IZZILY they swept around turns, skirted cliffs, hung suspended over nothing, yet clung to the ledge and plunged onward. Only madness could prompt such reckless chances, but madness held the wheel. To the rear those swinging arcs came into view with increasing frequency, but not gaining, as lower Raton pass on the southern side is one great writhing coil, with only an occasional upgrade.

The town below spread out across the valley in an irregular map of bright dots, like reflections from the stars above. The car slipped over a crest, plunged drunkenly down a short, steep grade, swung up another rise toward a far brighter star which grew larger with amazing speed crashed through a lanterned barrier of boards and stones.

then

A jagged plank bent for an instant against the radiator cap as Hootch and Agnes were thrown to the tonneau floor, then the board whipped back through the windshield, raking the car with flying scimiters of shattered glass.

Slim slowly drew his arm from his

eyes.

The car tilted at an angle, one wheel jammed between the cliff wall and a massive rock, the lights throwing grotesque shadows upward. Slashed, bleeding, bewildered, he slid out on the debris of an uncleared blast and crawled away, hugging the inner wall.

With almost impersonal interest, he felt the warm rivulets moving slowly across face and hands while lacking both means and courage to determine the extent of his injuries. Vaguely conscious at first of shadowy forms running in the opposite direction, he crawled painfully forward, intent only upon reaching the camp above Raton where motorists congregated each night.

Hootch could look out for himself. Bad business anyway. Wished he hadn't teamed up with that bootlegging yegg. All he wanted was a doctor and a bed, and they might throw in a sheriff, too, for all he cared. Maybe he would bleed to death, and then they would find him in the morning.

And so Slim, alone, went on his way to meet the armed deputies already calmly guarding the southern exit from the pass.

Agnes Harter landed on the floor against the great bulk of her captor. entirely escaping the glass, stunned, but not hurt. Even as she half rolled

"Give us the gun, sister," he pleaded, "and I'll leave you alone."

Against the cliffs echoed the hum of a speeding motor, nearer and near

er.

It gave her courage to refuse, although she did not quite feel master of the situation. Apparently calm, her mind was in tumult. Perhaps he had another gun; perhaps already she had backed too near the precipice. She dared not look away from him.

It seemed odd that he should keep the flash upon her instead of taking advantage of the darkness, but she knew he dared not attempt escape from the trail without his weapon, and, if possible, a captive to use as shield or hostage.

The little point of light began to move toward the inner cliff.

It passed the twin shafts of the wrecked car, and she noted in this brief moment of revealment against the glow that Hootch was holding his light at a deceptive distance away from his precious body.

Then there came a rustle, a rattle of light earth and stones. The ray 'ceased to waver, but regarded her with a fixed and insolent intensity.

For a second or two she was lulled into a feeling of security. Then she stepped quickly to one side. The eye did not follow.

In panic Agnes realized that the light had ceased to indicate the location of her enemy. With a feeling of hands clutching from the dark, she dashed down the trail.

Steps near at hand, an oath, proved that she had grasped her peril none too soon. Fear now lent wings, though she sensed the road only from the deeper shadows of the cliffs.

Suddenly-almost under her feetrose the carpeting lights of Raton, far below. She leaped aside just in time to avoid a plunge. A rock from beneath her foot shot into the void, bounded from crag to tree and then into the stillness of great depths.

Hootch's hand touched her sleeve. Screaming, she tore away and stumbled across the trail to the cliff. Twisting and dodging, she still clung to the gun, although not knowing where to fire.

Out of the black came a hurtling form; an arm swept around her, pinning the weapon to her side.

Then over the hill swept the pursuing car, its lights circling down from the sky until they revealed two forms struggling against the cliff.

Bob Daly, driving alone, jammed on the brakes. Hootch twisted free the gun and swept the girl aside. She shrieked agonized warning and threw herself upon the arm he sought to raise.

Daly's car skidded broadside across the trail and came to a stop with the lights almost touching the cliff. He had the sensation of leaping toward a spurt of flame as he hurled himself from the running board while the car was still in motion.

The bullet struck the rocky ground and pinged off into the distance. Daly's fist landed on Hootch's chin. The big fellow lashed out, shaking off the girl and forcing Daly to grapple in self defense.

The two desperate men, poorly matched in size, rolled on the ground, twisting and writhing. Every bit of strength Daily possessed was demanded merely to keep hold of his antagonist and prevent the gun from coming. into play. At moments, against the lighted sky, he could see the long steel barrel twisting toward him.

one

There on that narrow ledge road, within a hundred feet, were two cars with headlights burning, the slanting toward the stars and the other wasting its brilliancy upon the solid rock. The effect was only to intensify the outer darkness, but Agnes' eyes followed to its source another forgotten but precious trickle of light.

