Published in

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What every woman ought to know

the interest of Electrical Development by an Institution that will be helped by whatever helps the Industry.

HIS sign language tells of a servant that is always willing and always thorough, ready to do a day's housework for a few cents. On a wiring blueprint these symbols represent the circuits and outlets and switches through which electricity can work.

Electricity, the perfect servant, never asks for special privileges or afternoons off. But if we expect this dependable help to do the washing, ironing, cooking, sewing and cleaning, it falls upon us to meet it halfway.

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"What business of ours is that ?" it is natural to ask. Just this-because we people with money to invest haven't realized the advantages of owning lighting company securities, and that is one reason why in many cases the company finds it hard to get money enough to extend service lines to thousands of prospective home-builders.

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"You know why I've come?"

"I think I do," she said. "I have understood that you make it an effort of your leisure to drive from existence unfortunate persons-like me.'

"You are right. I have been on your trail. At first you were a rumor. My son first mentioned your existence to me. You are called "The Presence.' It is said that you exercise extraordinary powers over the sick."

"And your son directed you to me?" "No. He does not know that I am here. Why do you mention my son? How could he direct me to you? He knows nothing of you."

Nara sighed. She noticed that her visitor often wet his lips, as if they were parched and dry, and that he gripped the arm of his chair with tense, nervous hands.

"I wanted to see you," said Dr. Haith Claveloux. "But Heaven only knew when I started on that quest how it would end."

HE

E arose, took several turns back and forth, and then, with a "Pardon me!" went to the window, opened it wider, and appeared to be drawing the night air into his lungs. "Are you ill?" asked Nara. "No-under stress," he said. "I confess I am under stress. I have a disagreeable thing to do."

She saw him, as he came back toward her, stagger and catch at a chair back. "Are you ill?" she asked again. "Can I get you something?"

"Have you any coffee?" he asked irritably.

"Coffee?" she repeated, astonished.

He sat down. "Yes, coffee," he said. "It is my weakness. We, who are in close contact with the evils of mankind, know best that excesses of any kind work their sure results. At thirty a man or woman may still be ahead in the contest with some evil habit or excess. But there is not one chance in a thousand of escape from ultimate defeat and misery. It follows as the day follows night. Mine is coffeemore and more coffee-more and more caffeine. It keeps me working. I learned it when I was putting in eighteen hours a day with the microscope and stains and culture tubes and bacteria. Finally, when I die, it will be caffeine-Balzac died that way."

"I can make you some coffee," said Nara. "This percolator is all ready for our breakfast."

"Our breakfast? Who else?" "The old gentleman who helps me to You know manage our-our affairs. him."

"Thank you," said Dr. Haith Claveloux, nodding. "Coffee will tighten up my nerves."

Nara sat down quietly beside the table and lit the alcohol lamp. "Yes," said her visitor.

"I've been

for some weeks on your trail. I never ran into a campaign done in such a mysterious manner and on quite so farsighted a plan. It was my son who directed me to a Miss Corinne Yorke."

"Yes," said Nara. "Mr. Pascal Yorke's daughter."

"It was impossible to obtain one word from her that would help me," he explained. "Therefore I employed detectives. You are alarmed?""

"Not at all."

"They may or may not have bribed Yorke servants. That

here nor there, and the responsibility is not mine in any case. Here I am. The hideous satire of it is that it began with a conception of a different kind." "Of me?"

He looked at her steadily for a long time. "Yes, of you too," he said. "You claim the possession of some vital force which flows from you to others?"

"I claim nothing," she said. "I am dazed to find that when I am there-" "The Presence," he said. "Yes, that is the name. What is your real name?" "Nara Alexieff."

"I never heard it."

"But you got your results?" She nodded. "So it is said," she replied.

"Yes," said he, thrusting a searching look at her. "So it is said."

He was silent for a long time, apparently thinking deeply.

