The Washington herald., 1920-11-13

- the bottle. You have to shake
the bottle before using; for sulphur
VIII not dissolve. Then Dry Valley
saturated small sponge with the
liquid and rubbed IL carefully into
the roots Of his hair. Besides sui
phur there was sugar of lead in Il
and tincture of nux vomica and bay
rum. Dry Valley found the recipe
in Sunday. newspaper. You must
| next be told why a strong man
came to fall a victim to a Beauty
Hint.
Dry Valley had been a sheepman.
His real name was Hector, but he
had been rechristened after his
range. to distinguish him from
Elm Creek" Johnson, who ran
farther down the Frio.
Many years of living face to face
with sheep on their own terms
wearied Dry Valley Johnson. So,
he sold his ranch for $4,000 and
moved to Santa Rosa to live a life
i OF gentlemanly ease. Being a silent
| and melancholy person of 35-or,
! perhaps, 3S-he soon became that
cursed and earth-cumbering thing
an elderlyish bachelor with a hobby.
Someone gave him his first straw
.
; Dry Valley bought a four-room
cottage in the village. and a library
on strawberry culture. Behind the
, cottage was a garden, of which he
made a strawberry patch. In his
old gray wooden shirt. his brown
duck trousers and high -heeled boots
| he sprawled all day on a canvas cot
! under a live-oak tree at his back
! door, studying the history OF the
seductive. scarlet berry.
! The school teacher. Miss De Witt,
spoke of him as "a fine. presentab1e
man, for all his middle age" But
4 the focus OF Dry Valleys eyes en-
/ braced no women. They were mere
| ly beings who few skirts as a sig
1 nal for him to lift awkwardly his
heavy, round-crowned, broad-brim-
med felt Stetson whenever he met
| them. and then hurry past to get
back to his beloved berries.
! And all this recitative by the
chorus is only to bring us to the
point where you may be told why
| Dry Valley shook up the insoluble
sulphur in the bottle. So long-drawn
and inconsequential a thing Is his
ltory-the anamorphous shadow of a
milestone reaching down the road
! between us and the setting sun.
, When his Strawberries were be-
ginning to ripen Dry Valley bought
; the heaviest buggy whip in the San
ia Rosa store. He sat for many
hours under the live oak tree plait-
! ing and weaving in an extension to
+, its lash. When 1t was done he could
snip leaf from a bush twenty feet
away with the cracker. For the
bright, predatory eyes of Santa
! Rosa youth were watching the ripen-
/ ing berries, and Dry Valley was
arming himself against their ex-
pected raids. No greater care had he
F.: taken of his tender lambs during his
ranching days than he did of his
cherished fruit. warding II from the
hungry wolves that whistled and
howled and shot their marbles and
/ peered through the fence that sur
rounded the property.
1 In the house next to Dry Valleys
lived a widow with a pack of chill
dren that gave the husbandman fire.
, quent anxious misgivings. In the
woman there was a strain OF the
Spanish. She had welded one of the
name of o'Brien. Dry Valley was q
lconnoisseur in cross strains; and he
foresaw trouble in the offiepring Of
this union.
Between the two homesteads ran a
crazy picket fence overgrown with
morning glory and wild gourd vines
OFTEN he could see little heads with
mops of black hair and flashing dark
eyes lodging in and out between the
pickets. keeping tabs on the red
dening berries.
Late one AFTERNOON Dry valley
WENT to the postofice. When he
came back, like Mother Hubbard he
found the deuce to pay. The de-
scendants of Iberian bandits and HI
berian cattle raiders had swooper
Gown upon his strawberry patch. To
the outraged vision of Dry Valley
there seemed to be a sheep corral
full Of them; perhaps they numbered
| hve or six Between the rows of
green plants they were stopped, hop
ping about like toads. gobbiing ST.
lently andT yoraciously his finest
fruit.
Dry Valley slipped into the house.
got his whip, and charged the ma
lrauders, The lash curled about the
logs OF xhc nearest--a greedy To-
vear~e1d--beferp they. knev thoy