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(Continued). jiffy. I must have a heart-to-heart
SYNOPSIS. talk with the cautious Mr. Bullerton,
CHAPTER I.—Under his grandfather’s
will, Stanford Broughton, society idler,
finds his share of the estate, valued at
something like $440,000, lies in a “safe re-
pository,” latitude and longitude de-
scribed, and that is all. It may be identi-
fied by the presence nearby of a brown-
haired, blue-eyed girl, a piebald horse,
and a dog with a split face, half black
and half white. Stanford at first regards
the bequest as a joke, but after considera-
tion sets out to find his legacy.
CHAPTER I1.—On his way to Denver,
the city nearest the meridian described
in his grandfather's will, Stanford hears
from a fellow traveler a story having to
do with a flooded mine.
I happened to think of the Mining
exchange, and to wonder if somebody
connected with it might not have a list
of engineers and mining experts. A
hike through the streets brought me to
the exchange and the secretary not
only had such a list, but was willing
to show it to me. In its proper place I
found the name, “Charles Bullerton.”
A query shot at the man behind the
desk elicited the information that Mr.
Charles Bullerton was in South Amer-
fica. At this, I could have shouted for
joy, because it proved conclusively
that Charles Bullerton was my man,
and that the tale to which I bad lis-
tened wasn’t altogether made up out
of whole cloth, as so many Pullman
smoke-room romances are.
Bullerton’s usual address, when he
was in Colorado and not in Denver,
was in care of a certain bank in Crip-
ple Creek; or at least, that was the
way it had been before he went to
South America.
A telegraph office was the next thing
on the program, and when I found one
it seemed to be about a hundred-to-
one shot that I'd never touch bottom,
since I had no hint that Bullerton had
been headed for Cripple Creek. My
message, prepaid and answer prepaid,
contained only a single question:
“What was the name of the old gen-
tleman who bought the watered mine °
and then died? An answer to that
would tell the story.
For two whole days, an interval
which I spent in hither-and-yon chas-
ings of piebald ponies and harlequii.
faced dogs about the streets of Denver
—and found no blue-eyed girls a&at-
tached to any of them—I thought f
had merely shot up into the air witu
my telegram, and missed the whole
face of the earth. Then, one morn-
Then One Morning the Answer Came.
ing, the answer came in just two
words, like this:
“To Stanford Broughton,
“Hotel Savoy,
“Denver.
“John Smith.
“CHARLES BULLERTON.”
That settled it with a vengeance,
you'd say. And yet it didn’t. It
merely proved that Mr. Charles Buller-
ton had acquired a sudden excess of
caution, and was probably cussing him-
gelf plentifully for having been too
loose-tongued with a perfect stranger
in a Pullman smoker. He had an-
swered my wire with a name that
meant just as much or as little as if
he'd said “Alexander the Great,” and
that was precisely the amount of in-
formation he had intended to convey.
Whether or not Bullerton’s memo-
randum agreement with my grandfa-
ther would be binding upon me as
Grandfather Jasper’s heir, was a ques-
tion for the courts to decide. But one
thing was certain—that is, granting all
the assumptions; if he should find the
mine and go to work on his unwater-
ing scheme, he would have a grip on
things that might be handsomely trou-
blesome to shake loose.
After I had argued it out thus far
the next step suggested itself in a
' was hunting for.
signed to unwater a lot of flooded
telling him who I was, and perhaps
giving him a chance to join forces
with me in the search, if it should
prove te be my grandfather's mine that
he was looking for. Grabbing this inr
pulse by the neck, so to speak, I took
the first train for Cripple Creek. The
next morning, when I made inquiry. I
found that Bullerton had left town,
though where he had gone the bank
folks couldn’t say.
1 had gone into the chase more than
half for the sheer fun of it; pretty
much as the dog runs after the stick
you've flung into the bushes, and
which he hasn’t much hope of finding.
But now it was appealing to me as
more of a man’s job. There was a
legacy ; and however valueless it might
be in its present condition, it had once
been worth nearly half a million—and
might be again. And a half-million is
a whole lot of money, when you come
to consider it.
From what little the bank folks told |
me it appeared that Bullerton was |
fairly well known in Cripple Creek
and the region roundabout. Therefore,
somebody in the near vicinity must
know more than I had as yet been
able to learn about the manner of his |
disappearance and his probable desti-
nation. My job was to find the some-
body.
