back to personalities, when you read this you may be reading .{on the front page of the same paper, “Cross marks spot where ReRol Lea General Escobar stood when™he d | let you get dragged in, neither. Who'm | “Hear | up in all the headlines on the days; news. Some are on one side and some . a big concrete ballustrade where our| tell m: when to look up again. Finally| My friend President Calles and his, in Spain now is A fellow that fights the | Courtney Ryley Cooper | certainty. “Better not hang around here wastin' time!” he mused. “That won't help | me none!” | On again. Pulling himself up the last of the rocl {of the div | gressing along a trail already broken, moving faster than he had moved and | upon a definite course. He lowered his head against the gale shrieking down from the white-fringed peaks to the left. Steadily he pro- | gressed, at last to veer sharply along a | bare-swept shale-fleld and turn toward | the squatty outlines of a tiny cabin. He fumbled for the key to the heavy pad- lock; steel grated against steel, fol- lowed by the rasping yleld of rusted tumblers. Jed Lawrence stumbled with- in, passed round the little table, with its filterings of snow that the mountain wind had sent through the chinkings, and bent behind the stove. An ejacula- tion escaped him; he raised an object, looked above to where a small hole in the eaves-log told of a nail that had slipped from its fastenings, then dully stared at the thing in his hand. It was one of two snowshoes. The in | other lay upon the floor, its gut web- bing torn and frayed and ragged, even as this one. Beside it was a tin can, empty now—but nevertheless eloquent, ““The nail gave way,” mumbled Jed Lawrence in explanation. “The grease in that can must-ve been warm from the sun. Snowshoes hit it when they ‘(oll(-goz greasy. Pack-rats did the Test.” He tossed the web to the floor—merely so much bent, gnawed wood and useless strings now, chewed beyond repair by mountain pack-rats. He turned and stamped slowly about the little room, a hopeless man, halted at last to look above him where upon their pegs rested the curved stretches of what he had planned as a pair of skis—as useless as the snowshoes that lay behind the stove. “It'd take a night's work to fix 'em,” he sald. “They've got to be shaped yet, and grooved an’ everything. Who- ever it is that's after me——" There was no need in finishing the sentence. Jed Lawrence's left hand had gone instinctively to his belt there to fumble at emptness. To shape skis one must possess a keen blade—and his scabbard was empty. 3 JFROM over the ridge a roaring sounded, far away, then horribly close as the blast veered—the scraping and grinding of rocks, the scattering of shale and the booming of boulders as they thupdered downward to crash through the ice of a tiny lake a thou- sand feet below. ‘The cabin began to grow gray with the passing of the day—soon the win- dows were only blue smudges against the reflections of the snow, and the man a black hulk before a fireless stove. Sconer or later, he knew, there would come a knock on the door. And he would face an officer who carried a warrant for murder, There was no other way—those rugged rat-chewed snow- d | shoes behind the stove had ended every other hope. One could not travel with- out them. The snow was crusting now —not enough to hold a human form, but sufficiently to bind one's feet when they broke through and hold them as in a trap. Without snowshoes of with- out skis . .. Jed turned in the black- ness and glanced above. No knife. No time for the slow process of smoothing them and fitting their straps. emotion. “They're not goin anybody else up with this, I— He leaped from the chair, arms swung from his sides, head down, legs spraddled. He moved toward the door, halting after a few steps, listening for it to come again, as though his brain were making sport of him. But it was repeated, and re-repeated, in a voice he could not mistake: “Jed—Jed Lawrence!” “Here!” He had swung open the door and was staring outward. “Where are y]lz}x—'here are you? Call again, 14 w” mix “Come help me, Jed!” It was over to the right, and he swung forward, bucking blindly against the drifts, shouting again and again, and then waiting for the response. At last he knew, that black dot was steadily pro- | THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, MARCH 17, 1929—PART 7. “There wasn't | helted, panting, to glance again below, | I'm | then to stand, for a moment, in un- | out in a sudden excess of agony. “You're hurt, Ma “It was you, then! try to come here!” “It's just my knee” She said it bravely. “I came as far as I could with it. Raise your arm there. Jed—that's it. I started a slide—one of the big rocks——" Her words ceased in the suppression |of a groan as Jed Lawrence moved | swiftly toward the cabin. There he | fumbled his way within, one great arm holding her as though she were a child, the other fecling his way before him. At