Ottumwa tri-weekly courier., 1910-02-08
CHAPTER I.
TRuyToN KING

m ME was a tall. rawboned, rangy
E young fellow with face so
III III tanned by wind and sun you
had the impression that his
skin would feel like leather If YOU
could affect the impertinence to test it
by the sense of touch. His clothes fitted
him loosely and yet We're graciously
devoid Of the bagginess which char
acterizes the appearance of extremely
young men whose frames are not fully
set and whose joints are still parading
through the last stages Of college de-
velopment.
This tall young man in the panama
hat and gray fannels was Truxton
King, embryo globe trotter and search
er after the treasures of romance,
somewhere up near Central park, in
one Of the fashionable cross streets,
was the home of his father and his
fathers father before him-a home
which Truxton had not seen In TWO
years or more 1t is worthy Of pass
Ing notice, and that is ALL that his
father was manufacturer; more than
that, he was something of power in
the financial world. Els mother was
not strictly social queen in the great
metropolis, but she was what we
might safely call one of the first ia.
dies in waiting,'' which is quite good
enough for the wife Of manufacture
er, especially when one records that
her husband was manufacturer of
steel. 1t Is also a matter Of no little
consequence that TruXton's mother
was more or less averse to the steel
business as a heritage for her son.
Be 1t understood here and now that
she intended Truxton for the diplo.
matte service.
But neither Truxton's father. who
wanted him to be a manufacturing
Croesus, nor Truxton's mother, who
expected him to become social Solo
mon, appears to have taken the Young
mans private inclinations into con-
sideration.
Young Mr.. King believed in ro-
nance. He grew up with an ever In.
creasing bump Of imagination, CON
tiguous to which, strange to relate,
there was properly developed bump
of industry and applications; hence it
is not surprising that he was willing
to 90 far afield in search of the things
that seemed more or less worth while
to a young gentleman who had suf-
fered the i'll fortune to be born in the
nineteenth century instead of the sev.
enteenth.
we come upon him at last-luckily
Tor us we were not actually following
hlm-after two years Of wonderful but
rather disillusioning adventure in mid.
Asia and all Africa. He had seen the
hongo and the Euphrates, the Ganges
and the Nile, the Yangtseklang and
the 4enisei; he had climbed noun
tains in Abyssinia. in Siam, in Tibet
and Afghanistan; he had shot big
game in more than one jungle and had
been shot at by small brown men in
more than one forest, to say nothing
Of the little encounters he had had in
most unoccidental towns and cities.
For twenty days he had Travelled by
caravan across the Persian uplands.
through Herat and Meshhed and Bo-
khara, striking off with his guide alone
toward the sea of Aral and the east.
ern shores of the Caspian. thence
through the Ural foothills to the old
Roman highway that led down into
the sweet green valleys Of land he
had thought Of as nothing more than
the creation of harebrained actionist.
Somewhere out in the shlmmering
east he had learned. to his honest
amagement. that there was such
land as Graustark. At first he would
not believe, but the English bank in
Meshhed assured him that he would
come to it II he travelled long enough