About the time 1 thought I had ex-
hausted all the combinations, 1 found |
the one particular Bullerton friend I
His name, as I re-
call it, was Hilton, or something like
that, and he was the superintendent of :
a big drainage-tunnel undertaking de-
{ mines on the hills above the tunnel
' gite.
“I can give you a little information,
but not much,” was his answer to my
inquiry.
the subject of a lost mine—not an un-
| usual disease in any mining country— .
He
has a sketch map of the location, but :
nothing to tie it to. I didn’t ask him
where the location was—or rather, '
and he has gone to hunt for it.
where he thought it was.”
“Then, of course, you have no idea
where his hunt was to begin?” I threw
in.
“Only a guess, In our talk, he asked
me if I knew anything about a place
called Placerville, in the Red desert;
what sort of a town it was, and if a
man could outfit there for a prospect-
ing trip. I took it from this that he
might be heading for Placerville,
though te didn’t say that he was.”
As you'd imagine, this was enough
for me. The next morning I was back
in Denver, figuring out the quickest
way to get to Placerville in the Red
desert. I hoped Bullerton was on the
true scent, but was mightily afraid he
wasn’t—in which case I, too, would go
begutifully astray. But if he should
happen to be on the right track, then
1 must beat him to the goal.
much better off than I was.
the other hand, I had the girl, a hori?
und a dog.
CHAPTER IV.
At the Back of Beyond.
To my chagrin, the railroad ticket
offices in Denver didn't know any such
place as Placerville in the Red desert
region, which was then, as now, trav-.
ersed only by one railroad. The sin-
gle “Placerville” they had listed was
a station not far from Telluride, In |
Nor |
quite another part of the state.
would the Mining exchange gentleman
help me. However, he suggested that
if 1 could find some old resident (‘“‘old-
timer” was the word he used) whose
memory reached back a ways, there
might be something doing.
“Steer me,” I begged; “I'm a half-
orphan and a total stranger in Den-
ver.”
He laughed, and then thought for a
winute, and said:
“The Du Pont Powder people have
been doing business here for a good
many years, and they know the pow-
der buyers all over the state. It's just
possible that they could tell you. Sup-
pose you ask at their office.”
I went, forthwith; and the gentle-
man to whom I presented my card at
the cashier's window had the dope.
The Red Desert Placerville, he told
me, was strictly a “has been.” The
placers had long ago been exhausted,
and the place had afterward figured as
a shipping point for some mine or
mines on the desert slope of the East-
ern Timanyonis. He was not quite cer-
tain, but he thought the name ‘“Placer-
ville” had been changed to something
else.
As to the manner of reaching the
“has been,” this, as he pointed out,
was simple encugh. There were
through sleepers by way of the P. 8-W.
and Copah all the way to the Pacific
coast,
Armed with this information, 1
quickly shook the dust of Denver (no
glam here intended at the Queen City
of the Plain) from my feet, taking a
“Bullerton is bughouse on |
True, he
bad a map to zuide him, and was that |
But, ea
lowing morning, when I ran my win-
dow shade up previous to turning out
for breakfast, the train was rollicking
along over endless reaches of the
dryest, dreariest, most barren-looking
country that the sun ever shone upon;
red sand, it appeared to be, with with-
ered bits of grass here and there and
scattering bunches of what I after.
ward learned was called “greasewood.”
It was while luncheon was getting it-
self served that the train stopped to
water the engine at the most desolate
place that ever lay out of doors, I do
think. The place was utterly deserted;
there wasn’t a human being in sight,
either on the platform or in the street
upon which the station faced; not even
the bunch of loafers which usually ma-
terializes out of nowhere to see a
train came and go. I was looking out
of the window and wondering how any-
body, even a hermit telegraph opera-
tor, could stand it to live in such a
graveyard of a place when I got my
shock.
Jt was a dog that connected up the
high-voltage wires for me; a shaggy
' mongrel with his ears cocked and a
red ribbon of a tongue hanging out as
he jumped up on the high station plat-
form as if to say “Hello, stranger!” to
me. For, right down the center of that
dog's face and dividing it as accurate-
‘ly as if it had been drawn by some
| mathematical draftsman, was a line
marking off a black half from a white
. half! .
