The Frontier, May 1926 — page 72: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

62 mockingly, doffing his sombrero and showing white, even teeth in a wide erin. Dickie gasped. Little girl, indeed! His chin came up with a snap and his tiny fists clenched. He ignored the lounger, but his steps hurried, became uneven, and a rosy flush overwhelmed his cheeks and flowed over the back of his neck. Nina! It was those darn’, darn’ kilts! Oh why couldn’t he have pants like a big man—an’—an’ chaps like daddy wore? Stone Bellinger alone, among the prospectors, miners and general driit- ers at Hartnett, wore leather chapare- jos as he rode. A cowman he had been, and a cowman sheriff he would remain, even though his lot was cast among other sorts of Westerners. The nearest ranch of any sort lay in the se- cluded Demijohn Valley, forty-five miles to the northeast. The last steps Dickie took at a run, flinging himself inside the shack and slamming the door. Dry sobs were in his throat, but no tears flowed. He saw without caring that Old Torky had not come to consciousness. Darn her anyway! Darn her for making him wear kilts. But then he looked into his own dis- ordered room, and what he saw spilled on a table brought a flash of inspira- tion. A sewing basket had been over- turned. Shears—chaps! Maybe pants, too! He closed Old Torky’s door silently and tiptoed back to the table. There were the implements! THastily seizing scissors and a paper of safety pins that lay on top, he dropped to the floor and scrambled under the table. There he pulled the cover down until he was screened from any casual observer who might come into the room, and went busily to work. Poking the sharp-pointed shears through the material of his red kilts at the waistline in front, he sawed his way down the weave of the-cloth until a last chew of the none-too-sharp shears severed the binding at the bot- tom. This made the kilts gape open alarmingly in front, but Dickie stuck manfully to his task, his fingers trem- bling from over-zealousness and a rush of excitement. Straining his rounded stomach into smallest compass, he managed to turn the kilts completely around so that the slit was exactly at the back. Then he repeated the process with the scissors, cutting a new slit down the opposite side of the kilts. This finished, he dropped the shears from his trembling THE FRONTIER fingers and seized the paper of safety pins. A little flush of triumph rose in his face as he succeeded in pinning to- gether the bottom flaps around above his right knee. Here were his trou- sers! In his excitement he stuck the point of a pin deep in his finger, but went on, disregarding the pain. In a trice he had fastened three pins in his right pants-leg, and two in the left. That would do, because some- how or other he couldn’t make his fin- gers work to fasten the other pin. He tiptoed again to the hall door and lis- tened. Old Torky snored. Triumphant, Dickie flushed as he looked down at his handiwork. On the wall hung a cracked mirror the beloved daddy used when he shaved. Dickie climbed up and secured it. His blue eyes glistened with pleasure then as he held the glass this way and that, reflecting the meta- morphosed kilts. Course they weren’t exactly pants, but they were a lot bet- ter than those darn’, darn’ things! Now if he only had chaparejos to wear outside! The drive of inspiration was in him, though. He looked down. On the littered floor was an old fragment of rag carpet, raveled at the edges and The sheriff unrolled the bundle stiff with dirt. Dickie caught his breath. Thechaps! Sitting down with the dull shears, he forthwith attacked the ancient fabric. It proved a long, slow job, one which made his hand and wrist ache fiercely. The hours dragged along. In the other room Old Torky ceased snoring, and groaned heavily. Then there was the sound of a staggering step, a gurgle as of liquid being de- canted—another gurgle. Then by and by, a creak of cot springs. And finally another snore. Dicky had sawed out one long, iz- regular triangle of rug and affixed it by pins and raveling tied together, when his aching arm and the demands of his stomach made him call a halt. He remembered the sandwiches, and forthwith ate them all. It was long past noon. _ Later, the joy of creation a trifle dulled, but determination unimpaired, he started the task of sawing out a duplicate, growing heavy-eyed as the shadows crept down from the west- ward buttes. - II ISN UT in a valley of soos the Red Chalk an Range, Toi-Yabe Tolman frowned down puzzledly at a pair of small shoes and a pair of child’s stockings he had found behind a boulder. He looked about him. A kid of some kind! The valley, though, was as silent as a dead desert calm; even his own animals were not grazing on the sparse vegeta- tion jus then. He was sure that no one else could be within miles—and certain also, or nearly so, that these garments had not been behind the boulder the day before. Why, he had sat on that stone to eat his beans and pan biscuit! Yet he might have over- looked them, as he had been thinking almost entirely of Haj Maddox and what that treacherous coyote might be expected to do with his knowledge that the ex-bandit, Toi-Yabe Tolman, still lived. Toi-Yabe rolled up the shoes and stockings and tossed them back to the place he had found them. Then he looked deep into the crannies of the narrow cave he used as a provision cache, and later devoted a half hour to a climb, reaching a spot which gave him a bird’s-eye view of the valley. But beside a pair of far buzzards slowly circling, no living thing was in sight. He returned to his labor with drill, pick and shovel. Unaware of the net being woven for him, he labored in the shaft he was sinking diagonally downward at a right-angle to the slanting side of the bare mountain. Float gold was plenti- ful about the claim he owned. Low grade ore also was present in irregular veins two feet below the surface, sep- arated and broken by white, barren bull quartz. The low grade ore rep- COmicboooxsS. com