last & lamp flickered, and Jed Law- rence, his features lined and old, bent over the stove, lighting a fire. “If I'd known it was you, Mary,” he | said dully; “I never thought——" “Oh, T had to, Jed!” The girl turned painfully on the bunk. “They came to the cabin—the sheriff and four men, and forced it out of me that you'd been there. Your tracks in the snow—there wasn't any way to explain them.” “But they didn't follow me.” ‘The girl shook her head. “That’s why I came, Jed. I thought I could head you off by going through the big draw. But it's filled up with snow—I had to come back to your trail. I was trying to go too fast, and didn’t watch myself on the rocks. You must've heard it when the slide started —I just loosened one little rock, and everything seemed to give way.” “Yeh, I heard it,” he said dully. “Thought it was just the snow. I've got to get you down, some way, Mary. The ligaments must be tore——" “No, it's just the knee, Jed, It brushed againt me—the slide, you know. And threw me over to one side. My right foot was in the crevice—and it twisted my knee. I'm glad it did, Jed. You've got to go with me now!" He looked at her. “I wish you'd never come, Mary."” “And had them get you at the other side?” came the swift querry. “Oh, don't you see, Jed? They had Kendall along. He knows the pass as well as you do—the one place where you'd come out. I heard them talking about it. They didn't even follow your tracks past the cabin. Kendall said he knew what you'd do—that you'd try to get out the other side, and they started around to head you off. They're not even worrying, Jed. The sheriff's going back to town as soon as he places his men. He knows they'll get you, that you're in a trap.” She raised a hand, “Don't you see what it means, Jed—for you to be caught running away? You'd never have a_single chance of a de- fense—Judge Parker'd just—" “There ain't going to be no defense anyway, Mary." “But you've got to make one, Jed! You couldn't have done it with- ut—" “It'’s my business what I did.” He stood watching the T've got to get you down, some way. Them sl there—but I ain't got my knife, down in town.” “I've got mine, Jed." e HE twisted painfully, and reached for the scabbard at her belt. Jed Lawrence went slowly beside her, hold- ing forth a hand. The girl looked up curiously. “What's the matter with your right hand?” she asked. “Nothin’, with a knife.” s Uy It's— tested its edge. & ski- whittling at its rounded end. came a voice from the bed | bent, and his big arms encircling her, raised Mary Preston from the snow, cringing with sympathy as she cried v1” he exclaimed. Oh, why did you I just don't ever use it He took the blade from her, and Then, with the lamp his shoulder, he sat before the stove, braced between his knees, There ever knew you were left-handed, h, I ain't,” he said, “except when THE BREAKING MOON SHOWED THE HULKING FORM OF A BIG MAN. GLIDING SWIFTLY UPON HOMEMADE SKIS WITH A BURDEN IN HIS ARMS, - it comes to a knife. 'Member, three years ago, when I was cutting timbers for the Mammoth Mine? wrist jammed.” He held forth his right hand, striving to cup it. “Don't know what happened. Only, when I get my hand in this position it won't hold anything. Must've weakened somethin’. All right other ways.” ‘Then he went back to his whittling. An hour passed in the soft sound of steel against wood. At last he looked up. “Funny, ain't it?” he asked, with a break in his voice. “Me sittin' here whittlin’? You over there on the bunk, watchin' me. Just like I'd never killed anybody.” “How did you do it, Jed?” Jed Lawrence flared. “I thought we wasn't going to talk about that! “I didn't mean that way, Jed. What'd you do—just how'd you hit him, Jed?” “I—I don’t know, Mary. Unless,"— he rose and placed the knife in his own empty scabbard—“Unless, just as I was goin' down, I reached back like this and grabbed my knife and sent it straight out—" The girl raised herself to her elbow.” “But the sheriff said the wound was on the other side.” “Well, I don't know, Mary. Maybe it was—I don't remember it happenin at all. If it was on the other side, I must've brought’ my arm around, over my head, and set my knife into him that way on the down-stroke.” “Why, Jed?" “Oh, I don't know, Mary.” A sud- den petulance had come into his tone. "': person don't figure them things, do ey?” She stared at the ceiling. “I suppose not, Jed. That first ski's finished, isn't t?" “Except for the foot straps. Guess I can get enough off them snow shoes. Leg hurtin’ pretty bad?” “I can stand it, Jed.” * Kk K % SIL!:NCE again, except for the whin- ing of the wind. At last he looked up. Mary Preston had asked another question, “Who was it, Jed, that opened the P | door when you were fighting?” “I don't know, Mary. Guess it wasn't anybody. If 'twas, they'll show up to testify on me.” “I guess 50, Jed.” She said it hope- don’t make no di ference nohow? I killed him—ain't that enough? And you—-" He sud- denly rose and stalked to her side. “You're goin’ to keep your mouth shut, you understand? About—about what you told me this morin'. to have things said about you. Ha people pointin' you out as the woman that was—was sweet on a fellow that killed somebody. Nobody knows it but me—and nobody ain't goin’ to know it. I've killed a man, Mary! And I ain’t :olrll' to have nobody mixed in it but me!” Mexicans Out of It in Bull Fights EVER | | T WOULD TRY TO KID TBOYS, (WE, %OHE Do /l)‘ Too Bad They Must Be F Rogers Thinks He Would Be Able to Kid . 