"Of course you know why I began my interest in you. It is a fad of mine-a righteous, useful fad. I drive fakers out. I have a measure of success. It is a day apparently for mankind to follow strange beliefs. It is no longer simple life where one endeavors to live rightly and happily and do one's work. Not at all. All seek external aid. They must be adjusted by psychoanalysts, treated for imaginary ills by doctors, put in touch with the help of the spirit world by mediums; new societies and nations must be created by a theorist-oh, anything to avoid personal responsibility. So I have hounded the fakers, Miss Nara Alexieff. I am supposed to be a cold, hard man without a taint of emotionalism and to be proof against all mysticism."

He sat back silent for a long time. "And why do you come to see me?" she asked at last.

"I came-I came-" he began, and then suddenly pointed at the percolator. "May I?"

She filled one of the small green cups; her long sleeves fell back, and she was conscious that he was watching her hands. He wore upon his countenance a tense and harried expression.

"You will drink this?" she inquired. "Yes-yes."

"Why? You do not need to drink it." Dr. Haith Claveloux looked for a long time into her steady eyes. She still held the cup toward him.

"Why did you say that?" he asked. "That you did not need the coffee?" But she gave no answer to the question.

"Perhaps you think it is nothing to be keyed up, as I. have been, and go without my coffee?" he said almost angrily, and, taking the saucer in his fingers, put it down, with the cup in it, on the edge of the table.

"I was telling you why I am here," he went on. "I was telling you also what kind of a man I am. All my life I have been a scientist, dealing in accuracies. I have never allowed myself to jump from reality far ahead into unreality. Only the fool makes that excursion, so I have believed. I have known that mankind must gain its knowledge slowly and with infinite pains. That is why I began upon your trail. Do you know what my goal was?" "I do not know," she said. "To put you in jail."

"You could not do that," she said quietly. "I have done no one any wrong. I have saved two lives, perhaps-"

"You have!" he exclaimed. "You have!"

"Perhaps you think you have caught me now in a damaging claim," she said. "Of course I could be very indignant and angry, and order you to go, but I will not. I am too sure that I am right."

He jumped up as one in torment and went again to the window. "My man is downstairs," he said. "What will he make of this delay? Can you leave me here for a moment. Don't go far. I Iwant to think."

N

ARA

went bedroom,

crossed it swiftly and noiselessly,

and opened the door into the hall. The corridor was quiet with the hush of hotels after everyone has retired, but from the ballroom below she could hear the strains of the orchestra. Without knocking, she opened the door of Connor Lee's room.

Clothes and papers were scattered everywhere, on the couch, the mantel, the table in the center of the sitting room. The key of the outer door was still hanging with its medallion tag swinging slightly as if a hand had just left it.

"Connor Lee!" she called in a low voice.

She gasped from fear as she pushed open the bedroom door. She remembered his threat

There was no answer.

to kill himself if he were caught. But he had gone. His new wardrobe trunk, with one of its lower drawers opened as if grinning at the situation, had been emptied of everything, and his large Gladstone bag had disappeared. Only when Nara returned to the sitting room did she see upon the table a note addressed to her.

"Good-by," it said in a wide scrawl. "I am not to blame. It is the hand of Fate. It is always turned against me. I can tell by my own intuition when it is going to strike. It would do no good for me to be caught with you. I have made one ghastly mistake which you will find out. But you are innocent of that. If I stayed, the chances against you would be increased. Admit nothing. Deny everything. I have left your share of money at the bank to-day. And if you will believe in me still, and love me a little, you will take from an old and miserable man the wish that God-the same God I once served, and to whom I in my desperation always turn-will keep you forever, my dear Nara Alexieff. I am going back to England, where I grew up. I shall never see you again. God keep you always."

Nara stood looking down at this message, her lower lip tremulous. A great doubt of all mankind filled her. It made her touch her throat, as if some constricting fingers were choking her. Slowly she tore up the paper and scattered it behind her on the carpet as she left the room.

HE found Dr. Haith Claveloux sitting beside the table in her own apartment staring at the door as if waiting for her to come.

"I am ready," she said with an effort. "What can I do for you?"

