Argosy All-Story Weekly, January 13, 1923 — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

WHEN A MAN’S BROKE. “ Where’s Lutwell now?” ‘* Somewhere in Nevada?” “ Better wire him,” the banker advised. ** And send word to Frazer to look out.” “ Tl have a talk with Steve Brown,”’ said Dr. Hamilton. ‘ He.can’t know what a chump he is, taking that bunch of reptiles up there.” Puzzled, Dawes asked: “‘ What’s his idea, anyway? I thought he was going to work the mine himself.” “T don’t know,” the doctor confessed. * TI can’t make him out.” A busy mayor who is also a busy physi- cian cannot attend to everything he sees to do. Before Hamilton left the banker’s home he had been summoned to an all- night battle for a patient’s life at a fruit ranch five miles away. When he returned to town in the morning he was too late to have his talk with Steve Brown, who had left at daybreak with three of the leading spirits of the notorious Tudor Wheeling ring, bound for the Frazer homestead. Dr. Hamilton paused only long enough to send a telegram, then headed his team of bays for Greenleaf Gulch. CHAPTER X. A MATTER OF HONOR, T is a curious thing, and worthy of a | passing glance, that Mr. Lutwell, when making his preposterous proposal to Daniel Frazer, had kept Tudor Wheeling in mind as a horrible model to imitate in what he had to say. Only by imagining himself such a scoun- drel as Tudor Wheeling had Mr. Lutwell been able to assume and put over the role of iniquitous tempter. Known and detested was Mr. Wheeling wherever mines were bought and sold. We may think of this creature as black- jowled, small-eyed and corpulent. In broad horizontal stripes of black and white he would have seemed more appropriately clad than in the skirted broadcloth coat and the high silk hat which he wore habitually in public, His air as he walked the streets of the Colorado capital was the self-conscious and 527 superdignified air of one who expects to meet his ancient history at any turning and is ready to face it down harshly. He had three offices in Denver, and at least as many homes; which may or may not explain why the law, while everlasting- ly finding him out, could never find him in. Not in vain had the adroit Dick Lambert plied the Denver press with accounts of the heroic undertakings of S. L. Brown. For Mr. Wheeling read those accounts and said to himself: ‘“ Frazer? Ain’t that the old gink who was mooning around the mining exchange last winter? Sure it is.” Further he cogitated: ‘“ Platinum, eh? Let me see. Have I ever sold platinum shares to the masses? I trow not. And platinum is attractive. I must look into this.” With.a golf cap on his head in place of the high silk hat, yet still invested in broad- cloth, he rode beside S. L. Brown on the front seat of the mountain stage and regaled his ingenuous young driver with flattery. If flattery be ever justified, Mr. Wheel- ing’s was; for there were signs of business— Steve Brown’s business—all the way. Men with picks and shovels were filling a washout at the top of Greenleaf Gulch. They greeted S. L. Brown with loud and glad cries. At the mule ranch the Watkins boys were starting with loads of hay for the Frazer place. Their rheumatic sire, elated over the increase of industry in those parts, had dispensed with his canes. Below the long hill where the road dipped from the plateau to South Boulton Creek a tent was pitched, and three span of har- nessed mules were picketed. From the tenf emerged a hard-loeking young man with a love-story magazine in his hand. It was the roughneck Howfer. Contrite and useful he looked as he touched his hat to Steve Brown and the Denver strangers. His job there was to hook on the spare teams and give the ore carts a lift to the table-land. In another mile the travelers turned aside into the brush to let a procession of laden carts trundle past. The drivers of the carts waved and shouted. The last one blew a kiss from toothless gums, and swept his arm in a wide gesture of drinking a health Gomichboo <S) (E(0)