1f He Were Down There When Battle Starts—Kicks Bclow Border. 'EM OUT OF FIGHTING. Now he is an awfully nice fellow, well educated, speaks English. Very fine | personality. He told me the whole story of how he had captured the Leader of | that Revolution. (For one was just ibeing finished when I was there.) ‘Thats the one where Serano and Gomez were the leaders and were shot. Gomez | was the last one. He had been hiding iin the hills for weeks and Escobar was ’lh! Government General that caught him. He captured him one night on a trail as he was coming down to a house to try to get something to eat. He had lived in the hills and was about half starved and weak. Escobar took him to his tent and had him bathe and put on some of his clothes and clean up. Go- mez couldent understand why he dident take him out and shoot him then, (as he naturally thought he would be shot on arrest). He and Escobar had gone West Point) and had he Army for in t years, but had neler been particularly ] ] t o good friends, and Gomez couldent un- derstand Escobar showing him this much courtesy. From what I could gather from it Escobar wanted him to look well at the funeral. He turned him over to another General who shot him the next morn- ing. Now it had been reported that Go- | mez dident die game, and just the day before Escobar told me this story, why Gomez's Mother and Sister come to Es- cobar's house and asked him to please tell them the real facts of his death. You know that is one thing you got to hand to those Mexicans. They do know how to die, course I guess they get & lot of practice out of it. But when they | line em up against the wall, the most | they ever ask for is a cigarette, There | is none of these Alabis, and “Oh Honest I dident do it" thing. They got no ex- cuse to offer, they lost, and they die like a man. {the report was not so, that Gomez had died like a real man, and he told me that they put their arms around him and | .cried and thanked him and seemed to | be relieved as much to hear that as they would to have heard of his escape. Now he is in the hills, and he will be | the one to get lined up. Well I bet he ! didn't flinch. And another General | Almasans. He is the one that is hunt- | ling Escobar. I got awfully well ac- quainted with him, in fact I had he and Escobar to dinner one night and they took me to a Theater after. He :S a dandy fellow kidding and full of un, Then there is a General Lemon, that | was defending Juarez. (Thats the | Town right across from El Paso.) He| was the President’s especial Aide, on the | two weeks trip that I was with Presi-} dent Calles and Ambassador Morrow all ! over the country. He is a great little fellow. There was two of them broth-| ers, Lemon Grande, and Lemoncito. I always called em big and little Lemon. He was a Polo Player and when I got j{back to Mexico City he mounted me jand I played several times with him. It makes you sick to hear of these things hlnpenin% down there. For they are no different from us. They love Peace just as much, they love life, and they want to be let alone. But these Leaders get overally ambitious, and think they are not getting a square deal from somebody, and there is just | enough adventure in em to take the chance. But I think they are on the way to good Government. ~These Revo- lutions are getting more useless all the time. This one is Not popular. If it was it could win. I hope they get straightened out, for they are awful nice people. Hospitality is their mid- dle name. If I wasent acting a Fool I got my | I ain't goin’| reached a big building and passed with- | d Well, he told those two ladies that! “But won't you tell me why, Jed?" she begged. “It ain’t nobody't business but mine." “Jed, if I ask you one question, will you_answer me? “You ain't asked it."” ‘Was all this about a letter?” He fenced desperately. “All—all this what?" “This quarrel? Was it, Jed? About a letter that Brad said he was going to put out on Thornton?" The ski clattered to the floor. “You keep them questions to your- self!” Jed snapped. Then he returned to his labors, the rounding of the ski points, the cut- ting away of the rough spots, the scrap: | the fastening of refractory straps. At last he rose. “1f youre ready, Mary” he said. “Storm’s _ clearin'—just looked out. Moon shining through a little. We can take the long way round. Be swift goin’ with these skis.” He wrapped her coat about her, and