Evening Star Newspaper, June 21, 1931, Page 83

now that she’s got herself lost, come looking for you " < %1 Mississippi groaned. e 8 Just before dawn_they pulled up and waited for the light, and when it came Clem Harky sighted in his landmarks, and located the inconspicuaus print of a small heel. ) & “That’s the last earthly sign, Mississip’.” Mississippl Tyler got down and brought his dogs about him. He hardly knew how to put them onto this new kind of trail. He made them all lie down, then took Chicoree by the scruff. “This it,” he told thz red-and-white leader, making his voice excited. He pushed the ' dog’s nose hard down on the track. “Get it, and like it, and hang on! Now, go on!” In all that redbone pack Chicoree was the brains. Mississippi feared he would not get the idea, since the method was new; but Chicoree did. The trail was old, considering the dry heat of the soil, but Chicoree’s voice blared, and he set off at a trot. Holding the rest in was hard, but Mississippi managed it with voice and quirt, forcing their noses to the heel print, one after another. Last of all, the Thunder Pumper volunteered and gravely examined the heel print as the others had been forced to do. They pressed forward briskly for a little while, for here the trail was on fairly favorable ground. And presently, searching the tough sofl, the men found another visible print that the way of the dogs had shown. “They've got it!” Harky exulted. “Don’t cheer yet,” sald Mississippi. . “You're thinking of Crackman’'s Rocky?” “That, and something else.” You see, they did not know what would be at the end of that trail,” even if it was ever reached. Roy Linstrom joined them przsently, guided to them by the clamor of the pack. Ahead now loomed the far-stretching, crack-laced " gramite surfaces of the mesa called Crackman’s Rocky. Mississippi had been dreading the ar- rival of the hounds at Crackman’s Rocky, and hoping the trail would skirt it, for granite fors ever baked in th¢ Southwestern sun holds but little scent—and that for not very long, UP the slope of the granite Chicoree led the e pack, and by the leader's instant- voice - change Mississippi knew that the granite told them nothing. The dogs were running on gen- éral direction and hope. After a few hundred yards Chicoree admitted it and back-cast ‘to - the sand; but once more upon the granite lost " his way. E Casting carefully, checking both sides of the - widening dike to see that the trail did not - leave, Chicoree led them on until at length they came to a widening of those naked long reaches of stone, and Mississippi dismounted. Somberly he loosened his cinches and sat down " on a block of rock. THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JUNE 21, 1931. B —— . - He stopped and lifted his head, looking up at Mississippi with his mournful yellow eyes. It was as if he said, “This is as far as I can go; there is no more left.” invisible print, the Thunder Pumper came on. He was working just as h& had always worked the scent of lions, on all those long trails whose ends he had reached futilely, after the quarry was long dead. Faithful to himself—that was it: loyal first and always to the convictions that were bred in his blood and bone. “We'll be here some little time,” he told the ™ other two slowly. “There’s nothing to do now but wait.” Now a iong time passed without résult. Once Chicoree voiced uncertainly, and the pack ral- lied to him full cry; but it came to nothing. “I've combed this throw of the rock twenty times,” complained Harky. “I found out as much as the dogs did, with my own eyes. If this is the best they can do, we might as__ well—" “Give him time,” said Mississippi. “Chicoree’s left the pack, and gone off on his own. You'll hear him pretty soon now. There's a hound dog. I don't suppose he's been stumped three times in as many years. Give him a chance!” Yet an hour passed, and two hours. Then, at the end of three hours, Chicoree came in. He carried his head and tail low, a foolish looking red-and-white form that was for once com- pletely silent. That® old war dog, who had mede all the hunting reputation Mississippi had, had met utter defeat, and knew it. Mississippi sat down for a moment, his face in his hands. Clem Harky and Roy Linstrom were silent. No one knew the Rimrock better than these three, but now they did not know where to go that they had not already gone, . nor which way to turn. About Mississippi bhe- gan