"One moment," he said. "I am under great stress. I have had three days of it."

She looked at him with an expression of inquiry.

"I suppose you do not know why I have come."

"You said you were on my trail. That was your expression." She spoke of it with a little irony.

He waved that remark aside. "Please listen," he said. "I am an overwrought I may seem a little incoherent. You will forgive me. Sit down here, please."

man.

He leaned toward her. "There comes a time to every man when he is at his wits' end. I must, therefore, ask you questions."

"I will be glad to answer."

"I am right when I say that those whom you have attended were helpedas if by a miracle?"

"All but one," she replied.

"I have heard so. It is quite extraordinary."

He wet his lips.

"You can have no conception of what it is to end a life companionship," he went on, much moved. "There is the love of youth, but it does not send its roots down into one's being as the love of old age. Youth has not the accumulated memories; it has not woven long yards of life's fabric. Youth has no possession of the pictures of the coming of children, of the mother bending over her lifeless child, of the choosing of architects' plans of new homes, of tender care in illness, of a thousand shared hopes, disappointments, and victories. To-night I face the loss of my wife."

Nara gave a cry of sympathy and touched his trembling hand.

He looked down at the contact and then back into her eyes, his own granite gaze searching and pleading.

"There is something!" he whispered. "You have the power!"

He shook himself and stiffened as one who must goad himself to a task. He said: "My wife contracted typhoid nearly a year ago. Naturally, she was attended by the best medical skill in the country. She recovered, but with the recovery from typhoid her entire system was left in a state of exhaustion. Nerves, heart, circulation had lost their tone. Some disturbance of metabolism. She has lain in bed for

months at time so weak that she could not raise a hand. She has never been more lovely, never been more dear to us-to me and my son. But with all my efforts and the consultation of every man best fitted to help, science has been baffled. The lost vitality fails to return."

Nara shuddered. ing-" she began.

"Is there noth

"Nothing more," he said. "Once in a while we see a case of this kind. Sometimes they die. Life fails to assert itself. And my wife-Mary Claveloux-for a week has been slippingaway from me." His voice broke.

Nara touched his hand again; he sprang up. "What an irony of events!" he exclaimed. "That I of all men should come begging for your help!"

"No! No, no!" Nara exclaimed. "Don't ask that! I cannot help you."

Sspoke that her mind had weighed

HE was only conscious after she

everything before she gave this refusal. In the infinitely small space between his plea and her answer she had considered that Emlen Claveloux would see her at his mother's bedside. He would denounce her. He would offset her effect upon Mrs. Claveloux. He would find her a second time engaging in everything against which his nature revolted. She realized how much she loved him. She recognized how completely her going with Dr. Haith Claveloux would shut out forever all hope of sympathy from his son.

The father was now almost on his knees plucking at her dress, saying over and over again: "Do you know what you are saying? You are taking away the last hope, the last resort! Do you know what you are doing?"

"Yes," she said. "I know. I do not want to refuse. But it is beyond my control."

"You hold a grudge against me," he asserted. "You have no right to do so. You have no right!"

"I hold no grudge," she said in a quiet voice. "If you take me home with you, there is one member of your household who must never see me-never know that I am in your home." He stared at her. "Your son.'

"My son. Why?"

She shook her head, refusing to an

"Do you want me to go with you?" "Yes-for the love of Heaven-help us if you can. It is the last hope."

"Wait for me here," said Nara. "I will put on different clothing. You are sure your son will never see me?"

"I am sure I can arrange it. I promise."

He

Nara, in the moments while she endeavored to throw some of her possessions into a traveling case, tried to remember the words of Connor Lee. had sensed a warning of danger. There was no danger. He had fled; there was no reason for flight. Now, suddenly, was revealed to her the truth about him; he was one from whom conscience and cowardice always stripped the fruits of effort. He lived in everlasting and sometimes groundless fear from which there could be no escape because the fear was of himself.

When she came out Dr. Haith Claveloux had already jammed his hat upon his head and was pacing up and down.

