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HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1931-12-31, Page 6JIM THE CONQUEROR By PETER B. KYNE illustrated by Allen Dean SYNOPSIS. Don Jaime :NTiguel IIiguenes, Texas raucher, and Tom Antrim, a sheep own^. or. have been bitter enemies. Capt. ICen Hobart, formerly of the Texas Rangers, is now Don Jaime's manager. Don Jaime's mind, however, dwells on other things. He has fallen •in love with a Picture of Roberta Antrim,a society belie. He is attacked .from ambush and Ands shim wo wounded land. then o opport nent dead. On the body is a picture of Ro- berta and her address, with the request that she be notified in the event of Toro Antrim's death. Don Jaime sends her a message saying that Tont Antrim was killed in a quarrel. Robert, who lives with her uncle, "Crooked" Bill Latham, sees herself as an heiress. She con- siders going to Texas to take care of her interests. was half Irish, and when he looked at his offspring he was glad he'd done it. He noticed the cross had increased the height, breadth, general appearance, industry and'temperof the Higuenes tribe. We looked much more :11ce :slack Irish than Mexicans now, and were probably, a little more than half Celt, But we had Spanish customs and a Spanish outlook on life and Spanish was our mother tongue. Also we had no reason to be other than proud of our Spanish blood, se we never mixed it with Indian. When we moved to Texas my grandfather fought under the Stars and Bars. He CHAP. VIII.—(Cont'd.) sent my father to the Virginia Mili- "Well?" Roberta queried as Crooked Lary Institute and father harried a Bill folded the letter and laid it on Carrot of Virginia and begot me." the library table. "You have never been married?" The old schemer rubbed his ingen- the nurse asked. bus head. "Don't like the idea of that El Paso bank being co -executer with you, honey. We'd better. -ascer- tain how much money the estate owes the bank, pay them off and get rid of them. I imagine it isn't a great deal. No sane hank would loan Tom Antrim very much. Of course, this Dingle Bell—" "Bill Dingle," Roberta corrected. "Senor Higuenes doesn't trust him." "Senor Higuenes is evidently in the cattle business, if we may judge from his letter -head, so naturally he wouldn't trust any sheepman. 1 wouldn't be in too great a hurry to oust. Dingle Bell—I mean Bill Dingle, if I were you, Bobby. The qualities that go to make up a good sheep fore- man might not appeal to a cattleman. However, I think you should engage Senor Prudencio Alviso as your at- torney. What we want now is action. We must have those sheep counted. We'll engage Prudencie by night letter tonight and tell him we're forwarding a thousand for his retainer; we will also suggest that lie consult with •tii- guenes when selecting the man to count the sheep. The court will ,._ob- ably appoint the man nominated by your attorney. Meanwhile we will have to arm you with proper cre- dentials—birth certificate, affidavits and other proof that you are the iden- tical Roberta Antrim mentioned in your uncle's will. Glenn Hackett will attend to that, of course." CHAPTER IX. The assistant general manager of the Rancho Valle Verde walked into the vine -enclosed verandah where Don Jaime lay at ease in his chaise longue, Ins mother, sam' an adjacent chair knitting. "Well, how's our boss, Mrs. Ganby?" Ken Hobart queried. "His wounds have all healed by first intention," the nurse answered. "I should say he'Il be up and around again in a month. Probably lame for a m,.nt'h or two thereafter. At any rate he loses me next week." Don Jaime, with a polite request to be excused, read his mail. Presently he looked up and there was a glint of deviltry in his black eyes. "Don Prudencio Alviso writes me that he has been engaged by Miss Antrim as attorney for the estate; that Miss Antrim has given the Fed- eral Trust Company a cheque in pay- ment of the notes it held against the estate and that the bank has resigned as co-executor. Old Prudy writes to thank me for sending him the busi- ness. He tells me that with his ap- pointment he received a retainer of a thousand dollars and instructions to secure a good man to count those sheep. He suggests you, old leather - face, and I second the nomination, which is tantamount to election where Judge Aurelio Vasquez is concerned. Miss Antrim says she's going to leave everything in her lawyer's hands, with instructions to consult with me, and Whatever we two decide to do will meet with her approval. She ays she dreads coming down here in summer and she has accepted so many engagements of a social nature. "Who is Miss Antrim?" the nurse inquired. "The niece and sole heir of the man Antrim] killed after he'd busted me, Mrs. Ganlby." "And you are her adviser—she's friendly with you?" "Oh, she doesn't know I bumped old Tom off. I wrote her a chap named Jim Higgins had done it." Ken Hobart chuckled. "That's hit gringo alias, Mrs. Gan - by. The first Higuenes to be heard of in Spain was called James Michael Higgins. But the Spaniards gave it a Spanish twist—the `i' has the soiled od 'e' in Spanish and they have a habit' of adding 'es' to