Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 4, 1926 — page 44: what you’re looking at

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

O04 At last, unwillingly convinced that Ro- sita was also gone, Rusty himself drifted aimlessly away. It was not quite the same Rusty who came a week before. In his blue eyes lurked the shadow of trouble, of a secret sorrow. They no longer bubbled with. that infectious spirit of youth and good fellowship. His mind dwelt in constant longing on that vast region stretching south from the border. A girl named Rosita! What chance of finding her? Rusty was now inclined to blame Don Eugenio for the ruination of his hopes. Men of Spanish blood were horribly strict with their daughters, he knew. Don Eugenio might possibly have seen Rosita on the street; some acquaintance might have noticed the girl and told him. He might have returned sooner than she anticipated, and so learned of her adven- ture; Tia Maria’s attack might have been less severe than usual, so that she roused up, thus discovering Rosita’s absence. Any one of a score of explanations might be imagined, with the result of Rosita being sent home secretly, post haste; quite likely that selfsame night. But explanations did not interest Rusty Towers. The bitter fact remained that an unkind fate had cut him off from Ro- sita, his loved one—the Rose of Mexico. CHAPTER II. THE MASKED RAIDER. T was some months after the events at- tending the Mexican fiesta that Rusty Towers approached what might perhaps be termed his ancestral acres. The name Towers was well known throughout that region. Dan Towers, Rusty’s father, had fought a vigorous way up through the vicissitudes of drought, Texas fever, cattle ticks, and rustling forays to a success that ranked him among the richest cattlemen of the whole Southwest. Uncounted steers by the thousand car- ried. his brand—two crossed arrows— though a score of other brands were regis- tered in his name, once the property of divers cow outfits gradually absorbed dur- ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, ing the development of the Towers for- tune. ‘Old place looks same as ever,” Rusty teflected, as he rode up to the ranch. “ But deserted, sort of. I wonder where every- body is!” Rusty turned his pony loose in the corral and hung his saddle on a vacant rack in the stable, still puzzled at seeing so few signs of life and activity. Then he turned toward the house, where his father, a widower of ten or a dozen years standing, ran bache- lor’s hall. In the living room of the ranch house he found Dan Towers, seated in his favor- ite armchair, one foot, roughly bandaged, resting on a box before him. His hair was streaked with gray; his skin had been beaten to a mottled mahogany by the blis- tering heat of the summer sun during years spent on Southern ranges, and the equally blistering bits of winter blizzards sweep- ing down out of the northwest. But his eyes were as clear and his hand as steady at threescore as at twenty. He glanced up from the book he was reading at the jingle of his son’s spurs. “Well, Rusty,” was his calm greeting. “ Back again, eh?” “ Hello, dad. Yep, I’m back!” and Rusty scaled his sombrero toward a pair of branching steer horns mounted on the wall. He missed one tip by inches. “Not so good!” he grumbled. to be able to hit that every shot. Out of practice.” His eyes for the first time seemed to take in the bandaged foot. ‘““What’s up, dad? Horse roll on you?” “Got messed up with some barbed wire,” the ranchman told him. “A week or so ago, it was. Getting on all right, though it come at a damned poor time.” “ Meaning by that?” Rusty suggested. “We had another raid night before last.” “ Another!” Rusty exclaimed. ‘ News to me you’d had any!” “Tf you’d stick around home now and then instead of drifting over the range God knows where on the trail for excitement,” old Dan Towers sputtered testily, “ might be you’d know what’s doing hereabouts. Plenty excitement right at home; you don’t have to trail off looking for it. I wrote “T used (E00) DOOKS AUNG (F@)