"You are rather more yourself now?" she asked.

"Yes, I needed the stimulant-the coffee," he answered in a preoccupied

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The Feminine Touch

Continued from page 8

a clean white handkerchief. "Birdie!" he whispered hoarsely. "We-weboys, it's the truth! Birdie says we gotta take a bath-every Sat'day night! I-I- Gimme another one, Ab!"

There was a long, sick silence. "And water a dollar a barrel!" wailed Uncle Tommy. He turned the awful thing in his mind and a second thought speared him to the quick. "And it'll take a barrel and a half to wash ole Shad Papley!" he gasped.

FEW days after the bath ultimatum

Athere ayurred a stampede to Red

Mountain, over across Oak Creek, fifty or sixty miles from Stovelid. When the excitement died down we found that there wasn't more than twelve or fifteen of us left to hold down the town. And pretty soon we got a suspicion that these twelve or fifteen were not feeling very well or they probably would have gone too.

"Move fast, too. I'll have the Chuckawalla doctor here before to-morrow night-or there'll be dead mules scattered all over this desert! Fly!"

"It can't be done, Miss Birdie-it can't be done!" wailed old Poker. "It takes two whole days to make that round trip-with a regular mule skinner drivin'-"

But Birdie was gone.

I came out for the second lucid interval to hear the jingle of harness rings, the cracking of a whip and a stream of the most bloodcurdling language I ever heard. Under that searing attack the mules apparently broke into a frightened gallop; and presently the sounds died away and disappeared down the Chuckawalla stage road.

"He, he, he!" chuckled poor old Poker Terribone weakly. "Birdie shore does speak their language after all!"

We were at dinner a short time after Ist

and Johnny Seaver came in late.

"What's been keeping you, Johnny?" inquired Birdie.

"I been helpin' Jim Hood into bed," said Johnny. "Jim, he's sick."

"What's the matter with him?"

"I don't know, Miss Birdie. He says he's got a sort of a tired misery all over him."

Birdie considered this seriously, standing by the table with the coffeepot in her strong young hands.

"Where does Stovelid's drinking water come from?" she asked.

"Bud Lathrop, he hauls it in from Juniper Creek," said Uncle Tommy Saddler. "Juniper Creek's twenty miles northeast of here. It's a long haul. That's what makes it cost a dollar a barrel! Costly water to take a bath in!"

Birdie ignored the hint. She was thinking. "Any settlement up the creek from where Bud gets the water?" "Yes," admitted Uncle Tommy. "There's a bunch of Mexicans and Chinese camped about a mile up the creek. They're placerin' the creek and drypannin' the benches. They been there for two-three years."

Birdie came out of her deep thinking. That masterful look went round the table and beneath it our inferior egos quailed. "No more water that hasn't been boiled, remember!" said Birdie.

We obeyed. We were afraid of Birdie, so we obeyed-excepting on occasions when we saw opportunities to get unboiled water without her knowledge. Then, like perverse children, we drank four times as much as we really wanted.

THE

HREE days after Jim Hood started it, every man in Stovelid was in bed and the great Stovelid typhoid siege was on. Did I say every man? There were two exceptions. Old Shad Popley continued as well as ever. Shad seldom drank water; besides, his internal mechanism had become so accustomed to sinister things that a typhoid germ stood absolutely no show at all. Nor did Sam Duck fall sick. Perhaps the red devil papers he scattered all over the hotel made him immune. don't know.

I

The beginning of the epidemic is more or less dim in my recollection. However, I recall two lucid intervals that occurred just before my light went out for keeps. During the first lucid interval Birdie Calamus came into the big dining room where she had us all bedded down as though we were in a hospital ward, with old Shad Popley ambling about, attending upon us and sworn to approximate sobriety under threats of a horrible death.

"You can't drive 'em, Miss Birdie!" I heard Poker Terribone insisting in a weak, peevish voice. "You got to talk mule talk to 'em-and you don't know how. They'll just naturally lay down on you if you don't use mule talk. And you don't speak their language!"

