The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-17
IN THE YAQUI COUNTRY.
nY BAILEY MILLARD.

BY BAILEY MILLARD.
 tAuthor of Down the Plume with the
 Sheath Piano" Etc.)
 Copyright. 1906, by Joseph B. Bowles.)
 Bad trails. bad water and hopeless 1y slow mules, had made the long ride from the railroad most vexatious ad- venture for the Nesbitts, only seven days from Fifth Avenue and French cookery.
 ''oh, don't worry, papa! I'm all right" Murie1 smiled lresigned1y through her veil. and slipped off her mule with the help of statuesque mozo. Her big blue eyes shifted cov- ertIy now and again to the up-trail prospect, which, if anything, seemed more desolate than the country they had. traversed. For 1t was here at Agua Caliente that Stratford Banning was to meet them. Banning was the man in charge of her fathers mine at Los Nidos. Between him and A-uriel there had once been perfect under standing. That was In the year he graduated as a mining engineer and was hanging around the Broadway of- fees waiting for chance to let loose Ais pent-up energy.
 Muriel, looking up the trail, was thinking now of their last ride togeth- CT under the Bronx beeches. Many things have happened since then. The cnleIeSL or IHeS6 LHinSS was LHdL lle complete understanding was no longer any sort or understandings few hasty, heart-freezing words had done that. And now Abner Card, a we'll preserved, middle-aged man whose mil lions nearly measured up with those of her father, was dangling along at her side--the luckiest man in New York, they had called him, for had he not bagged the proudest beauty of the New port season?
 Card had become interested in the Nesbitt mine. in the Rio Yaqui coun- try, to the extent of half a million, and was going with his prospective father-in- Jaw to look at the property. Muriel, who had been everywhere with her father since the day of her mothers long funeral train, joined him in this, his first visit to the mine. She had dared the meeting with Ban ming because she had thought that they would each be strong enough and have common sense enough to show that they had lived down the ghastly fact of their two-year arrangement.
 Banning came hurrying out from the office at the end of the great grimy mining sheds.
 ''Huilo!" he called, running bare headed down the trail, a big piece of white paper in his hand-the pay sheet of the mine. What in the name of all the-Didn't you get my tele- gram? Sent it to Fl Paso, care of Stevens. Don't see how it could have missed yon."
 Then he drew his face out of its anx- ious, worried look and greeted them more hospitably. The touch of Mu- riels gloved hand was like that of a phantom reaching out from the dead years. Instantly he saw what were her relations with Card. whom be had met before when he was beseeching Broadway for a mining job, and who oddly enough, as he thought. remem- bered him. Somehow people had g way of remembering that clean square chin of Earnings and those unfiinchine gray eyes.
 After supper, when the men were smoking big rough cigars in a corner of the cool patio where the moonlight siIvered the smooth silken edges oi the banana leaves, Nesbitt laid his hand on Earnings shoulder.
 well, Strat," he asked, whats the rumpus?'
 ''No rumpus," said Banning his eye searching out the feather-duster tor of a cocoa palm.