Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 6, 1923 — page 35: what you’re looking at

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

be ‘old Paint! fo ee "DESERT VOICES. The Golden Cloud pein) hall was alive — with lights and music. The sight of the notorious old den ablaze- in an otherwise darkened town astonished - him. Could it be that he was dreaming? Was he actually being transported into that vanished era of Sun-up’s frontier history? It was most assuredly one thing or the _ Other. For there were the old saddle horses a string of them tethered to the uprights of the piazza roofs. _ Indeed, Wyndham was himself a part of © that picture. His own saddle seemed tobe squeaking with a jollier rhythm, ‘the rein chains jingled. The brim of his big som- brero flopped upward with the keen night wind, and a sudden blaze of yellow light flooded the young foreman’s face as he drew up before the old saloon. Reining in his horse he stood staring at. this resurrection—this miracle. He saw the - | Se illuminated by a hanging oil lamp: THE NEW GOLDEN. CLOUD. -*“Tt’s not the new one!” he exclaimed, mentally. “It’s the genuine Golden Cloud — of twenty years ago. I remember this blaze _of light when I was a calf—six years old! Brilliant starlight, desert air, the ever- present smell of Sage, the siad from the mesas—it was all as it had been before the lid was put on the boisterous, roaring bars the mechanical music of- the record. set te of Sun-up, But there was one touch which until now had escaped the astounded Phil Wyndham. -It was more convincing than the retch of leather or the neighing of pintos. It was a. ‘cow country song, heard in the-old days all the way from Texas to Montana. It came drifting to him—not exactly through the windows of the saloon, but in- a monotonous, eerie, inexplicable way, al- ‘most as if it had been an echo. long impris-_ oned in the old mechanical piano of the dance hall trying insistently to free itself. It came drifting, it seemed, from somewhere far beyond the dance hall, beyond the bar, beyond the shack itself. The small, uniform volume of its tune— unrelieved ‘by crescendos excepting only - when the wind, shifting, brought the full ==5 _ burden of it to Wyndham’s ears: “ Good-— tn ane He Ebeyenne! a= Wyndham Sanctinice walked: his tone” to one of the old tethering posts, ‘and — stepped to the door. He heard laughter, the old-time yipping of high spirited vaqueros, — the sound of chips, te click of a billiard — He had a vision of the long bar, Sepping wet with beer suds.. He entered. = There was a barkeep sure enough and— = the first impression of all—a Papago Indian. with a red blanket. Still attracted, charmed, by that eld song, he stepped into the hall. There was ‘No- pichestra-—n0 mechanical — piano, Ss =— Se There were—as. oe easily have ‘been — imagined—no horsemen out there on the dance floor leading their mounts through a— quadrille. For a moment a pang of disillu- — sionment struck through Wyndham’s heart. _“ Vil be damned if Lain’t plum lecoed= Tt’s only a , phonc nogray yh!” — ~~ —= va of eriempk and nance she was s giving a = hilarious exhibition of the old Texas Tom: = my accompanied, by a carrot-topped young = man in = Sat fate ate suit, Ess see ae of the town’s iaers assisted the performance by yipping and stamping their = hobnailed beots. = The jingle of a vaquero 'S Spurs vitalized - _Inen, who in the old tin tied six-guns, were gri sty engaged at ee = cae the familiar : Scene sty. =o thet ae i admirers, Hallie failed to notice the é en-~ S trance of the man from her home ranch. And for a few moments at least W yyndham was unable to catch her eye. .Samt Quige-— Jey, harness maker, had started an argument — which Phil could not immediately interrupt. Sam had asked for the President’s naneuraie address, a Fecord which Hallie promptly produced. - : The man ae had once been 2 bark Ss turned from wiping the Sage souniaty