to gather the weaker hounds, half a dozen, . who flopped down around him in raglike . postures, plainly considering the hunt ended. Chicoree was still casting, or pretending to, at a disconsolate walk, and so were Belle and Strap; and the two pups, Three Star and Hen- . nessey, were still running in their perpetual circles, making a big show of remembering what they were after, which probably they did not. And, of course, there still kept coming to them the deep bass bloomps of the Thunder Pumper, coming up so slowly that he was still working that part of the trail that was on favorable earth. “It’s getting late,” said Linstrom. Mississippi rose, his face grim and gray as the face of the baffling rock itself. Slowly he tigntened his cinch. “They may pick it up some other place,” he offered without conviction. “We’ll swing some . long circles of our own, using our heads the best we can.” Mississippi stuck a foot in the stirrup; but there, suddenly, he checked. “Wait a minute,” he said in a queer voice. He had cast one glance back along the way they had come, and something he had glimpsed there held him immobile. The two other men - followed his ‘eyes. Then, through a break in a split ledge, ap- peared a slow low-headed form, so far off that - they could hardly make out what it was—until _it lifted its head, and the deep halloo of the Thunder Pumper came up the wind. “Aw, it's only——" began Clem Harky. “He can’t do nothing,” grunted Linstrom. Mississippi’s voice was hardly audible, but it seemed torn out of him, so that it cut down the comments of the others. “Pumps is on the rock!” “You mean he’s—" “Wait!” They could see the Thunder Pumper more plainly now, his long ears dragging on the rock, At every other step he paused to sniff delib- erately, and each time he bayed, before he passed on. “Snuff-snuff—she set foot here. Bloo-roop!...And here, again. No, wait. Yes, I am sure. Bloowowup!...And the next step was here...” AND slowly it dawned on Mississippi that the Thunder Pumper did not know that he had come to barren rock, where no scent could hold; that he was not aware that he was working a vanished trail that no dog nose could hope to detect. For to the Thunder Pumper all difficulties and all trails had at last proved the same. .“Bloowump, awump, awump! Here she stepped, I know.. And here—let us make cer- tain. Yes,- exactly here. Wowooo—oh!” Fumping doleful thunder over every lost touch of Willa Brent’s boot. #“Can it be possible he knows—" “You bet he knows,” said Mississippi, the muscles tight around his eyes” “Slow, ghastly slow, always; but wrong? He neyer” was wrong fu his life. . . .” The tears were running down Mississippi’s leather face by now. That was partly for love of that slow, honest dog, who had been true to his own ways all these years to serve his purpose here. But mostly because the beloved trail the Thunder Pumper traced was a broken, wavering line. “She—was looking for me,” he FOR LOVE OF THE MIKE Continued from Fourth Page and shaggy eyebrows and he ldoked unpleasant. “Ah!” exclaimed this person. “Aahh!” And then ominously: “Aaahhh!” “Er, ah,” stammered Mr. Osmund P, Wick- field, dismayed. “Yes, sir, I, ah—that is to - say, er—well, you know—ah, ah!” ! “I understand perfectly,” denounced the manager with a grim smile. “Sufficient has - been said. Our staff of announcers is com- plete. - Thank you for caliing, and by all means, whatever you do, I invite you cordially not to call again. Good-day.” “Say,” a few minutes later Nanty, emerging - from the Commercial lobby on an errand, in- tercepted the passage of the frenzied elevator - starter to inquire curiously, “What's the mat- - ter, Osmund? You look as though you're heading for bitter times. Don’'t tell me,” sym- pathetically, “you encountered a splinter on your ladder of success?” “Oh, nothing,” dully answered Osmund, “ex- cept my career is ruined. That's all.” He turned away, a stony look in his eyes—turned squarely into the arms of the little man with the bald head and spectacles. “Pardon me,” said that individual affably, _ “but I wish to speak to you privately, sir. The . other day I was standing back of that direc- tory-board there and overheard you reciting to yourself, with rare verve and fluency, the names of musical artists and compositions. I was deeply impressed by your fine pronuncia- tion. “Now I happen to be,” he went on, as a new light fell on Osmund’s orbs, “the American representative of