"Hey, Shad Popley-you hurry out there and help me hitch up those mules!" was Birdie's only response.

T was many days later when I next struggled back to consciousness. I opened my eyes and found myself peering up into the face of a young man; he could not have been more than twenty-five or thirty, with fuzz on his chin and a mustache which reminded me of a discouraged bunch of alfilaria grass trying to grow on the stingy desert soil. With the instinct of an old desert dweller I guessed that he was a tenderfoot-and not over a year out of college. He had a spoon in his hand. "Drink this!" he said.

I cordially invited him to go to a climate even hotter than Stovelid's famous ozone, uttering the words with the superhuman effort with which an exhausted sleeper strives to throw off a nightmare.

"Drink it, I tell you!" he repeated, advancing the spoon. I tried to ward off the threatening invasion from my lips, but I discovered that I hadn't the strength to move my hand. "I won't!" I muttered peevishly. "Who are you?" "I'm the doctor!" said the tenderfoot. “And if you don't open your homely face and swallow this dope, you thundering old lizard, I'm going to punch you in the eye!"

Some way or another the idea of this soft-handed tenderfoot threatening to punch me in the eye struck me as the funniest thing I had ever heard. I giggled, the puerile giggle of a twohundred-pound man who has been reduced to a mere scrap of himself. The doctor half turned and grinned over his shoulder.

"This old fuzzy-face is coming along, Miss Birdie," he called. "He's got his sense of humor back! He'll live!"

Dimly then I saw the face of Birdie Calamus looking over the doctor's shoulder. But what a changed face! It was haggard and drawn by the long weeks of battling with death. Night and day, most of the time; so I was told later. And not once in all that time had she relaxed her persistent hold on hope. The doctor and Birdie-they were two young people, but both faces were haggard and drawn like the faces of the aged. And still they were able to greet the returned reason of their last patient with a joke!

mus.

"He won't take it," said the doctor. "I reckon you'll have to hold his nose!" Hot with unreasoning rebellion, I looked from the doctor to Birdie CalaThe girl's eyes were still the indomitable, compelling eyes of the old Birdie Calamus; but shining in them now was a new, tender light that shines in the eyes of all the mothers of the world. "Drink it, Uncle Buck!" said Birdie gently.

And suddenly I wasn't afraid of Birdie any more. But I obeyed her. I didn't obey because I was afraid, either. The phenomenon did not appeal to me at the time, however. I only knew that I was glad to do it-and then I went to sleep. Birdie was holding my hand.

As I fell asleep I heard the doctor's voice again: "That's the last one!" he exulted. "We've saved 'em all, you and I! Miss Birdie, there isn't a woman in

of us was strong enough to brag about, but the rest was simply a matter of good food and a religious shunning of Ab Linder's brew. There was no particular reason why the young doctor should not go, yet unaccountably he tarried.

"I like Stovelid," he said one day. "I like the climate and the-er-the scenery.

Doc and I were sitting on the porch of the hotel one evening when he made this remark. Inside the hotel Birdie Calamus was singing. Back in the kitchen Sam Duck was singing too. It sounded like a cat fight, but poor Sam Duck was not aware of this.

I looked abroad at old Dead Man Butte, rising bare and waterless against the sky, pelted by a thousand centuries of storm-driven sand, made bald by a million years of fierce sun baking his ancient head. I viewed the shriveled desert waste, crowding inhospitably about us and sweeping away to the blue Panamints, lying grimly under the east. Above us the brassy sun glared upon Stovelid with a withering heat.

"Yes," I cordially agreed with Doc. "This is a wonderful place!" For no man can see anything but beauty in his own home. Whereupon I invited Doc to settle with us permanently.

"This place has a great future," I told him. "And all the boys are strong for you. They've asked me talk it over with you."

But Doc grinned and shook his head. "Buck," he said, "I can't begin to tell you how I wish I could do what you want. But I can't. You see, Chuckawalla merely loaned me to Stovelid. I promised to go back as soon as you boys were able to stand and smoke again. I should have gone sooner; but-but-"

I didn't say much for a few minutes. Then I told the doctor something that had been lying grievously upon my soul. "Doc," I said, "when I was coming out of my fever I called you a-a tenderfoot!"

