The Argosy, Vol. 75, No. 4 — page 54: what you’re looking at

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

756 to make it possible, Natalie and Alice had come out into the land of mystery to seek “‘ Oncle Phillipe’s estate.” : To Miss Thorpe’s practical nature it had seemed a kind of rainbow chase. She did not believe much in Phillipe le Fevre and his heritage to his niece. But Natalie was about to pay the price that poverty exacts from a nature like hers, and Alice Thorpe undertook the trip, knowing that only an absolute change would restore the imaginative, ill-nourished, sensitive little girl to health, She believed that Oncle Phillipe had concocted his amiable fairy-tale of a fine estate near Pifion, from which he had. been driven by the “ beasts of men,’ simply and solely to gloss over his imposition of himself and his vo- racious appetite on the hard-working little maker of ribbon-flowers. Providence had mercifully removed Oncle Phillipe, evidently preferring to leave Natalie a chance at the good things of the world on which her uncle had imposed. But Natalie was a girl of the pecul- iarly sensitive temperament who lived soul first, instead of body; and she had been starved of the refinement of sur- roundings, the cultured associations which were hers in France, till her poor little body had almost given up trying to exist with the soul-hunger gnawing at its energies. Alice had encouraged the dream of the estate, and had urged the journéy to Pifon because her trained eyes saw that only fresh air, warm, golden light, leisure, and hope could cure the girl she had grown to love with the inten- sity of a heart denied its natural moth- er career. When they reached the point in the journey where the luxury of Pullman was left, Natalie had been unable to sit up. Her great eyes burned into Miss Thorpe’s with a fear that she was mot to reach the promised land. Alice had exerted all the force of her mind and practical experience to supply a means by which they might THE ARGOSY. go on. So the cot in the baggage-car had been arranged. The lounging cow-men about the station saw the cot set out of the car with wondering interest. Two of them started forward when the stood alone and uncertain beside the still figure on the bed. “ Excuse me, madam, but mebbe we kin he’p you.” Alice turned to the deliverer. Her civilization-trained eyes lost a bit of their terror at the crudeness of things when they encountered the kindly glances that the foreman of Mat Gill’s ranch was turning from her to Nata- lie. “Would you lift her out of the sun? It’s so hot!”’ she said. Instantly young Sykes stepped to the head of the cot while Frank Ben- son took up the foot. They swung the little French girl along as lightly as the breeze might have borne her. Something in the vigor and easy harmony of the motion startled her from the apathy of endurance which had enabled her to stand the bumping and creaking of the baggage-car. She lifted her dark head from the pillow and smiled with the soft splendor of her deep eyes, too large and too pa- thetically bright. Benson grinned, “Hello, kid! You'll get well in a hurrah out hyah!” he announced. Natalie pushed herself up on her pillow as if the promise strengthened her. “Thank you, monsieur,’ she re- sponded as the color leaped into her cheeks. The cowboys had come closer. Nata- lie had been mistaken for a child by them as well as by Frank Benson. ‘The foreman was one of the gawky, kindly men to whom a ceremonious title fitted as illy as a velvet violin-cover would have suited a cast-iron frying-pan. But the “monsteur”’ of the little invalid made him straighten up and try to look the part. The cowboys snorted at his pretensions and guffawed EOPMICLOOOKS woman _ (E@)