things. Some- times they say sheepes or sheeps as She plural of sheep, for instance. So with the passage of time James Mi- ehael Higgins, the big Mick, developed into Jaime Miguel Higuenes.' When did that happen, Don Jaime?" "When the first J. M. married a red-headed Spanish woman who in- lasted nlisted on spelling the name as it was pronounced. My ancestor did not ob- ject. So the tribe of Higuenes was born. The family migrated to Mexico in the nineteenth century, and my great grandfather married the daugh- ter of an Irishman who owned this rancho. That brought the Cultic strain up a little. My grandfather added to it by marrying a ,girl who,, "Never:" "Aren't you going to be?" ".1 fear not. The loneliness here- the coyote chorus on the buttes—all militate against it, Mrs. Ganby." "The right girl," said ales. Ganby, "wouldn't mind it in the least. Go forth and search for her, Don Jaime." Don Jaime appraised the old nurse with kindly interest. "Mrs. Ganby, you told me you are a widow. Have you any children?" "One—a boy of fifteen. He has been quite crippled since his twelfth birth- day. Infantile paralysis." • Don Jaime considered this. "Sup- pose you had a comfortable kerne where you could be with your boy al- ways? I should have a hostess here. For some time I have felt that Fla- vio's wife is too—well, elemental, for the job. This hacienda should know a gentlewoman's management, at nurse's wages." "Oh, Don Jaime! You mean it!" He nodded. "I'd like to be able to invite nice people to visit me, Mrs. Ganby. I should like to have my friends from the surrounding country come to dinner oftener, but I'm never satisfied with the appearance of my board, the menu, or the service. I have no time to train maids and house- keepers—and if I did I wouldn't know how." , "Yes, a man is very helpless. 1 should be glad t,, come, Don Jaime." "You :.re very -kind. Ken, you run up to El Paso and get the boy. Mrs. Ganby will arrange that detail with you. Now clear out and let me sleep" Mrs. Ganby, with tears of happiness in her middle-aged eyes, followed the assistant general manager into the "Why do you think he engaged me, Mr. Hobart? Do you think he sus- pected he was doing a very wonderful thing for my boy and me?" "Yes, I think so. But he engaged you, principally, I think, because he wants the Casa Higuenes to be run- ning in civilized fashion in case his luck holds and he should have the honor of entertaining Miss Roberta Antrim and her duenna." "She'll not have a duenna." "Oh, yes, she -will. You'll supply that lack. Don Jaime is very tactful and formal. "Why is he so interested in the niece o' this vicious old man he had to kill?" "Because Don Jaime Miguel Hi- guenes is a romantic Mick, that's why. He saw a full-page rotogravure pic- ture of her in the Suburban Gentle- man." "Oh, dear, he's quite hopeless! She may photograph beautifully even with red hair, freckles and green eyes, but she may also be mean and selfish and irritating; she may be without man- ners." Mrs. Ganby wrote a note to the'peo- ple with whom she boarded her crip- pled sol- and gave it to Hobart togeth er with the address. When he repair- ed to his quarters to array himself for the journey, Mrs. Ganby returned to. her patient. "What a chaeming man your Mr. Hobart is, Don Jaime!" she began. "He'll do in a pinch"—laconically. "He is very devoted to your inter- ests." Don Jaime did not answer. His glance was out through the arched gateway, from welch the road ran straight down the .valley. A mile away a dust -cloud was gathering on that road. "Somebody is coming in a hurry," he murmured. "When they hurry it's always bad newts." A horseman galloped, threw him- self off and hurried up the steps. "Well, my friend," Don Jaime quer- ied, "what evil message do you bring, and from whom?" "Thirty , riders crossed the Rio Grande at daylight, senor. They ..re rounding up several hundred of the senor's cattle. It is'a raid." "My thanks are due you, my friend. They will not ret far. Who sent giu here?" "'Phe American customs agent at Los Algodones, Don Jaime. He bids you send your riders to head them off before they redress the river with your cattle;' "Return and tell hint I have but. forty men available. The others are attending a baffle et the Rancho Vel'- dugo. Forty teen will be sufficient, I think. Return to the customs agent with my gratitude foe his warning and tell him my men will start in ten minutes, perhaps less." (To be continued.) ualit has ea fres9om zee 9crckns' y -.-.,f..- --..Y-o•+ .-.s- -.-s. •.-.•.