Arizona Round-Up — page 128: what you’re looking at

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

126 WILLIAM HOPSON to the peace and quiet of my job down in Texas. I’m getting too old to be,poking my neck into fusses like this one, Pete.” “We both are. But at least you've got friends to go back to. Lily and I have none.” “I've got more than friends,” Tex Burnett replied. “Relatives too. A granddaughter.” “A what?” grunted the freighter. “I'll be jiggered, Tex; I didn’t know that. I heard rumors years ago that youd lost a wife when you were pretty young, but I never knew you had children.” “Two of them. Twins,” Burnett replied. “A boy and a girl. The mother and the boy died in a wagon train during an Indian at- tack. The girl survived. She’s married to a rancher named Jeff Renfro and has a girl of her own. I can’t wait to get back there and see her. As a matter of fact,” he added, suddenly pulling up, “there's really no use in my going on any further. I'll just turn around and head back. As long as we've got to say good- bye it might as well be now. So you're going north?” “That's what Lil said. Whichever way she wants.” “In that case I'll say good-bye and cut over a ways, make camp, and get an early start home in the morning.” Lily Owens reined up her horse beside him. In the brightness of the moon’s light she was at that moment the loveliest thing he had ever seen. “I'm sorry we've got to say good-bye, Tex,” she told him sim- ply. “It’s been a little over twenty-four hours, hasn't itP” “About that. If you’re ever down that way, drop in through Red Arrow County and visit us. It’s a good country.” | “We might do it sometime,” she said seriously, and stuck out a slim hand. He took it, removing his hat with the other. He shook hands with her father. Then they were gone and he was cutting west to get over the ridge and tum south again, regretting that he couldn’t have known her a little longer. His reverie was broken by the sharp sounds of galloping hoofs. He wheeled in the saddle, the Colt half out of the sheath, before he recognized them. They pulled up and fell in alongside him. , “I said I'd go where Lily wants to go, Tex,” Jed Haraway said quietly. “She wants to go to Texas.” Tex looked over at her and saw her warm smile, the slight mis- comicbooks.com