the famous violinist, Monsieur Eryaldendvdon Zouejuysiackwholiszche, of Czechoslokavia. He has just contracted to ve an hour’s concert a week over one of nation’s radio chains, and will play in London, but be announced and introduced from the local station, WHIZ. “Uniluckily, I am with what is termed microphone fright; further, I find, the radio announcers of the station' here cannot do justice to my employer’s difficult name, and on sudden happy thought I decided to solicit your aid. How about it, sir?” R. OSMOND P. WICKFIELD modestly re- plied to this query that he could deftly facilitate through his trained larynx a superior locomotion of all European phonetics, includ- ing the Scandinavian; and forthwith the little chap and he pedéstrianed over to Station WHIZ to make arrangements for the eve- ning’s broadcast. . That night when Mr. Osmund P. Wickfield vailed. It was said the success of the violin- ist's debut largely depented on the linguistic ability of his new announcer. - But this person went about his duties in calm, almost blase, manner. When the time came he stepped quietly before the microphone and clearly, unctuously said: “Ladies and gentlemen of the radio audi- ence, the Union Broadcasting Company takes great pleasure in presenting the American radio debut of the celebrated Czechoslovakian violin- ist, Monsieur Eryaldendvdon Zouejuysiackwhios- ache.” T As he spoke the last part of the last name he bowed his head a trifile but the admiring * onlookers noted nothing unusual. Man ance times during the masterful perform- London, the announcer on this side . repeatgd with ease and clarity the formidable cognomen of the violinist. And said the grate- ful studio manager when it was all over: “My dear young fellow, if still want that posi- tion, it is yours, W is glad to have you— till the big-time networks call!” And paeaned- Nancy later the same day: “Oh, Osmund, Papa, listzned in last night, and was he proud of Sis’ weakness? He'’s revised of his opinion of you—he told me to in- vite you to dinner Sunday, sure. Especially did he think you were marvelous in pronouncing _Mr. Do-funny's quesr name. Say, how in the world did you do it?” “It's a technical gift, Nancy,” soberly re- plied the expert atmosphere disturber, “that only a few of us outstanding artists possess. The fellow’s agent,” he went on, “told me how that name was demonstrated, but when alone I tried to say it my throat suffered a traffic jam. I tried and I tried, and although I could finally get out the first half of the last name neatly enough, I faltered on the last half, and so gummed up the entire works. Then came the idea that made everything as simple as pie. “When, to explain, I repeated the name in the studio I bent my head at the last three syllables and put some pepper, hidden in a hand, to my nose, and softly sneezed. That finished the pronunciation perfectly, even ar- tistically. © Analyze that Czechoslovakian mouth- ful and see if I'm not right, but don’t sneeze at my success, even if I had to. “Now, listen, Nancy,” he adjured, as Nancy beautifically did nothing else but. “I want to make you a proposition. I want you to resign your job and start cooking plank steak in order to keep the timbre in your husband’s voice. _Well, what do you articulate?” . “You dialed the right station,” articulated Nancy with a wonderful blush. “There’s no _static—the reception is perfect. In other words —oh, Osmund, don't kiss me so hard! Kiss Slow, deadly slow, baying individually each "came (40 the -stutllo:.considerable anxiety pre-. .- me again!—What I mean, okeh by me!! i _ whimpered—and put down his head. told himself over and over. “I'm never goin to forgive myself for that.” Then—the Thunder Pumper fal 2N had come to the place where L of hounds had laid their hot smokha es on the rock; and all over the stone, too, were the invisible trampling trails the 12 dogs had made, and the men, and the horses’ musky- smelling hoofs. He stopped and lifted his head, and for the first time slowly turned it tc look Mississippi in the face with his mourn- ful yellow eyes. It was as if he said, “Th's is as far as I can go; there is no more left . . .” Mississippi did not speak, because he could " not; slowly he sat down znd averted his face frcm the other men. The Thunder Pumper And once more he was lost in the mysteries of the trail. 