-e. CROWNING GLORY BY J. HILARY GARRATT Two faces, one above the other smiled simultaneously in the hair- dresser's mirror. "Mademoiselle," said the hairdress- er, Jules Lafontaine, as he stood back and admired his handiwork upon the fair head of his prettiest customer, "now you look exquisite." "Splendid, Jules. That will be five shillings, I suppose? And really—" The customer, whom. Jules knew only as Betty, for all her fellow shop - girls called her that, sprang up and took a brief look into the glass. "I really think, if you will allow me—" "No, not from you young ladies who are in shops," said Jules depre catingly. "As they say in the famous tea -establishments, there are mo teeps. Miss Betty, you give me more -by your, kindly patronage of this shop. ,If the day is dull and the poor .coiffurist is also dull, Miss Betty arrive, and the day is bright." "Terribly flattering of you, Jules. But haven't you," she said archly, "told me about a certain Henriette?" "Henriette? Ah, she is French, and; therefore is not romantic. She is p r-ractical. When I devise the shop, She work the thing out to a halfpenny. She know what I must spend, she see a little quickly, having evidently has - QUEEN OF BERENGARIA COM- ING TO ENGLAND. "The Queen of Berengaria, better .known by her pseudonym of 011a Van- ua, under which she has made some charming contributic ns to English magazines, arrives at Dover today, travelling incognito as the Duchess of Villefranche. She will stay with her school friend, the Countess of Craigie, at her town house in Belgrave Square. Her Majesty is one of the most beauti- ful women in. Europe, and since a child the glory of her hair has been her most remarkable feature." "She," said Jules, "is coming to England!" A great enthusiasm lit his eyes, and he gazed with the rapture of a wor- shipper at the photograph given above the paragraph. Dignity and beauty only had been added by her recent at- tainment of thirty-nine years. She was a glorious woman, and even in the photograph the beauty of her hair was noticeable. "If I could only get the Queen of Berengaria to come to this shop, only once, to have her hair dressed by me," sighed Jules, almost in an agony of professional longing, "then, indeed, all the great English ladies would follow in her wake, and I would become, not a shop, not a coiffurist's—but an es- tablishment!" In his enthusiasm he had spoken aloud and taken quite two strides. In doing so he nearly collided with Betty. "An establishment, eh, Jules?" she said, witl;,,that look' of sudden sun- s- .ine on her face. She was breathing what will be the sin:.11 return, for at first I must work for the poor bafk,; discerning customers. I have the genius, the art; Henriette, she have 'he hard eye for the money. She is good for me, Henriette, but—" "I can't listen to any more of your family history," laughed Betty. "May your shadow never grow less, and," as in turning she knocked down an ex- pensive box of powder from a fixture, "may your shop grow bigger." Jules had indeed a box of a shop, but it represented his first 'definite step towards independence. "A kiosk," as Betty had once put it, "on Success Avenue." Jules really understood hair, and he understood you. The rent of this little box of a place in Pixie Street, in the purlieus of Bond Street, was two hundred and to our shop tomorrow the queen. fifty pounds a year. He lived on ten. shillings a week himself, having a tiny room above his shop. It was a ques- tion of getting th' great to patronize es—the really great. A visit from. Royalty was the great dream of Jules. Like many of -es, he clung on to a dream. He was day -dreaming at that mo- ment just after Betty had gone, for 1•;. woke up with a start when a rau- cous voice shouted into the shop "Paper, sir?" "Eh?" said Jules. "All the winners, sir." "Weevers?" said Jules contemptu- ously. But then his face broke into a smile; in spite of his rough voice the boy looked rather appealing. Jule bought a paper. Passing at one stride into the ma- thematical centre of the apartment, lie sat down and began to read. His eyes were immediately arrested by a pare graph tened to the shop. "I think I left a letter over there. It was on top of -that box of powder that I knocked down when I tried '�o turn round here -you remember? Ah, here it is! Jules, you have been slacking. You have noteswept up, you have not even picked up my letter." "Ah, Mademoiselle Betty," added Jules, "I have been reading the paper, and since I read it I see only one thing—the Queen of Berengaria, she with the so -wonderful hair, come here tomorrow, and, oh, that she would come to my shop to have her hair dressed. It is hopeless to think of, of course" "The Queen of Berengaria? Why, this letter is about her. It is (rom— a customer, saying she will be coming "Your shop? And—and you will speak to her?" "Of course—or—or, well, perhaps. I' remember now," Betty went on, re- garding him with those steady, cap- able cobalt blue eyes of hers, "that you do not know where my shop is. It is quite well known. Queens and people come and drape themselves round in heaps, you know." "And," Jules cried, "you could men- tion the shop of Jules? Ask her, per. haps, to come here—to one who, : bove all things, would appreciate the honor of dressing her wonderful hair?" "Well, I can but try, Jules," said Betty. Two days later, when he had just finished the head of an almost con- temptible little blonde, Jules received a letter front Betty, pencilled hastily on a snap of paper, which ran: "The Queen of Berengaria will be coming to your shop this afternoon at three o'clock,.