The Port of Adventure

ng straight legs which could carry him very fast over great stretches of country. Also he had a way of holding his head high, a way which a man gets if he is in the habit of gazing to

ick a handsome man, and not merely a "good-looking fellow." It was because of his eyes that women turned in the street for another glance when he went into Bakersfield or Fresno; but Nick never knew that they turned. He liked pretty girls, and enjoyed their society, but was too busy to seek it, and had had little of it in his life. It did not occur t

hich was certainly far from conventional. "I'm ashamed of myself for blowin' in on you this way," he said, "especially as you're so mighty fine. I hope you'll excuse me, for you

u in those clothes." She smiled at him as if she would like him in anything; but Nick was thinking about Jim Beach

m, you haven't got much vanity if you mean to wear

cut off his words in a slipshod way, as if he had never had time to think much about the value or beauty of the English language. Still, though his spe

ou needn't worry," said Carmen. "Only-well, I don't believe ther

of navy blue serge. Everything he had on was neat and of good material, but Carmen smiled when she thought of this tall, belted figure, hatted with a gray sombrero on the back of its head, arriving at one of the best hotels in New York. Nick was pretty sur

d he. "As long as you excuse me for not having on my Sunday-

ver coming," she said,

ge! I thought the

putation to

ed Oil Company. He's their lawyer-and does some work for the railroad too. Smart sort of man he seems to be, though kind of stiff w

had stayed too long. "I've never met his family myself. You know how close I was kept till a year ago. But I've heard of them.

tel in New York. I was kind of plannin' to be a swell, and hang out at the Waldorf-Astoria, to see the nobs at home. But his place sounds nice, and I like bein' with him pretty well. He's lit up with bright ideas and maybe he'll pass on some to me. His business won't keep him lo

interest. She looked older than she had looked when she held out her ha

young or ol

ears accepted. "All I can tell you is, that she's a Mrs. May, a relation or friend of Franklin Merriam the big

ewhere in the southern part of the State!" Carmen sighed with relief. "I've heard of him of

g, isn't it mighty sweet here to-night? It look

m I an angel? Do I se

reflected aloud. "You're sure handsome enough-for anything, Mrs. Gaylor. But

d Carmen, piqued. "But other men

which blazed up in her olive cheeks, like a reflection of the su

a man's look at a woman; but not

e the sun at noon in midsummer, when so many flowers ar

d I've had a good many," she laughed. "Besides-coming from you, Nick!

real glad I was smart enough to bring one off. I spoke out just what

u-than an angel. Angels are cold, far-off, impossible things th

ful, I don't know hardly what-only something I've never had-that sort of angel is a woman, too, and not cold, though far above me, of course. She has starry eyes and moonlight hair-lots of it, hanging down in waves that cou

"I didn't know you wer

ed half

g like moths-thoughts about past and future. But lately, since that blessed little oil town has been croppin' up like a bed of mushrooms round my big gusher-or rather, the company's gusher, as it is now-I've had my mind on that more than anything else, unless it's been my ditches. Gee! there's as much romance about irrigation in this country, I guess,

as a little girl," replied Carmen, wondering what Ni

e out-of-doors. If I ever do anything to make him so mad that he quits, I'll be finished-dried up. That book, The Arabian Nights, has got a dead clinch on me. You know, when I run

not tired of anything that concerned him. "You never told me. T

there's lots I want to do before I'm old. I

e old ever, or for a long time, but I will. I'm that kind, I'm afraid. My mother was. I've got no time to lose; but to-day's mine. Nick must love me re

,'" she said, to give herself tim

irrigation business of ours in California is like rubbing that lamp. It throws open doors of dark caves in deserts, and gives up enchanted gardens full of jewelled fruit and flowers. Then rub the smoky old lamp again and you get a spout of oil-another gift, which ma

he place as foreman, with me alone, and Eld gone. I needed you badly, and I'd have been glad to give you land for nothing if you'd

over here is another world; and I was sayin' to myself, how I owe the biggest things of my life to you. True, I was taking out my wages in calves while the boss was alive, and he was lettin' me put my brand on 'em by the hundred. But square as he w

tude, and happy in the renewed assurance that this man was hers. "Besides, all you did and spent seemed likely to harm more than help, when everybody said you wou

It's all arranged by Something Big up there beyond where the sun's sinking and the moon's rising. But maybe you'll say that's sentimenta

se of coping with it," said Carmen. "So I suppose you think it was Heaven sent y

ick laughed. "My mother used to talk a lot about those things, you know, and though I was

the girl-widow had taken in sewing to support her child, and when she couldn't get that, had washed or scrubbed; and how, as Nick became a wise, worried old man of four or five years, he had been able to help earn the family living by selling the newspapers which had refused his dead father's contributions. Nick had not enlarged upon his adventures after this stage of his youthful career, merely sketching them in the baldest manner, when it had been necessary to present his credentials to the "boss"-"old Grizzly Gaylor." But in one way or other it had leaked out that the boy had learned to read and write and

had got his long-cherished wish to "go West," by working on the railway and eventually becoming a brakesman. After that short experience "cowpunching" days had come, and after several years in a subordinate position on Eldridge Gaylor's ranch he had at twe

in the City of Mexico, where he had gone to see a great bullfight ten years ago. When he had brought her home to his famous ranch, willing for a while to be her slave and give her everything she wanted, she had found Nick a cowpuncher among other cowpunchers. And she had seen how he made "old Grizzly" respect him. But his promotion had come through a row and an attempt at murdering the "boss" by a drunken foreman driven mad by a blow from the short whip Gaylor carrie

about his mother, or whether that subject was too delicate to

we could talk afterward by moonlight (I love talking in moonlight!) befo

dinner in that way before, and he felt proud, if a little a

that skirted the lawn on one side, and on the other a canal full to th

e and an hour