then, affixing his skis, stumbled across the floor and raised the girl, trembling | with pain that his action caused her. Then to the awkward task of his exit. . . . A few minutes later, on the hum- mock at the top of the ridge, the break- ing moon showed the hulking form of a big man, gliding swiftly upon home- made skis, with a burden in his arms. Hours of toil, of weariness, of clumsy tenderness, of silence. Paling stars, and the beginning of the last descent. Dawn, and a knock upon the door of the sher- iff's house. “I guess you want me,” said Jed Lawrence to the sleepy-eyed man who faced him. “They told me up at the | hospital that you'd just come back.” The sheriff nodded. “Yes, Just been talking to 'em. They said you'd brought Mary Preston down. Hurt bad?” = “Strained ligaments. Guess she’ll be all right. Jed said it prosaically in the dullness of utter tragedy. As prosaically he obeyed the man to whom he had surrendered, and, when the cell door had closed, he viewed the steel bars about him with the blankness of one from whom all rebellion had de- parted. 0 An hour . Jed Lawrence found the hospital doctor, at his cell, for what reason he did not know. “Here, put your right hand through the bars. Farther—up to the elbow. That's right.” The doctor concluded his examina- tion and went away. Jed Lawrence pulled back his arm and stared at it. “I ought've told him,” he mumbled. “It was the other hand I done it with.” By and by the under-sheriff came. “Better put on your coat, Jed,” he said, handing it through the bars, “The sherif’s telephoned for you. He's down the street.” * ¥ k X 'HEY went forth, into the crispness of the morning. At last they in. A door opened and Jed Lawrence saw features of Mary Preston above the white coverings of the cot within. He drew back in sudden panic. “I ain’t going in there!" he rebelled. “There wasn't nobody mixed up in this but—" There he halted, mouth agape. A voice had come from within, petulantly answering a question from the sheriff. “What's Thornton Luce doing here? he asked sharply. The under-sheriff evaded his ques- ion. “Get in there!” came his suddenly gruff command. Jed Lawrence obeyed; there was nothing else to do. Blankly he took the place designated for him, staring from the determined eyes of Mary Preston to the pasty-faced Thorn« ton Luce, and beyond him to the sher- proached the self-accused man and shot & question. “Now, Mr. Lawrence, what happened Masters “Why"—he stared from one to an- other—"T guess I stuck my knife—" “I don't mean that. You told Miss Preston something about turning your head. Why did you do it?"” “Why, I heard a door open.” “Was that before or after the kill- ing?" “Why—why, before. I was just goin' Brad'd hit me a pretty hard nd then what?” “I don't know. He spread his hands. “Except that I must've knifed him_then.” “How? “Why——" The man rose and sent his left hand to his hip. * yanked out my knife, this wa: brought it over and around, so's to plant it in his side.” “Was that what you saw, Mr. Luce?” he, asked. and Jed Lawrence straight- ened. So there had been a witness! The pasty-faced man stirred. “Exactly—exactly,” he said. The district attorney turned again to Jed Lawrence. “Your friend Mr. Luce has been a very unwilling witness. In fact, it wasn't until we had found a man who saw him going toward Master's pool-hall that he would admit that he'd seen anything. He insisted that he didn't know anything about it | until he came along later with some | other people. What were you fighting about? Was it a letter?"” o Bud Jed Lawrence answered de- lantly: “I've said enough!" he mumbled. Rl gl "THE door opened; the hospital doctor handed a slip of paper to the dis- trict attorney, who passed it quickly to the sheriff and then to Mary Preston. And now came the voice of the district attorney: “Mr. Luce, you heard the prisoner describe the blow as he thought he must have struck it. You said it was the blow you had seen. Is that right?" “Yes sir.” “Then how do you account for the fact that a doctor’s examination shows two things—Airst, that the prisoner cannot handle a knife with his right here in New York and have stay I would be in Mexico in 24 hours. would try to kid em out of fi Viva Mexico. (Copyright, 1029.) 