1 was just taking a swallow of hot
chocolate when the dog appeared, and
© it nearly choked me. Luckily, T got
' the swallow down before I saw the
: horse—a grasshopper-headed COW
pony, saddled and bridled and standing
. hitched to a gnawed wooden rail in
, front of one of the tumble-down
\ \ \
NC
iy
| “H’'m; Ticketed to Angels,” He Mut-
tered Half to Himself.
shacks. “Piebald” is a sort of an elas-
through ticket to Angels; and the fol- |
+ have
| strenuous effcrt to suraightea things |
| ticket-named
and found a typical mining camp of a
| dreariness scarcely exceeded by that
© of the dead-alive Atropia.
thing I saw on th
| man whose greatest need was for a
. train conductor.
| rich, but if I could have known the
“Thank you; that helps. Now how i
much farther is it to Angels?”
“Bout twenty miles.”
“All right. And when will there be
a train coming back to this Atropia
place?”
“Way-freight — tomorruh mornin’—
eight-thirty out o’ Angels.”
“Good. Now if those fire people and
the brass band don’t miss me—" 1
couldn't resist the temptation to give
him a final shot, and it hit the bull's-
eye. As he edged away I could see by
his expression that he still thought we
crazy.
When I got back to my Pullman
after luncheon I perceived at once that
the train conductor had promptly
passed the word about the episode in |
the dining car. The Pullman conduc-
tor evidently had his weather eye on
me, and the negro porter shied every
time he passed my section. This was
tenth part of what was going to pop
out of this Pandor~ box that I had
foolishly dug up in ‘he dining car, the
amusement feature would speedily |
been Forgotten in pretty |
there was yet time. !
the train at my |
of Angels. |
out. while
I descended fron
destination
single street and a tawdry, dusty |
The first
station platform
was my train conductor talking earn-
estly to a large, desperadoish-looking
clean shave. By the manner of the two
I saw that their talk was aiming itself
at me; the railroad man was only too |
plainly warning the Angelic person
that Angels the Blest had a probably |
harmless, but possibly dangerous,
maniac ip its midst.
Still I saw only the humorous side |
of it and refused to be disturbed. Fired |
by the ambition to find some way of :
returning at once to Atropia, before |
the magic horse and dog should disap- !
pear, I tramped off in search of a place
where I could leave my two grips. The
place that offered, and the only one,
was the “Celestial Heel” and 1 won-
dered what sly wag had suggested the
name, which was a double pun upon
the name of the town and the fact that
the tavern, half restaurant and half
lodging-house, was kept by a China-
man.
But I secured accommodation, and
as I was turning to leave the restau-
rant-tavern trouble loomed up in the
shape of the heavy-shouldered des-
peradoish-looking person whom I had
seen at the station talking with the
“I’m onto you with both feet,” he re-
marked, boring me vith an eye that I |
into the heart of the most reckless !
1
|
"could easily fancy might strike terror |
1
|
1
| criminal. “I'm givin’ you warnin’ right
' now that no funny business don’t go in |
! this man’s town; see?” |
“Im quite harmless,” I assured him. |
: “Give me a little information, and I'll |
| forthwith remove wyself from the con-
fines of your charming city. How far |
| is it by wagon-road to Placervilie- |
. Atropia, and how can I get there?”
. of you in the same dog-goned week!”
tic word, as the dictionaries define it, |
and it might apply to almost any
beast-markings out of the ordinary.
| But the horse I was gaping at fell eas-
ily within any or all of the definitions;
it was a true “calico,” white and light
| sorrel in grotesque patchings; unmis-
* takably “piebald,” if a purist in the
use of the mother-tongue—like Cousin
| Percy, for example—wished to call it
S0.
Before 1 could rush back to the
steward’s sentry-hox in the vestibule GL
the car our train was chasing along
again,
! “Hey!” I shouted: “what’s the nape
of that place where we stopped to wa-
ter the engine?” :
ground.
Atropia?”
“I don’t get you.”
“Excuse me; I'll try to put it in
| simpler form. Why is Atropia?”’
