Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 12, 1927 — page 146: what you’re looking at

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

By GARRET SMITH AN KING came slowly out of the 1) door of the old ranch house and paused irresolutely on the broad veranda. Trouble haunted the depths of his dreamy blue eyes. It corrugated his lean, handsome young face. Down the long slope his gaze swept over the remaining acres of the King ranch till it rested finally on the little town in the valley—King City—to which his master- ful father had given his name. Dan sighed. A slight shudder, almost a tremor of fear, passed over his stalwart frame. He shook himself angrily and _ started down the path toward the corral! “Tt’s about time I lay off dreamin’ and did a little fightin’,” he told himself. ‘‘ Dad wouldn’t give in to it if he was alive.” A moment he leaned against the corral gate and looked back at the old rambling gray house where he was born. The wistful dreaminess returned to his eyes. 140 Old Dan King, his father, had wrought better than he knew when he built that house fifty years before. There had been a touch of the dreamer in old Dan, too, down under his vigorous, practical exterior. His home reflected it. Its lines were those of the graceful old New England farm- houses of Colonial days. Again Dan pulled himself together. It became apparent that he had a resolute chin. There was a glint of steel in the blue eyes now. ‘ Can’t let the old place go!” he gritted. “They ain’t got me hog-tied yet, not a-tall.”’ He swung open the corral gate and whis- tled shrilly through his fingers. ‘Hey, Pinto,” he called. His favorite paint-pony lifted his head and whinnied, then broke loose from the bunch of his fellows and cantered toward his master. Dan led the pony to the barn by the fore- (E90) ~ Comicbooks