Louisiana Lou

were rooms upstairs where games were played that were somewhat different from pool and billiards. There was also a bar up there and the drinks tha

front of the place where-strange anachronism in a town that swarmed with shiny automobiles-were

ndicating the dilapidated

e beasts, identifying them wit

h the demon rum. Anything you want to know about the Es

nker? Old-t

ever since fourteen ninety-two, I reckon. B'en here so long he r

or. "I wonder. Are there any m

uns this honkatonk-he's one of 'em. Banker's another. You remember when them Wall Street guys hired 'Panamint Charlie' Wantage

e Launay. "W

ninetee

rd. But I remember Panamint. He and J

hem days and hangin' together. But Panamint struck this soft graft and wouldn't let Jim in on it, so they broke up the household. You know-or maybe you don't-that Panamint was finally found dead in a 105 cave in Death Valley and the

keep the road house at the f

l informed on ancient history

weaned when Louisiana was run out of the country. My old man could tel

im," said

wed my o

he'd not re

," he declared. "Him and old Ike Brandon was the last ranchers left this side the Esmeraldas, and since Ike checked in

itinerant labor that was filling the town with recruits and initiates of the I. W. W. There were one or two who were of cleaner strain, like the two young cowmen. Behind the bar was a red-faced, shifty-eyed man, wearing a mustache so black as to appear startling in contrast to his sandy ha

mind. "You say Ike Brandon's dead?" he

Sucatash. "Dave, wh

fer 'Cap' Wilding, las

Southern slur. Snake Murphy, who was polishing the rough bar in front of him, glanced quickly up, as though hearing somethi

s," he murmured.

y, absently looking into and throug

g the note of sentiment. "Yeah?" he said, a bit d

said De

sayin' nothin' against a lady, you understand, but sh

ire to see if the girl of six had fulfilled the promise of her youth after nineteen years, had even dreamed, in his soberer moments, of coming back to her to play

a young lawyer of the town, an officer of their regim

lapses from sobriety had been only occasional as long as he had work to do, and this occasi

u when you can find him, and then call at the hotel for Mademoiselle d'Albr

edy, unprepossessing, but carrying under his dilap

irl who had occupied a niche in his memory for nineteen years. He found her with banged and docked hair, rouged and bepowdered, clad in g

in and to her De Launay explained that mademoiselle was the daughter of her grandfather's former employee and that she would wish to discuss with her certain matters 109 connected with th

ees, I s'pose. Well, believe me, she's come a long way to get disappointed if she t

Pettis and I," said Wilding

t on her spiky heels

ss you might attend to," he said. Wilding set himself to listen, re

ingering documents as though he must awake from sleep and find he had been dreaming. De L

siness there was finished, shook hands in parting w

osed and heads hanging. He walked around them before going in. A worn, dirty leather scabbard, bursting at the seams, slanted up past the withers of on

, was rewarded by the lazy flopping of an

girl with bright hair and sweet face. He had come to find a roaring, artificial city on the site of the range, the friends of his youth gone, the men he had known dying out, his very trade a vanishing art. Instead of a fairy maiden, sweet and demure, a grown-up child as he ha

nt, half-amused interest in Mademoiselle d'Albret's adventure which had occupied his activities during the past weeks, revived with redoubled force. Sick, shaken, and disgusted, he