He appeared to have reached tne
conclusion that I wo3 an escaped luna-
| tic, safe enough, most probably
harmless one. He looked first at the lit-
i tle colored slip sticking in my hat-band
and then consulted a note-book drawn
from his pocket.
“H'ma; ticketed to Angels,” he mnt-
tered half to himself. And then to me:
“Was you expectin’ to have friends
meet you at Angels?”
This was too much, and, anxious as
I was to find out something more about
Atropia, I felt it an imperative duty—
fool-like—to do my small part toward
enlivening a rather sad world. So (
said, solemnly:
What are the industries of
Angels fire department, in uniform,
and with the apparatus, headed by a
brass band. But this is irrelevant to
the present burning question. What I
am thirsting to know is why there
should be a dog with a face half
! white and half black standing on the
bald pony hitched to the horse-rack
on the Atropia public square.”
That finished him.
“Say, young feller, you've got 'em
bad,” he commented. “But that'll be
all right. Just you wait till we get to
Angels, and then you can find out ail
these funny things you're so dead anx-
! ious to know.”
“Hold on a minute,” I interposed as
he was trying to escape. “Atropia
hasn't always been as dead as'it is
now, has it? What was its name when
it was alive and able to sit up and take
nourishment?”
“Huh?” he queried; and then: “Oh,
1 get you, now; it used to be called
Placerville.”
| “Atropia.”
| “Deuth-sleep,” I translated with =
| grin. “It fits, all the way down to tue !
a:
“I shall be met by a parade of the |
Atropia station platform, and a pie- |
| kind, and hurried down to the rail- |
“My gosh!” he snid gloomily; “two
“HWven so. When did the other one |
arrive?”
“Day before yistidday. He didn’t |
look so much bughouse as you do, but |
1 reckon he must ’a’ been off his ka- |
whoop, too, 'r he wouldn't 'a’ gone to i
"Tropia.”
“Let him rest in peace. Do I get my :
{nformation?”
“Shore: we speeds the partin’ guest
You've come apast your place. Twenty-
one mile back; and the way-freight 'll
git you there to-morruh mornin’.” {
“1 gong to Atropia—-this aiier:
noon,” 1 bragged.
. lle let me pass, and 1 tramped up
the street until I found the one livery
stable. Here, again, my fool reputs-
tion had quite evidently outrun ne.
The man had idle horses, plenty of |
them, as I couldn't help seeing, but I
couldn't hire one for love or MOREY.
When it came right down to the pinch,
he wouldn't even sell me one.
By this time I was in a hot swert
of impatience to be on my Way; to |
bridge that twenty-one miles before
the elusive clue—if it were the clue—
could once more dodge me and vanish
into thin air. In that frame of mind I
told the cautious liveryman, in gentle
phrase, what I thought of him and bis |
road, hoping to be able to catch an
east-bound train of some kind, any
kind, whose crew could be bribed or
cajoled into carrying me to Atropia.
It was just as I was about to inquire
of the telegraph operator what the
chances were that the great tempta-
tion rose up and slapped me in the
face. Up the grade from the westward
a tiny, three-wheeled car, carrying two
men, came spinning along. 1 recog-
nized it at once as a track-inspection |
car, driven by a small gasoline engine;
an evolution of the old velocipede car,
foot and hand-driven and used by road-
masters and other vailroad men for
making quick trips over short dis-
tances.
In half a minute the little car rat:
tled up to the station and made a |
quick stop, the two men setting the
brakes and hopping off to dodge into
the telegraph office. They left the lit.
tle pop-popping engine running at
idling speed, and in a flash I saw my
chance. Of course, if I should steal
the car, I'd be caught and arrested ana
hauled off somewhere to be tried and
fined; but before any of these unto- |
ward things could happen, I should
have settled that biting question of
the ownership of the piebald pony and
the harlequin-faced dog.
With a quick glance over my shoul:
der to make sure that the coast was
still clear, I slipped into the driving:
seat, jerked the throttle open and re-
leased the clutch, praying fervently
! sunlight.
j was
that the switches might be set right
for me at the upper end of the Angels
yard.
As (he machine began to gather
speed, I looked back. What I saw was
a-plenty. Three men, one of them,
What | Saw Was a-Plenty.
whom I took to be the telegraph op-
erator, in his shirt-sleeves, came run-
ning up the station platform. The
shirt-sleeved man was yelling and wav-
ing something that glistened in the
Next I heard the distance-
diminished crack of a pistol and a
blunt-nosed bullet sang a whining lit-
tle lullaby to me as it tore past.
