Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 7, 1928 — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

BY THE AUTHOR OF “EYES WEST! ’’ When two knights of old, tossed down in the midst of the cow country, hear the cry of a ladye faire things are bound to happen CHAPTER X. POPULARITY. HERE were moments in the irk- some hours of his imprisonment when Norman Trent saw, with- out mirth, a grotesque humor in the situation. For a conservative, studi- ously conventional New Yorker of habitual sobriety and traditional res- pectability to have the very muse of romantic tragedy select him as her exponent was near enough to satiric comedy in all conscience. But it chal- lenged sober credulity or the liveliest fancy, that a whole countryside should accept him in the incongruous role and celebrate his name almost to the point of electing him to the pantheon of a crude mythology. New Mexico was essentially a land of traditions from which it neither could nor would escape, and the at- mosphere was surcharged with fan- tastic mysticism from border to border. Hard-headed settlers came from New England witheut sentiment or illusion in their souls, and seemed quickly to embrace and adopt the extravagant superstitions and legendary lore of the cliff-dwelling aborigines. An amusing lie was more acceptable than a wholesome truth, and a tower- ing fabrication of improbable fancies stood a better chance for belief than a sober statement of obvious fact. He felt that the intangible element of chance, variously accepted by the sober or the frivolous as destiny, fate, or luck, had played a series of sorry This story began in the Argosy-Allstory Weekly for March 24 112 7A COMIC OOO KS ad (E@)