2 At sunset the Thunder Pumper brought them to the edge of the rock, still step by stép to the last; and here the redbon2 pack—the pack that had falcd—recognized the trail shown to them on the better earth. The horses could no longer follow the rough tragl - and Mississippi followed the dogs alone at a stumbling run through the starl ght. v So finally he came to a limp slender figure lying motionless in a ravine, not 10 yards from a point at which Clem Harky had passed in his hallooing search. Though a dozen had ridden there, they would hardly have found her, so stll she lay under the chinquapin scrub. She was alive . . . 5 Before Willa Brent at last opened her eyes, and knew where she was, or with whom, she was established on Mississippi's couch, in the cabin he had built thinking of her. “Will you ever forgive me, Mississip'?” “PFor what, child?” i “For com’'ng here——" "rlhy, honey chil ™ 3 “I just couldn’t stand it o) Mississip.” g “It must have been terrible, what with all any " them relations——" “It wasn't that. It was just the thinking that you were gone, and that I wasn't going to hear the hound music com‘ng down the trail to our house any more.” “I—I reckon I'd have come down that trail before’ very long,” said Miss'ssippi. “Of course, after your paw made you promise you wouldn't have anything to do with me any more—", “Why, Miss'ssippi, I never promised any such a thing!” 2 “Why—but I thought——" % “You were in the saddle by then. But.T told Ded that that was the one thing T wotfd not promise, ever in the world. Then, after while, I guessed you had misunderstood; and I rode up to your cabin, and you were gone, So I thought I'd just ride along, kind of casual, and pretend—" Willa began to cry. % “Shush, there—:t's all right now, honey child. You're safe, thank heaven, and I'm going to make you marry me so quick you ‘won’t have time to say jack rabbit.” “I wouldn't admit the truth to myself; but there's no use fooling any more. I know now I'd rather live with you in a tree than be . alive any place else at all.” 5 “Reckon we won't have to live in a tree, hon. Perhaps her eye caught the glint of the old _brasses frorh that other country that Missise sippi was from; for she looked around the room for the first time. A look of puzzlement came Into her face as she saw all those surpaising t‘!l:elna that he had so painstakingly gathered Te. “Mississippl—where are we?” A ;heflome. Home, honey.” forgotten Thunder Pumper came in wearily and laid a big mournful head. edge of the couch. - a— (Copyright, 1930.) Oil Tank Corrosion Problem. Conaomonuwuqu'}.mau.& problems of the petroleum industry ,m-.nyenorhhneheenmndgwfindtt:fi‘ tion. Aluminum seemed to be the’ answer, but after exhaustive tests the use of aluminum has been found to have its own drawbacks. . ~The hydrogen sulphide gas in petroleum is the principal offender in the corrosion and in the Panhandle section of Texas it is not un common to find stee! tanks worthless 14 months after being put in service. s Aluminum plates were substituted for the steel in test tanks in an experiment carried on by the Bureau of Mines and the aluminum was found to be non-corrosive in so far as hydrogen sulphide was concerned. But the joy was shorte lived, for it was found that the brine of the petroleum was very corrosive to the aluminum and had etched deeply into the plates along the bottom of the tank. The use of sieel plates below and aluminum above where the hydrogen sulphide gas eol lects in the air space was suggested, but care is vital that a proper insulation be placed between the two metals in order that no elec- trolosist be set up. +Potatoes Chosen in New Test. "r isn’t every potato which will make good potato chips or French fried potatoes. In fact, a large proportion of potatoes are not suitable for fthese purposes and to separate the sheep from the goats the Department of Agri- culture has worked out a simple little test which will tell in a minute or so whether the potato will do. The adapatability of the potato to the two uses mentioned is governed by the amount of soluble sugars present, and the greater amount the less value has the potato. To tell quickly the status of the sugars the test calls for the cutting of a cylindrical portion from the po- tato, which is placed in a solution of picrie acid made alkaline with sodium carbonate. potato portion is heated in the test liquid for & minute. The formation of a deep-red solution is indicative that the potato will not do, while a slight ooloring: gives the)signiof approval,