Ladysmith news-budget. [volume] (Ladysmith, Rusk County, Wis.) 1907-1927, 1919-04-04


with its flowing black tie and leather
belt. She looked more like herself to-
day. She had bleached out in Tucson.
She had been letting herself get too
tanned, running around without hats.
Sunburn paled the value of those
splendid eyes of hers. He could always
tease her by lkening them to tOpazes.
His eyes ran over the pink and pur-
pie lines of cOrd-trained vines which
made floral screens for her tent Free
of the strings overhead, they riOted
over the ramada, the second roof, OF
living boughs. He acknowledged their
beauty. They gave grace to bare ne
cessty; they denied the painting,
thirsty desert just beyond.
He remembered his own ramada.
Gerry had hated it, had complained of
it so bitterly when she came home
from New York that he had had it
pulled down and replaced by ' roof
If pine boards, glaring and ugly. Gerty
was satisfied, for it was clean; she no
longer felt that she lived in a SquaW
house. Let the Indians have ramadas;
there was no earthly reason she should.
He had urged that the desert dwellers
had valuable hints to give them. But
what was remada to him. or anything
else? Hardin turned to leave.
She did not want him to go so soon.
She pointed out a new vine to him.
She had brought it from Tucson
''Kudzu." they called it; a Japanese
vine. And there was another broken
rose. quite beyond the help of stripped
handkerchiefs and mesquit splints.
He followed her around the tent, her
prattle falling from his grim mood. He
was rot thinking of her flowers except
as knocking parallel. The desert
storm had made havoc Of his garden
"a sorry botch Of his life. He and
Innes had been trying to make a gar
den out OF desert; the desert had
llOuted them. 1t was not his fault.
Something had happened; something
quite beyond his power. Luck was
turning against him.
lines, why, she was playing as with
toy. 1t was the natural instinct of
woman to make things pretty around
her. But he had sacrificed his youth,
his chances. His domestic life, too
he should never have carried dainty
little woman like Gerty into the deS-
ert. He had never reproached her for
leaving him, even last time when he
fnp Thn nrI
burned his wound. Whose good? His
or Gerty's? Somehow, though they
wrangled, he always knew it would
turn out all right; life would run
smoothly when they left the desert.
But things were getting worse; his
mouth puckered over some recOllec-
tons. Yet he loved Gerty; he couldn't
picture life without her. He decided
that it was because there had never
been anyone else. Most fellows had
had sweethearts before they married;
he had not, nor a mistress when she
have been easy enough. His mouth
fell into Sardonic lines. Those half
, breed women! No one, even when a
divorce ehad hung over him. Oh he
knew what their friends made of each
Of Gerty's heightened flights; he knew!
But that had been spared him, that
vulgar grisly spectacle of med Gu life
when two people who have been lovers
drag the carcass of their love over the
grimy floor of curious gaping court.
He shuddered. Gerty loved him. Else,
why had she come back to him? Why
had she not kept her threat when he
refused to abandon his desert project
and turn his abilities into more
! profitable dedication? He could see
her face as she stared flushing up into
| his that nipping cold day when he had
run into her on Broadway. He remem-
bered her coquetry when she suggest
| ed that there was plenty of room in
her apartment! His wife! She spoke
Of seeing his pictures in the papers.
He had grown to be great mani"
That piquant meeting, the week fol-
lowing had been the brightest of his
life. He was sure then that Gerry
loved him. The wrangles were only
| their different ways of looking at
things. OF course. they loved each
other But Gerty couldn't stand piO-
neer life She had loved him, or she
would not so easily have been per-
Suaded to try it over again. She
yearned to make him comfortable, she
said So she had gone back, and pulled
down his ramada, and put his clothes
in the lowest bureau drawer!
at wasn't either of our faults he
ruminated 1T was the fault of the in
stitution. Marriage itself is a failure.
Look at the papers, the divorce courts.
A mans interests are no longer his
wife's. Curious that it should be so.
But it's fact. 1t IS the modern els
content. Women want different careers
from their husbands
Yer, how could he help throwing his