Doc laughed till he cried and then I saw that he was more than ever a boy, with a cowlick that wouldn't stay in place and mischievous eyes that had not yet learned to watch the world for envy and hate and selfishness. "Well, Buck," he said, "I am a tenderfoot; ain't I?"

"You're a liar!" I told him hotly. "Doc, you're a whole flock of wildcats! And Birdie Calamus is an angel-and we hated Birdie when she first came-"

"Sh!" says Doc. "I want to talk to you about that. Buck, when she came into Chuckawalla, cussin' a team of mules into a run, I thought the same way about her. She certainly looked

like poison and sudden death to any fool man that would dare her tongue. Yes, sir, I was afraid of her. But after I'd seen her work over you fellows for a couple or three weeks I saw that she was designed by Providence to be a doctor's wife and I figured that I was the lucky doctor! You'd all have died if it hadn't been for her. You'd all have died in a heap. But she hung on and wouldn't let you go. She-she held you back from the grave by sheer will power, it seemed to me; and so, Buck, Birdie and I are going to be married!" I got up and went inside. Birdie saw me come in and she stopped in the middle of the dining room and looked at me with a wistful, timid sort of smile. Not at all like the old Birdie that had come into Stovelid and bullied us all.

"I know what you're going to say, Uncle Buck," she said, "but don't say it. Not until you hear me first. Come over here and sit down."

So we sat down and Birdie told me all about it.

"I was brought up in an orphans'

home, Uncle Buck," she said. "But I didn't stay there any longer than I could help. And when I got out and faced the world- It's a mighty big world, Uncle Buck, and it-it scared me. Did you ever see a kitten wrinkle up its nose and fluff up its fur and try to terrify a bulldog? That was me!

Welch's

All my life I've had to fight. A girl" THE NATIONAL DRINK" who goes out to face the world alone has got to fight, every day of her life. If she doesn't-she goes under! And I found out early that I could blufffine! And so I bluffed.

"Even you whiskered desert men were afraid of me! Oh, if you boys had only known how frightened I was when I came to Stovelid that dayhow awfully Poker Terribone scared me! And if I had only known what great big soft hearts you same rough fellows had! I know it now! Andand-"

And

There were tears in her eyes. then suddenly I saw the real Birdie Calamus; just a poor, scared little girl, alone in the dark, making faces to keep the spooks away. I thought about the scared kitten, fluffing up its fur to frighten the bulldog and something got into my eyes. Alkali dust, probably. I couldn't seem to wink it away, and so I got up and went across to Ab Linder's place. Doc wasn't there, but half a dozen of the old-timers were, and I went right to the middle of the subject at once. I told them all that Doc and Birdie had told me.

"And so we're going to lose Doc and Birdie, both at one wallop!" I wound up.

NOBO

OBODY said anything for several minutes. Then old Poker Terribone got up and started for the door. "Which way, Poke?" I asked him. "I'm a-goin' over to Chuckawalla," said Poker, not turning his head.

"But wait a minute! Wait-" "Wait-hell!" snarled Poker Terribone. "You keep the doctor corraled in Stovelid till I get back-or there'll be shootin'!"

Late as it was, Poker hitched up and started to make the first trip to Chuckawalla after his recent sickness. As he drove past the hotel he saw Doc sitting on the porch. He stopped and beckoned; and when Doc came out to the wagon, Poker leaned down and told him where he was going.

HE drink that reflects the health of all outdoors-Nature's drink. WELCH'S is the pure juice of fullboose and I may not," he said. "But, ripe, luscious Concord grapes. Drink

"I may get shot or put in the cala

Doc, I want you to go in and take a message from me to Birdie Calamus."

Doc grinned up at the old stage driver. Doc was a handsome boy, tall and straight and sunburnt, with the skin peeling on his impudent nose. But old Poker continued deadly serious.