On an outcrop of stone lay the flash which Hootch had left as a decoy. To reach it she ran around the car. In returning she cut through Daly's machine, leaning for a moment against the wheel while flashing the beam on the battling men and wondering if she could convert the car into a

weapon.

Hootch had struggled to his knees, with Bob clinging desperately. Athletic as he was, Daly's efforts were outclassed by strength and bulk. Uncertain whether her light most favored

minute," he explained in brisk staccato.

She was back in a moment. Hootch

still writhed and moaned, but craftily watched.

"Where's this fellow's pal?" asked Bob.

"He ran the other way," she explained. "Slim wasn't dangerous."

"One of us has to tie this fellow," considered Daly, "And it looks like. your job. I promise to hit him with the first shot if he moves an inchand there's four shots left."

She started to work, bravely but too gently.

"Tighter!" ordered Bob, grimly. "This is no parlor game. He's a murderer at heart. We found the Trinidad garage dark and had to break in. It's one of the Fond-du-lac chain and should be open night and day. The

night mechanic was trussed up in the elevator between floors and nearly suffocated with a bag of waste.Tighter!'' Let him howl!-Police just got word of a stolen car and a couple of bootlegging bums hitting the pass. Then we lit out to beat them to

you, but had to stop and drag their

stalled car back to a turnout.'

Hootch squirmed and swore as she wound the cable around his arms.

over the ground, then leaped down and seized a jagged fragment of rock.

With this in her hand, she hovered around the struggling men, made desperate by her champion's peril yet from second to second unable to find an opening.

Daly felt the great muscles twisting under his hands as Hootch sought to turn the gun upon him. His foot gripped in a rut, then all his remaining strength went into a crushing lunge which pinned the bandit for an instant against the cliff.

Agnes saw the outstretched hand with its weapon, flat against the rocks. Sweeping in, remorselessly, she crashed her rock against his wrist, then seized the gun which clattered to the ground.

She stepped back in haste, dazed by the success of her primitive impulse.

Fear of the man returned as she saw him hurl off Daly and sink to the ground, moaning and gripping the bruised wrist with his other hand.

In an instant Daly had taken the revolver and light from her hands. “Get the tow rope," he ordered, still panting heavily. "He isn't badly hurt."

"Where's Auntie?" she demanded, voicing her greatest fear.

"Coming with Carnahan. Hurry with that rope. Couldn't leave her alone. Posse from Trinidad due any

the gun.

"Just remember that mechanic," he advised the girl. "Fellow with wife and children, and he'd been dead now except for your brakes. Put your foot on him and pull. Here you take the gun and let me finish it."

Romance, gilded dream of youth, lies around every corner, and yet some pass by with averted eyes. All that is needed is a man and a maid, mutually agreeable, who share an ambition,

a secret or an adventure.

With Hootch wrapped and knotted in folds of stout rope, Daly stepped to his car and turned the spot light upon his prisoner. Then he put the weapon in his pocket, as he drew the girl down. beside him on the running board.

"Don't," he insisted, as she attempted to gather up her flowing locks. "Not just now. You're glorious!"

Obviously there was no reply to that. She knew it, and was glad that he knew it.

"I never met anybody just like you before," he began, deliberately, dreading the imminent arrival of his friend and the dragon aunt, "although I've done some looking. Mind if I talk about myself?"

"I wish you would," she encouraged.

"Thanks. That's what my father did, the first night he met my mother—

at a country dance in Wisconsin. He didn't wait to do any Myles Standish. He had a small bicycle shop in the village, and she taught rural school. They've done better since, and have been very happy. I'm a mechanic, too, like he was-and is-but I've had a technical education. In fact Carnahan and I designed this new Fond-dulac motor, and they pay us pretty well. Now are you dead set on minding auntie all your life, or could you consider keeping house for a mechanic?" "Well-if he-if he were a good mechanic," she parried, “And I had known him a long time."

very

"Five hours can be an epoch," he assured, and she seemed to agree.

Half dragging an irritated lady, Pat Carnahan was stumbling down the trail when the sharp crack of a revolver almost made his heart stop

beating. Both broke into a desperate lope despite weariness.

"Oh! Maybe she's killed!" the woman cried.

"Maybe he's killed," snarled Carnahan. "More likely. Had no business letting him leave me. We went through school and war and the works together and it's part of my job holding him in. The last thing old Peter made me promise was not to let Bob pull any of his stunts. What am I going to tell him, I'd like to know?" "You run ahead," she demanded

pluckily. "Maybe there's time!"

The lights and song of a speeding motor, the Trinidad posse, came to them from the trail behind. Almost side by side, Jane Harter sustained by anxiety, they stumbled up the slope and gazed down at the tilted lights of the touring car, then deeper in the hollow where two dim forms were revealed in amicable conference beneath the spot light of Bob Daly's car.