I flung up an arm to show the pistol-
firer that he had missed, and then the
small car swung around the shoulder
of the nearest hill and Angels became
only a backward-flitting memory.
CHAPTER V.
The Magic Triad.
To be stopped before I could reach
my goal was no part of my plan, so I
opened things up and gave the little
three-wheeled dinky all the gas it
could use, keeping a sharp lookout
ahead, and meaning to pull up a little
way short of the graveyard city, aban-
doning the car and making the actual
approach on foot.
Judging from the way the scenery
was racing backward, I estimated that
the little car must be doing at least
thirty miles to the hour; which meant
forty minutes or such a matter, to
cover the twenty-one miles. If oppos-
ing train or trains, whatever they
might be, would only keep out of my
way for those precious forty min-
minutes. :
I pushed the small motor to its limit
suddenly, on a grade that was a bit
steeper than usual, the popping ex-
haust quit short off, the engine slowed
down, and the car, squeaking and
grinding. came to a stand on a low
embankment between two of the hill
cuttings.
There wasn’t anything very compli-
cated about the little motor, and I soon
discovered that a broken ignition wire
what had killed it. Happily,
there was a small toolbox under the
«eat. and in the kit there was a pair
of pliers. But sometimes—and this
was one of them—a bit of material is
as important as the tools to work with.
The broken wire was too short to eou-
ple up again, and there wasn’t an inck
of spare wire to be found in the
Kit.
They say that necessity is the moth-
er of invention; but I'll defy anybody
to invent a piece of wire in the middle
of the Great Sahara desert. Every
minute I was expecting to hear the
rumble and roar of a train.
In this extremity it was a little
desert zephyr that gave me the great
idea. A gzentle breeze came sighing up
| the draw from some overheated area
out beyond, and finding no trees on
the barren hills, it sang its little song
in the thickly clustering telegraph
wires on the poles. Why, sure! I
said to myself; here was my wire—
miles and miles of it. All I had to do
was to climb up and get it.
Gentle reader, 1 wonder if you've
ever tried to climb a telegraph pole
without the contrivances that a line-
man buckles upon his feet? If you
haven't. the advice of this amateur is—
don’t. Half a dozen times I shinnied
up to perhaps the height of a man’s
head, only to come sliding dowh again
on a run. At last, by a series of inch-
ings I contrived to get within arm’s-
reach of the lowest crosspiece. Pliers
in hand, I strained for the nearest
wire, progged it, and began to twist it
back and forth to break it.
Not to let me miss any of the thrills,
it was at the precise instant of the
wire-breaking that my straining ears
caught the sound they had been lis-
tening for; a far-away, drumming rum-
bie that seemed to come from nowhere
in particular. Then, out’ of the same
indefinite circumambience came a
warning that was still more unmistak-
able—the long-drawn blast of a loco-
motive whistle.
I didn't climb down that pole; I
came down like the time-ball on the
flagstaff in Washington at high noon.
Moreover, I struck the ground run-
ning, as one might say. All thoughts
of tinkering that confounded motor
had vanished and my one great object
in life was to get the car off the track
before a worse thing should happen.
I was doing fairly well with the lifting
and tugging when the enemy hove in
sight less than five hundred yards
away. And that wasn't all, either. At
precisely the same instant, as if it had
been timed by the same mechanism
that had brought the freight train,
here came a wild engine around the
curve in the opposite direction, with
its whistle valve held open and making
a racket to wake the dead. The be-
reft motor-car riders had found a lo
comotive somewhere and were chasing
me.
One mad heave at the stranded gas-
oline car, a mighty boost that got all
but one wheel of it in the clear, and
I was gone—streaking it like a jack-
rabbit for the tall timber—only there
wasn't a stick of timber nearer than
the slopes of the backgrounding moun-
tains.
One glance over my shoulder as I
fled showed me what I was in for:
that the story was to be immediately
continued in our next, Both engineers
tried to stop; did stop in time to avert
the greater catastrophe. Three or four
men jumped from the freight and two
from the wild engine to come tearing
after me. I fancied I could give them
their money’s worth at that game—
being in pretty fair training—so I
pitched out to try to turn the hypo-
thetical theory into a condition.