—B." Jules, in his extraordinary mental aberration, nearly curled his own Hoye with the tongs! The moment had _eine! - Fortunately, it was nearly one o'clock now, and Jules could close his shop and spend his luncheon -time in making his tiny place as habita`Sle for Royalty as possible. "An angel—an angel is Betty!" said Jules. He finished packing the last curl on the head of the unimportant blonde and locked the doors. At two -thirty the place was ready. And now Jules stood, ramrod -like, at the door, waiting for the queen to arrive. Queen are proverbially late, and the half-hour Jules expected to wait prov- ably extended. One oe. two usual 3u-- tomers came, but - Jules waved them off as though hairdressing were the last thing in the -world he expected to undertake that afternoon. But at last his patient vigil was rewarded by the sight of a chauffeur in an unobtrusive, yet noble car, bearing down towards the tiny shop in Pixie Street. Two ladies stepped from a limousine upholstered like a drawing room. There followed them a being of un- mistakable face and queenly pose—the Queen of Berengaria. Jules, bowed low, and was spee'h- less. Fortunately he had enough chairs. The ladies-in-waiting were really very helpful. They found seats. Looking round to see that ;,he ladies-in-waitin were accommodated, Jules 'urned again to find that Her Majesty cad arranged herself in the chair in the most natural manner in the world. It seemed that even queens eo:xld take a seat in a hairdresser's shop with -lit making a fuss about it. The glorious head of hair was be- fore him. Jules bent to take the sweet lady's instructions. The work bran. How it finished Jules did not know. All he knew was that he found himself that evening reading a late elitim of a London evening newspaper in a cafe exclusively French. The Queen had expressed hs•-eelf as charmee--Tules was made. - He had made one momentous deci- sion—he would ask Betty, the author of his success, to share it A fig for Henriette! Jules turned over the newspaper idly. Behold, there was a photo of his royal patron of Lhe afternoon Pop ping out of his shop! "The Queen of Berengaria," said the caption, "leaves a Pixie Street shop after having her hair dressed." He turned over to the back pages; perhaps there would be some other picture of the Queen of Berengaria. Surely there was. And Jules looked, and dropped the paper with a gasp, so that Madame of the restaurant, an old friend of his, hastened to him with alarm in her eyes. With agony in his eyes, Jules was gazing at a picture which showed the queen and a young lady he knew well, and underneath was printed: "The Queen of Berengaria shopping in London today with her young friend, the Lady Betty Selden. "That girl, that beautiful English girl," declared Jules, "she come to my establishment an' I call her 'Betty. This day she send the queen ... and I even dare to think that I ..." "Ah, her mother has a shop near you in South Street," said Madame. "D'Oraine's it is called. The young lady works there incognito. This fact is known by some, but not, it seems, by you, Jules." Suddenly he felt Madame's nand grip his shoulder, heard her whisper: "Hist! It is as well sometimes to .:onceal impossible affairs of the heart." And Jules raised his eyes to see the the hard-featured—but dependable and inevitable—Henriette.--Pearson's Weekly. Orange T ie In Africa A tylllcal scene Baden, Sts th' Africa, an 'erenge grove awaiting the' hand of the pielter. The rife us industry 'does it big elrport tiade in that the winter season ..when- South African oranges are picked —coincides with the northern he iisphere's summer when oranges are In demand. Life. at Epitaph for an Aviator It is a narrow bed for one Who had companioned star and sun. r It is a bitter thing that he, Accomplished a sovereignty Wherein the very stars were bound, Must be obedient to the ground, Yielding his far, ethereal zone To be the dust beneath this stone! —Daniel Henderson in "Voices." Mr. Wilbur Glenn Voliva predicts that the end of the world will come is 1135. t seems a long time to wait.— A Half-breed This queer bird Is a "turke x hybrid between an Austrian white turkey and a Rhode Island Red hen. The experiment was conducted at De Paul University, Chicago. Smart Scotsmen? London.—Visitors from north of Tweed who pass the recruiting office in Whitehall have been somewhat startled by three new posters which read: "Smart meat wanted for the Grena- diers." "Smart men wanted for the Welsh Guards." "Scotchmen wanted for the Scots Guards." The visitors from the North doesn't know whether this means one doesn't have to be smart to be a member ofi the Scots Guards or whether it is just, taken for granted all Scotsmen are smart. Love Lights the Fire Love lights his fire to burn my Past—e There goes the house where I wase horn! And even Friendship—Love declares Must feed his precious flames and! burn. I stuffed my life with odds and ends, But how much joy can Iinowledge, give? The World my guide, I lived to kerne, From Love, alone, I learn to live. —W.lef. Davies, "1 m,derstand you went through an ope'o.tion, Mae?" "Wel ,---I had my alimony cut off --if that is what you mean." TRUTH High o'er the eastcrji steep the sun beaming, And darkness ties wile her deceitful shaclovvs; So truth prevails o'er falsehood ' I%enilworth ISSUE x.5.2....'31 ��