The Key West Citizen Newspaper, September 10, 1952, Page 10

Page 10 THE KEY WESTCITIZEN Wednesday, September 10, 1952 BARNEY GOGGLE AND SNUFLY SMITH IT'S A oe HOW DO YOU LIKE MY NEW SUN SUIT, SNUFFIKINS ? BRINGING UP FATHER BY GOLLY-THIS Door IS sTuCcK! T CAN'T BUDGE IT NOW- Cope 1952, King Features Syndicate, Inc., World rights reserved HIS We CAN TALK \l||. ON THE WAY TO THE THEATER J! All yon SUNDOWN-- AND SEVERAL OWNERS OF THE RANCH DRAG THEMSELVES TOWARD THE I'M SO GLAD! 1 TALKED YOUR WIFE INTO MAKING ONE EXACTLY LIKE (T YE CALL THAT THIS WILL 00 IT- 1 HAVE TO UNSCREW THE YOU SAID IT- TRY WHILE I GET SCREWDRIVER - |) 7 A HOUSE OVER 1 VSHALL AWAIT YONDER!” WHILST POPEYE EXPLORES BACK WEILL ACTUALLY HAVE To HURRY /— L MEAN THE JUDGES WiLL BE SIMPLY LIVID IF ANY OF THE GIRLS ARE LATE FoR THE CONTEST /— I'M SO EXCITED.’ I JUST INOW ILL SWOON IF TC peeontfilt “EXACTLY”? ain NAILIN’ “EM YONDER! po ae — BUT WAIT-'—THIS ISN'T THE WAY./— WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME 2 ‘ose Salinas and Rod Peed Y \M TIRED AND HUNGRY, BUT MY HANDS ARE SO SORE I CAN'T LIFTA KNIFE AN’ FORK/ ~.4 DEJECTED FIGURE SITS = JERRY AND 1 HAD i. HUDDLED IN A CORNER OF be PLANNED ON GETTING + THE BUG OUSOUT... @— MARRIED TONIGHT _ AFTER WINNING TH PENNANT... BUT TH EAGLES WAVE TH’ FLAG LOCKED UP IF THEY HANG ONTO THEIR 2-RUN TS A BLASTED OUTRAGE! WE OWN THE RANCH AND LET THIS CISCO KID WORK US LIKE SLAVES. I SAY WE OUGHT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT HIM! \ WOULD TAKE A CHANCE ON < MY WEAK ANKLE AND LET \ ME IN THERE BEFORE aN ITS Aik OVERS Chapter Two “you won't kill anybody here, Regan,” Dupré said easily. His arm moved toward his wife in a half-negligent gesture. “Look,” he said simply. eyes shot_a sharp, glancing look at Sally Dupré, widened in dis- belief. In her right hand was a wide-bore, double-barreled der- tinger, pointing straight at Re- gan’s heart. She smiled at him, the double muzzles of the gun implacable in their certain promise of sudden death. “Perhaps we've all been a little too hasty, Mr. Regan,” she said softly. “Would you like to throw your knife out there on the gallery, through the door, and start all over again?” He nodded, slowly, reluctantly, accepting a fact that could not be evaded. With a motion that was half carelessness and half inso- lence he tossed the knife away with a flip of his wrist. “All right,” he said slowly. “You've won this hand. You’ve ot the gun. But I’ve got the map. Sina as far as I'm concerned, you can rot before you'll touch that money!” Dupré moved his chair aside, smiling, assured, completely at ease as he got to his feet. “Before we're done with you, Regan,” he said softly, “you'll beg us to take the map and go get the money.” Suddenly, without warning, he struck Regan twice across the mouth, smiling as the bright blood trickled down Regan’s chin. “Sit down!” he said harshly. “Get back in your chair!” The unwavering muzzles of the gun enforced his demand, and Regan eased himself into the chcir, his eyes alert and watchful, but with a black shadow of fear beginning to build itself up be- hind them. Dupré was slow and methodi- cal. His own silken stock bound s hands behind him, back of the chair. Two torn strips of curtain lashed his feet to the rungs, and the golden lover’s knot that had been a curtain tieback served admirably as a gag. Through it all Regan sat im- mobile, silent, but when Dupré set the six flaming candles of the heavy, soft-gleaming candelabra a scant three inches beneath his bound finger tips he screamed in agony as the hot flames swept up over his wrists. destroying the flesh, eating away at the hard bone and the soft skin and the taut tendons that were his hands. With each scream Dupré struck him across the face, turning it into a bleeding, broken mass of flesh and scattered bone that was scarcely human. Through it all NEW \ Alert for treachery, Regan’s|F RK (P—Of the millions | tack, praised him for his kindness “The map! Where is the map?” snarled Dupré. rose the high, wailing intensity of Regan’s anguished screams. Then, suddenly, the flame was gone. Through the crimson fog of pain Dupré's voice came distantly, faintly to Regan’s ears. “You said we'd need a man to guide us, and there’s a man down- stairs at the bar who can do it. If you’re ready to talk to him— ready to give up the map—I’ll have him come up. If you aren't, we'll let you taste the fire again.’ Regan’s body was a harsh, con- vex bow, straining against its bonds, half mad wit agony. Great drops of sweat stood out on his forehead, and through the muffling folds of the golden gag came the deep, half-sobbing groans of an animal trapped, tor- tured, and defeated. “He'll talk,” Dupré said scorn- fully. “He'll talk—with perhaps a touch of the candies now and again to jog his memory. Go down and tell Blaine Shepley we want to see him. He'll be at the bar. One of the boys will get him for you. Her white shoulders gleaming in the candlelight and her crisp petticoats wiuapesne softly as she walked, Sally Dupré moved gracefully across the r through the doorway. S= was proud of this house, for she had literally conjured it up from despair with only her !AL BOYLE SAYS By HAL BOYLE | death on the eve of the great at- £ Wor'd War II the one most likely | 2nd called him “‘the best officer to win immorvasity is probably the | that ever lived. famous young ‘‘major of St. Lo.” It was his concern for the wel- His name was Thomas D. Howie, | fare of his troops that had cost and hometown friends in Abbe- ville, S. C., are today dedicating ag te marker to him. Hundreds of his scattered comrades will wish they cou'd be there, too, to pay honor to a man who has be- | come symbol of valor to the | Ame n < | His tele is died in th g mon in 1914. But after the year: you in inspirir 8 or’s bittersweet vie- | Maj. Howie was a tremendous sold must have been just 2 man before he put jonau ? 1 vis t |the day St and I r j how his mea, s.ill mourning | ACROSS oreman | Was 5 him his life. Before hitting the ditch during a sudden German mortar barrage, he paused and to see that his men were safe— and death took him, standing. Shortly before he had attended | a staff conference at which he had expressed his determination to lead his own battalion ‘first into grcen hedsevows of St. Lo, the bitter bastion of the | Nazi defense line. His last words on leaving the € were a cheery, ‘‘Sce Lo.” That became the ». of the 29th Infantry Di- | vision — ‘See you in St. Lo!” | and when the commanding general orzanized a tank and Coughboy task force to smash into the city, he remembered Tom’s last wish RB» the general's order, Tom's bo ‘!1 clad in full combat gear, ed in an ambulance in the OO E2308 DAIny |P/O|O[RIE|S IT Mi [RIE (NIE! [EWwiGie/O|S|SMMEIAISIE/S Solution of Yesterday's Puszie Two halves Frighten suddenly Not all Sugary Pasteboard box Massachusetis cape Abound eves ub out in Suk fabric Tree Animal's foot BE-wbaped irk ESSRUBBESESen 4» pee ww ELSSSERASRS B and | this—shabb; own will and her woman's wiles to help her. Three years ago she had not been Sally Dupre, the mistress of a gambling house above the Memphis levee, but Sally de Neyrac, safe, secure, and protected in ker father’s house. with all the beaux and gallants of New Orleans at her feet. But that was before the dark- faced figure of André Dupré came into her life. Dupré, the cold- eyed, slim-fingered gambling man who had come to New Orleans in search of gold from cards or dice, and won instead the heart of the fabulously lovely Sally de Neyrac. It was a winning that almost cost him his life, for the Neyra¢ men took swift and vigorous ace tion to nip the affair in the bud. Confronting him in a shadowed street, René de Neyrac had prom- ised to shoot