1 ghting. So l* hand, and second. that the blow that {lled Brad Masters could not have been struck by a left-handed man?" don't—" ing of the buttons to gliding smoothness, | iff and the district attorney, who ap- | when you were fighting with Brad | 111 “That the blow that a left-handed person would have used must have sent | the knife into him upside down, instead Iof the way that it was found?" “How should I be expected to know about that?” “And that further, this fight was over a letter Brad Masters had received from your deserted wife in carrying out a promise to Miss Preston that he had the evidence to support suspicions that, she had entertained about you. And that this letter had been found, ere it fell, behind a radiator, and remained concealed there, in spite of your search for it."” “I don't know anything about it!” “No?" Jed Lawrence saw the dis- trict attorney shake a finger in slow emphasis. “Very well, Mr. Luce. We have a witness who saw you go to the pool hall. We have the indisputable evidence that this blow was struck by We know that d you of being too oily and sm to be real, and | that Brad Masters belleved he could | show you up as an unworthy man. We know that Miss Preston asked him to | do it, first, because she wanted to be sure of her own dislike, and. secondly, so that she could have an irrefutable argument with which to break the friendship Lawrence here seemed to have for you. We know that Brad Masters and Jed Lawrence fought over this letter, which is in the sheriff’s possession. And it will not be very hard to prove that you came along as | they were fighting, leaped into the room as Lawrence was 'DF' down, | struck the blow that killed Brad Mas- | ters and left this man to believe he had done it.” ‘Thornton Luce raised a hand to his dry lips. “You've got it to prove.” | “We will—with the motive of mak- | ing & murderer of a man whom Mary | Preston had told you she loved, and of clearing a path for yourself—of put- ting out of the way a person who held evidence against you.” “Prove it. then!” came the repeated answer. The district attorney smiled. “That is easier than you think.” he sald. “You see, Luce, you didn’t think fast enough when you killed Brad Masters. You struck the blow first with your own knife. Then you drove Law- rence’s blade into the wound to take the place of your own. We've just had an autopsy—it shows that one knife was withdrawn and another substituted, making two distinct wounds, one inside the other. And, too,” he concluded, “we’'ve examined your knife, which we | found in the ash pit behind your house. You didn't clean it as well as you thought—there was still a stain or two of fresh blood against the hilt.” Thornton Luce strove for a moment | to maintain the look of denial that had blazed in his eyes throughout the accusation. But it wavered. And then e slumped forward in silent confession. With that, a dazed man rose—a man who had called himself a murderer. He turned, his arms outstretched. “You knowed it, didn't you, Mary—that's why you kept on askin' questions when L ;as making them skis—making me tell you things—-" The room blurred: vague figures were moving. Voices whispered; s door opened. And Jed Lawrence found that he was on his knees, and that brown eves were looking into his own, eyes of faith that had seen, even when his own were blinded. (Copyright. 1929.) | & right-handed man. Miss Preston has s\ | | Explosion Causes. ITH!: question as to what puts an ex- plosive into action when a nearby explosive lets loose is rapidly becoming a matter of cold statistics as the result of some clever photography work being accomplished at the Pittsburgh experi- mental station of the United States BuArelu n(‘ Mines. N optical arrangement has been perfected which uses the increased re- fractive index of air when compressed. The method, known as the Schlieren method, is combined in Payman's wave- speed camera to enable a motion pie- ture to be taken of the wave as it leaves an explosion. Valuable data are bein, the tests. Some show t| pressure wave com! in contact with a neighboring explosive which causes the second explosive to blow up, while | In other cases the pressure wave which precedes the heat wave of the explosion has o effect, but the buring gas which follows causes the second blast. The results will be used to secure | more information on the causes of fire- damp explosions in mines. o Limer Oil Drill Troubles. Bmfl'on, the supersponge of the metal compounds, is one of the real nuisances of the ofl driller's life | This strange material has a tremen- ! dous affinity for water and has the | power of absorbing as much as 10 imes its weight in water. When the driller is sinking his bore through bentonite, the water used at the drill head to keep it cool immedi- ately is attracted to the bentonite, which forms a sticky mass, flowing into the bore and becoming almost solia efter sufficient water is attracted. If ol be obtained by it it is the | present. emulsions are formed which make the problem all the worse. The sides of the hole often swell and fre- quently the casing is broken in, but whether or not the damage reaches this extent, the oil driller has little use for bentonite. Herds Protected. "THE value of game preserves is shown 1 by the experience of the rangers at | Glacier National Park. In recent years, poaching, once the main problem of the | rangers, has almost disappeared. The hunters now realize the value of the preserves for the propagation of ‘wild life and find that protection of the herds within the park increases the quantity of game that later finds its way out into unprotected where the hunter holds sway. 3