Carnahan's vast faith in his comrade was melting the ice of Aunt Jane's suspicion.

"Agnes!" she called.
"Bob!" hailed Carnahan.

The responses were cheerful. Jane Harter clutched her companion's sleeve, as they hurried down the slope. "Wasn't he holding her hand?" she gasped.

"Shouldn't wonder," agreed Pat. "His brakes seem to be burning for the first time."

"Oh, why did I ever bring her away from home!" lamented the lady. "She's. likely to throw away Henry Whipple and a farm worth twenty thousand

dollars!"

"Too bad," consoled Carnahan. "She might need it some afternoon for change, if she gets Peter Daly's only son and the whole Fond-du-lac plant."

END.

face. They were fools, they were simple. They were too good. If she were they, not a drop she would give; or if she did she would make them pay for it ten times its worth. . . .

There was now very little activity over the pond. Miss Diorno was partly responsible for this. The chief reason, however, was that, being toward the Fall, the supply for the year was about exhausted. A string of carloads of zinfandel grapes arrived from the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys, and a fresh provision of wine for the coming twelve months was again insured.

Again there appeared signs of life between the two places, though slowly and of a different character than before. The few who visited the oasis came back in a boisterous manner and tumbled in the streets of Westwood. The company sent a sharp warning across the pond and set a policeman to watch the bridge-head at night. One after another people from Westwood made for the bridge, they reasoned, offered cigars to the policeman all in vain. He was a rigid man. At the beginning he halted even an oasis dweller whose face did not betray his nationality. "Back, back, from this bridge. You can't go across!" he would command. The un-Italian looking man would check his pace, alarmed, not knowing what to say. The policeman would nail a look on him: "You can't go across, I tell you!" The halted man would begin to handle. the English, telling him that he lived in the oasis.

Gradually the policeman was left unmolested by the westerners. Gradually he too began to see things floating above the oasis. Indeed, the little village being already legendary and now flooded in the mystic glare of the mountain moon, it needed but a small effort of imagination to convince himself that he was beholding a village of dreams. Suppose he ventured there? What if the company learns of his escapade? He would invent pretexts: he would say he heard singing in English, he heard a brawl going on. So he went, and an hour later he returned-only as far as the middle of the bridge. Drunk to insensibility he fell into the water and was half drowned when he began to sober up and battle for his life. His deathseized grip caught on the side of a floating log and the log rolled over his head, making him duck. He attempted to yell. His throat was full

all day long, draining their strength. In the evening they were tired, dull; life was colorless to them. They craved something to ginger them up. Some bought dry fruit, raisins and grain, and distilled, using wash boilers and deep basins. Thus they made moonshine which gingered them up but besotted them as well. Respect for their bodies would have turned them against such life-crippling dope...

Occasional faces now appeared on the western shores of the pond. They were contemplative and their eyes wandered eastward. An observer might have mistaken them for soldiers in mill-workers' disguise planning an attack on the oasis. But one familiar with the history of Westwood would have recognized in them former visi-' tors to the little village, brooding and pondering on past memories. The oasis seemed to have gone farther from them and become more inaccessible. Hazily only could they make out things moving in the air. The multitude of taverns under the scattered pines were but shapeless blotches of faded brown looming in the distant forms of the mountains.

Different tactics were needed to get there.

Big Bill worked with Crispi at the table, pulling away at heavy boards that continually glided on rolling chains. A job calling for action and brawn. Only men like Bill or Crispi could stay at it over one month without their backbones sagging or snapping. Big Bill had something to suggest to Crispi after supper, so the latter invited the former to his shack. In Crispi's tavern Bill suggested that the two take a contract cutting logs. But, in truth, his chief interest was wine. He begged Crispi to sell him a bottle. Crispi at once sprang to his feet, moved. "Not for gold!" he intoned, "a glass-well, I give; but sell? bah! Nothing done!" One would sooner have succeeded in separating him from his life than from his wine. But all were not like Crispi.

The drama in Westwood ran the gamut of the drama on the stage. It began with a courtship with lady wine: she was naive, her smiles were those of innocence: she appealed to them but did not infatuate them. They were glad with her. They prattled; they laughed; they made a song and gaily serenaded her. Prudence had its reward. Then came temptation, causing disgust, friction and one death. Finally came tragedy

A

LORA WELLMAN was a New Englander, and John London was a Pennsylvanian by birth, --a soldier, scout, and all around wanderer, which probably accounts for the spirit of unrest inherited by the lad I took to them in San Francisco, on January 12, 1876. They named him John, and started calling him "Jack". I guess about as many folks have heard of "Jack London" as ever heard about old London Town itself. Jack went to the public schools in Oakland, sold papers, and then drifted into long-shoreing; took a chance at most everything, salmon fishing, oyster-pirating, sailing, tramping, and at 16 shipped before the mast. He knocked around the world, and then came back and studied again, then gave it up and went to Alaska, coming back to support the family after his father died in 1898.