him on sight if he were in New Orleans more than twelve more hours. No fool, Dupré had left New Orleans for Havana that night— but Sally de Neyrac was with him. And before the Caribbean Queen had reached the blue wa- ters of the Gulf, its master had Pronounced them man and wife. For Sally, Havana had been a magic city, gilded and glorified during the first enchanted months by her own dream-wrapped ecstasy. But Dupré was not man who wore well. Beneath his suave exterior were dark abysses of anger and faithlessness and cruel- ty. Before the year was out, the madness that had possessed her like a demon was gone, and in its Place was only the bitter knowl- edge that she had burned her bridges behind her for a man who was only an empty facade, a man she could scarcely tolerate and would never love. They left Havana, and the sec- ond year was twelve months of frustration and eostpuly: such as Sally had never known, Like vagrants, they wandered up and down the Mississippi, drifting from Natchez to Vicksburg, up- river to the new town of St. Louis, downstream again to Memphis, with André’s slim fingers always turning the cards or flinging the dice in the gambling houses and bordellos of the raw river towns. He was at home there, relaxed, confident, and at ease, but to Sally it was a nightmare without a beginning or an end—a limit- less succession of days and nights with no meaning, no hope, and no integrity. She had never known that men and women lived like , aimless,trootless as leaves in the wind, bound by the past, without plans or courage to face the future, barren of se- curity and pride and self-respect. (Te be continued) task force column. I looked in and saw him. Amid the thunder of guns, the armored column — bearing the dead hero — fought toward St. Lo. Down pock - marked roads it | rolled, past stricken trees whose limbs hung down like broken arms, past meadows where no birds sang, but bulleis did. Churning clouds of yellow en- veloped the vehicles, sweat grimed the faces of firing soldiers, As I remember it, a German | artillery bombardment cut the col- umn as it passed a cemetery on the outskirts of the city, The am- bulance was needed to rush back the wounded, Tom, lying on a stretcher, was transferred to a leading jeep. The column trundled on. It smashed through the last ring of German defenders and entered the fallen city, a sea of flaming ruins, Doughboys quickly lifted the young major, so silent on the | stretcher in all that crash of sound, | and ran through enemy sniping to a nearby shell - torn church. And they placed him atop the rubble of the church wall, and left him | there, and went back into the bat- tle. In death his comrades had won for the major the iast goal of his | life — he was with “the first inte St. Lo.” Entering the city the next morn- ing with mop-up infantry squads, I had my last glimpse of Tom— his flag-draped body lying in state on an altar of rubble. All the troops who went through St. Le that day, and there were many, heard of the young major and prig him tribute. Some doffed their hel- mets as they passed. Some knelt, Five years later, in 1949, I re visited St. Lo and the rebuilg | church before which now stands @ | monument telling of Maj. Howie's sacrifice — and his triumph. The French people still deck the mony ment with flowers, and remember him in prayers. They feel hig | tragic story led many Americang | to contribute funds to help St. Le rise again from its own rubble, The new marker to his memory in Abbeville is a fine hometows | testament that will perpetuate te later generations the strange sage lof Maj. Thomas D. Howe's here ism, selfless courage and fidelity | ta his men, who repaid him in the | best way they could | Those who knew Tom, of course, need orither marker, monument, ner memorial to remember him. | STRONG ARM BRAND COFFES Triumph Coffee Mill j at j aLL crocers