"You tell Birdie," he said, "that Poker Terribone called her a hen hawk when she first came to Stovelid. You You tell her she ain't no hen hawk. tell Birdie that Poker Terribone says she's-she's-" Poker's voice got away from him and went queer and squeaky and he batted his old red-rimmed eyes -"Poker Terribone he says she's a Bird of Paradise!"

"All right!" said Doc. "But, Poker -the wedding's to-morrow evening!"

Old Poker sent the long whip popping over the leaders' heads. "I'll be there!" he said.

Birdie Calamus came out on the porch and looked at the young doctor. And again I saw that light which is in the eyes of all the mothers of all the world.

"Billy!" she called softly.

Doc turned; and in Doc's eyes I saw that Birdie might bluff all mankind; but Love was one thing that never would be bluffed. Together they went inside.

"And we're goin' to lose 'em both!" croaked Pacheco Dan. "Say, Buck-the world's goin' plumb to hell!"

TH

HE big dining room was crowded, for now the boys were beginning to get back from the recent stampede to Red Mountain. Doc and Birdie stood up and the preacher opened his book. The preacher was an itinerant

ing a small glass of it gives you all the richness, all the food elements and all the health-building qualities of a big bunch of grapes fresh from the vine.

When served "straight," WELCH'S should be chilled and sipped from small glasses. It is an excellent fruit course for breakfast. A glass each day promotes health.

For a longer drink, and for social occasions, WELCH'S may be blended with plain or charged water in a hiball, or with ginger ale or lemonade. In a punch, WELCH'S adds color, body and most delightful taste.

The value of WELCH'S as a drink is the value of fresh fruit in the diet. Not only does it quench thirst, but it gives vigor without reaction. It has a value far beyond mere flavored beverages. WELCH'S has been the quality grape juice since 1869.

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shrimp and we were afraid he would not be able to handle such a momentous affair. However, he proved equal to it.

Through the awful hush the little preacher's voice came distinctly. Then a door banged open and old Poker Terribone came in. He was covered with dust, but his whiskered face was cleft by a grin which would have advertised his success for half a mile.

"I win!" he bawled. "I goes against Chuckawalla single-handed for Birdie and Doc-and I win 'em easy!"

The shocked silence apprised poor old Poker that somehow he had done something awful. The preacher's thin voice began piping again, reading the marriage service. Poker Terribone slunk abashed into a corner and sat down. And as soon as the service was at an end he slid out of the back door and fled. It was a great disappointment when the party hunted for him and was unable to locate him.

Howing, sitting in the dark stall

[OWEVER, I found him later in the

with his mules. He opened up and told me all about it. Even in the darkness I imagined I could see his wide, bashful grin. "I couldn't stay, Buck. They'd wanted me to get up and make a speech. But it was thisaway: When I got into Chuckawalla I went round and hunted up Ike Petrie. You know Ike's the Big Wolf of Chuckawalla and what he says goes.

66

'Ike,' I says, 'I want to speak to you about a young doctor you used to own over here"

"Excuse me, Mr. Terribone,' says Ike, polite as hell. 'You prob❜ly mean the doctor Chuckawalla owns right now! And, by the way,' he says, 'when you Stovelid invalids goin' to send our doctor back?'

66 'Ike,' I says, 'I got to explain.' And then I told him about Birdie Calamus and about Doc bein' scrupulous and all that. And so you, Ike,' I says, 'if you get your doctor back, you takes Birdie Calamus with him. More'n that, you robs Stovelid of all that makes life

Collier's, The National Weekly worth livin',' I says. 'And, speakin' personal, I for one comes over and shoots up Chuckawalla as long as I can see a citizen to aim at! Now we don't want anything like that, Ike. It wouldn't be neighborly and it would give this part of the desert a black eye. Let's you and me think up somethin'.'

66

""I ain't the kind that yields to coercion,' says Ike. 'Was you aimin' at coercion?'