It was a great race. Through one
gap and into another we went, mak-
ing figure eights around the hills and
back again, dodging into new ravines
and out of them into others, circling
among great sandstone boulders that
took all sorts of weird shapes in the
passing glimpse,
I don’t know just how long the chase
lasted, but it was long enough to give
me a very considerable degree of re-
spect for the nerve and persistence of
those highly indignant railroad men.
We must have been miles away from
the scene of the disaster when I final-
ly left them behind and lost them.
When I looked back and found myself
alone with the solitudes I sat down up-
on a flat rock to gasp and laugh. It
had all been so supremely ridiculous,
and so beautifully in keeping with the
reputation I had left behind me at
Angels, that I felt sure that now noth-
ing less than a verdict of expert alien-
ists would ever serve to convince these
Red Desert folk that I was anything
but an escaped lunatic.
After the breathing spell I kept on
up the valley, heading away from the
setting sun, and feeling certain that,
sooner or later, I must come out some-
where in the neighborhood of Atropia.
Two hours later I came into a sort
of an excuse for a road. Being pretty
well winded by the stiff climb out of
the canyon ravine, I sat down at the
roadside to rest a bit and to decide
which way I should go, to the right
or to ‘the left, Just as I was making
up my mind I heard a patter of feet
and a dog barked.
A moment later I could see the
beast, indistinctly. He had been com-
ing up the road and had stopped at
the sight—or scent—of me. Since a
dog argued the proximity of a dog-
owning human being, I called coaxing-
ly: “Here, Towser—here—come on,
old fellow—that’s a boy!” and the cur-
! jous thing about it is that he did it,
and was getting along beautifully until |
running up a little way and stopping,
and finally coming to squat before
me and to lift a paw for me to shake.
I jollied him a bit and let him nose
me to his heart’s content. Then sud-
denly, as if he had discovered a long-
lost master, he broke away and began
to leap and dance around me, barking
a furious and hilarious welcome. In
the midst of this hubbub I heard hoof-
beats and the squeaking of saddle
leather, and the dog's owner rode up.
At first I thought the dimly outlined
Stetson-hatted figure in the saddle was
that of a boy. But it was a woman's
voice, and a mighty pleasant one, that
called to the dog: “Down, Barney,
end hehave yourseif—what's the mat-
ter with you, sir!”
I stood up and pulled off my cap.
“Pm chiefly the matter,” I said.
*Your dog seems to think he knows
me, and I'm awfully sorry that his
memory is so much better than mine.”
You'd think—anybody would think
—that a woman riding alone in the
dark on a solitary mountain road
would be handsomely startled, to say
the least, at seeing a man rise up falr-
ly under her horse's nose. But if my
iittle lady were scared, she certainly
didn’t parade her fright.
“Barney is such a foolish dog, some-
times,” she said apologetically. “He
has a double brain, you know; half
of it is good-natured and silly and
the other half is—well, it's—"
(Continued Next Week).
——— el ————————
Pennsylvania Leads in Automobile
Registration.
Pennsylvania leads the Union in the
number of passenger automobiles
registered, according to a tabulation
prepared by the Bureau of Public
Roads, United States Department of
Agriculture. The total number of
such cars registered in Pennsylvania
is 557,765. California had only sever-
al hundred fewer—bH57,231. IFassen-
ger automobiles in New York are es-
timated, in the lack of complete infor-
mation, at 505,642. Other States
showing large registrations are Ohio,
547,000; Illinois, 512,641; and Texas,
412,332. Nevada has the smallest
number of registrations, 8,688.
—— Come here for your job work.
JREE——
Where Old Ship Rope Goes.
Rope from ships that have sailed
the Seven Seas—that has been tied to
every port in the world—ends its ca-
reer by guarding the natiui : tele-
phone conversation.
From junk rope is made the high
grade ot paper which insulates every
| wire in a piece of telephone cable.
Over 13,000,000 pounds of old rope
were fed to the giant vats which tore,
enalrod. washed and heat nlp
the makings of '1,u0U,000 pounds of
cable paper used by the Bell Tele-
phone system last year.
ee ered eter
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