Jack always wanted to be a writer. He made material for his stories from

The wine amounted to about twentyfive cents per quart to the oasis dwellers. They could easily sell it for one dollar. Of course for some it was wrong to sell the beverage; for others it was an easy way to make money, and in the meantime to pass as good scouts with their eager patrons who now, able to obtain any quantity, drank like fish.

In one week three corpses were fished out of the pond.

In the oasis there fermented bitterness against those who trafficked in booze; among the officials of the company there brewed an equal bitterness against the whole oasis.

It was not uncommon now to see men wobbling in the town of Westwood. They were noisy and offensive. In their eyes there dwelt the glare of the insane, eyes that look at a tragedy and at a toy with equal concern, eyes that reflect a troubled life. Their faces were blowzed, like faces too near a fire or in a high fever, and wore an ugly, sottish mien; their lips were purplish and their lower jaws sagged. The striking similarities among them were their confused foreheads and gaping mouths. A monkey beside a drunkard would look a god.

The drama was hastened to an end

By J. H. PRENTICE JACK LONDON 1876-1916

his experiences and travels, and in no time had attracted wide attention. As I recall, his first magazine article was published in the OVERLAND MONTHLY, in January, 1899. Since that time he has written for everybody, everywhere. I couldn't begin to remember the names of all his books and stories, 'though there's some I couldn't begin to forget. Take his "Son of the Wolf," "God of His Fathers," "Call of the Wild," "Sea Wolf," "Valley of the Moon," "Strength of the Strong,' Moon," "Strength of the Strong," "Cruise of the Dazzler," to say nothing of the books, and letters, and essays, and articles on sciology like "The War of the Classes," "The Iron Heel," and "John Barleycorn.'

Jack London surely liked adventure. I remember how he set out on a 7 years' trip in the "Snark," a 50-foot boat, in 1906. Too bad he got sick. I would like to have heard him tell the rest about that trip, 'cause he certainly was gifted and could tell things tainly was gifted and could tell things

Seems to me in such a human way. someone called him the American Kipling. Then there was his work as war-correspondent in the Jap-Russian War, and in Mexico in 1914. My, what a traveller that boy was. Went all over the United States, and Canada, as a tramp, as a vagabond, in London,—the seven seas, as a sailor, and even all the little quiet places in California he loved so well. Don't seem quite right he had to go so young. I'll bet that if there's any travelling in Heaven, Jack London has done his share since he went there in 1916. My, couldn't he tell us a story about it, though? Too, bad! Too, bad!

dent at the head, private detectives behind him, the fighting force following, they filed across the pond. A crowbar rammed at the entrance of a cellar. The door flew open. Sledges and axes crashed wine casks which, like knifed beasts, groaned under the blows, red fluids gushing out from their sides, finally collapsing, sending a flood of bubbling liquid over the ground. Another cellar was attacked and casks and bottles were smashed. A third, a fourth, a fifth suffered equal fate, perishing under the battering weapons. A tenth, a fifteenth cellar was wrecked. The dreamy village was in a pool of blood-like fluid. Streams of it ran into the pond, turning its transparent body into brilliant pink. Cries of distress were heard in the oasis. A woman would try to defend a cellar; a child would scream towards the saw-mill for father.

The oasis dwellers ran there from the plant. The calamity had really happened. The staff of their life, their dear, comforting treasure was bled dry. Had they been bled dry themselves they would hardly have suffered more. Some thought the world had gone mad; others voiced their hatred of the company or cursed the bootleggers. They rushed to their stormed cellers to save what drop they could.

Some arrived in time to behold, with thorns in their hearts, axes flying at their beloved barrels. They stared at their bleeding retorts as if staring at faithful companions done to death. by a mob.

The smashing army, led by private detectives, swept over the village taverns with speed and clock-work precision. They were now progressing towards their last door-Crispi's. With wild countenance, Crispi implanted himself before his cellar.

The president saw that parley was necessary before the onslaught. He told Crispi to clear the way if he wanted to avoid bodily harm.

"Fight me if you want!" Crispi hurled back.

"We don't want you. We want to crack your barrels so you can't sell any more wine."

"Who! me, sell wine? Not for gold!"

The president ordered him a second time from the door; Crispi's countenance grew wilder.

"Then we will put you in jail." shouted the chief, attempting to intimidate him.

"Oright, put me in jail."

"No; we will not put you in jail: we will buy a ticket for the old country."

(Continued on page 44)