"Never!' I says. 'I merely want to state that I'm plumb frantic over the thought of losin' Doc and Birdie; and when I get frantic I sometimes do things I'm sorry for in my calmer moments!' "What you suggest?' asked Ike.

66

"Let's you and me shake dice for 'em!' I says. "Three shakes. Best two out of three. Winner takes Doc and Birdie for keeps. Are you game, or are you a yaller pup?' I pulled the dice out of my pocket.

"There's several things I ain't,' says Ike, reachin' for the dicebox. 'And one of 'em's a yaller pup!'

"So we shook and I win-easy! They was only one bad loser in Chuckawalla; that was old Jason Applegate. He couldn't see it at all. But after I shoved my six gun against his stummick he saw it plumb reasonable and as plain as day. And that's all, Buck. We wins Doc and Birdie and we win 'em permanent."

For a long time we sat and smoked silently. "Poker," I said after a while, "let me see those bones."

Reluctantly old Poker brought the dice from his pocket. Reluctantly he held them forth in his hand while I struck a match and peered at them. I recognized them at a glance. From the dice I glanced up at the old stage driver's face. It was a sheepish grin now, but still a stubborn one. The match went out.

"Aw, say, Buck!" he said. "There was too much at stake! Aw, say, Buck-"

And to this day neither Stovelid nor Chuckawalla knows that Poker Terribone played for Doc and Birdie with loaded dice.

Crimes of the Highway

Continued from page 11

of the automobile. I don't mean to say that the highest price tire is necessarily the best, but as a general rule you get just about what you pay for in tires.

It is a pretty well established fact that light is bad for tires. So is heat. A car left in the summer sun costs a lot of money for deterioration, much of it for tires. Also, a tire carried on the running board or tire rack loses its vitality more quickly than one in normal, sensible service. If you have a nice new spare tire on the rear rack or the running board without a lighttight protecting cover, you are abetting tire suicide.

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Too Much Air or Too Little?

T was James J. Hill, I think, who said it was easy to foretell your own success or failure by your ability to save money. One of the best ways of saving money on motoring is in the watchful care of tires, and one of the best ways of caring for tires is to drive slowly over rough places, babying the car along so as to avoid sudden impacts of the tires against sharp stones, especially in wet weather.

Much has been said and written on the subject of tire inflation. I had the idea, for a long time, that it was wise to underinflate your tires in summer to allow for the heat expansion of the air in them. I am convinced now that this condition is so limited as to be negligible. Before I found this out I injured a number of good tires by carrying from fifteen to twenty pounds less pressure than the manufacturers recommended. This underinflation allowed the side walls to "work." Then I changed my method and went to the other extreme. This left me with a car which, in riding comfort, resembled the tanks

in which we used to charge over stone walls during the recent misunderstanding, and my tire bills showed no signs of mitigating their monthly punishment. Therefore I went out after advice, and the country's supply of that commodity being at its normal high level, I had no trouble in finding it. The brand I followed came from an automotive engineer.

"Figure it out for yourself," he said. "Why were tires invented? As shock absorbers. Very well. When you pump them up as hard as rocks they don't absorb shocks. They transmit them to every part of the car. Also, they cause stone bruises, which create blowouts. So much for overinflation. Now, granting a tire should have some 'give' when striking road obstacles, what happens when you underinflate? Why, the same thing except that, instead of the shocks going to the car or being absorbed by the entire cushion of air in the tire, they land all in one spot on the tire and simply squash its life out. I don't know which is the worst in damage and expense, underinflation or too much air. They're both bad. Find out the pressure recommended by the manufacturer of the particular tire you are using, or by the table of air pressures adopted by the Society of Automotive Engineers, and carry that pressure, or a very few pounds under it.

"You can never tell the pressure in a tire by looking at it or kicking it the way you do. A motorist who is trying to save himself money and trouble will test his tires immediately after inflation and once or twice a week, not with the gauge on his pump line, but with an independent gauge, one that opens the valve. The gauge on the pump or air hose registers only the air pressure less the resistance of the valve."