Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine, Vol. 107 No. 3 — page 31: what you’re looking at

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

THE DUKE OF CHIMNEY history of Milton Philbrook and his ad- ventures in the Bad Lands the landlord at the hotel in Glendora told Lambert on the evening of the travelers’ arrival there. The story had come as the result of ques- tions concerning the great white house on the mesa, the two men sitting on the porch in plain view of it, Taterleg entertaining the daughter of the hotel across the show- case in the office. Lambert ‘found the story more interest- ing than anything he ever had imagined of the Bad Lands. Here was romance look- ing down on him from the lonely walls of that white house, and heroism of a finer kind than these people appreciated, he was sure. “Ts the girl still here?” he inquired. | ‘Yes, she’s back now. She’s been away to school in Boston for three or four years, min’ back in summer for a little while.” hen did she come back?” Lam felt that his voice was thick as he inqui disturbed by the eager beating of Who knows? And perhaps, and all the rest of it came galloping to him with a.roar of blood in “his ears like the sound of a thousand hoofs. The land- lord called to his daughter: “Alta, when did Vesta Philbrook come back?” | “Four or five weeks ago,” said Alta, with the sound of chewing gum. “Four or five weeks ago,” the landlord repeated, as though Alta spoke a foreign tongue and must be translated. “IT see,”’ said Lambert, vaguely, shaking to the tips of his fingers with a kind of buck ague that he never had before. He was afraid the landlord would notice it, and slewed his chair, getting out his tobacco to cover the fool spell. For that was she, Vesta Philbrook was she, and she was Vesta Philbrook. He _ knew it as well as he knew that he could count ten. Something had led him there that day; the force that was shaping the course of their two lives to cross again had held him back when he had considered sell- ing his horse and going West a long dis- tance on the train. He grew calmer when he had his cigarette alight. The landlord was talking again. BUTTE. 373 “Funny thing about Vesta comin’ home, too,” he said, and stopped a little, as if to consider the humor of it. Lambert looked at him with a sudden wrench of the neck. ‘“ Which?” ‘“ Philbrook’s luck held out, it looked like, till she got through her education. All through the fights he had and the scrapes he run into the last ten years he never got a scratch. Bullets used to hum around that man like bees, and he’d ride through "em like they was bees, but none of ’em ever notched him. Curious, wasn’t it?” ‘Did somebody get him at last?” ‘“No, he took the typhoid fever. He took down about a week or ten days after Vesta got home. He died about a couple of weeks ago. Vesta had him laid beside her mother up there on the hill. He said they’d never run him out of this country, livin’ or dead.”’- Lambert swallowed a dry lump. ‘“Ts she running the ranch?” “Like an old soldier, sir. I tell you, I’ve got a whole lot of admiration for that girl.” ‘‘ She must have her hands full.” ‘Night and day. She’s short on fence- riders, and I guess if you boys are lookin’ for a job you can land up there with Vesta, all right.” ‘““We didn’t expect to strike anything this soon,” Lambert said, his active mind leaping ahead to shape new romance like a magician. “You don’t look like the kind of boys that ’d shy from a job if it jumped out in the road ahead of you.” ‘““No, I'd hate to have anybody think we would.” Oe ‘ Ain’t you the feller they call the Duke of Chimney Butte?” ‘““ They call me that in this country.” - “Yes; I knew that horse the minute you rode up, though he’s changed for the better wonderful since I saw him last, and I knew you from the descriptions I’ve heard of you. Vesta’d give you a job in a minute, and she’d pay you good money, too. I wouldn’t wonder if she didn’t put you in as foreman right on the jump, ac- count of the name you’ve got up here in the Bad Lands.” ELOOO Co S Co mM