Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1923-02-16

made to suffer a humiliation equally
as great. 1t came about that he ac-
tually had to pay the Chases for water
to irrigate his alfalfa fields. The
never-failing spring upon his land an
swered for the needs of household
and horses, but no more.
These matters were unfortunate for
Bedding, but not by any means wholly
accountable for his worry and unhap-
piness and brooding hate. He be-
lieved Dick Gale and the rest of the
party taken into the desert by the
Yaqui had been killed or lost. Two
months before a string of Mexican
horses, riderless, saddled, starved for
grass and wild for water, had come
to Forlorn River. They were a part
of the horses belonging to Roias and
his band. Their arrival complicated
the mystery and strengthened convic-
tions of the loss Of both pursuers and
pursued.
Belongs u%nhapPiness could hardly
be laid to material loss. He had been
rich and was now poor, but change of
fortune such as that could nor have
made him unhappy. Something more
somber and mysterious and sad than
the loss of Dick Gale and their friends
had come into the lives of his wife
and. Nell. He dated the time of this
change back to a certain day when
Mrs. Bedding recognized in the elder
Chase an old schoolmate and a re-
Ioo+od e,,itor Tf fooLy tina for Glow.
thinking Bedding to discover anything
wrong in his household, but gradually
he had forced on him the fact of some
secret cause for grief other than Gales
loss. He was sure of it when his wife
signified her desire to make a visit to
her old home back in Peoria.
A letter she had received contained
news that may or may not have been
authentic; but it was enough, Bedding
thought, to interest his wife. An old
p%rospector had returned to Peoria,
and he had told relatives of meeting
Robert Burton at the Sonoyta oasis
fifteen years before, and that Burton
had gone into the desert never to re-
turn. To Bedding this was no sur
prise, for he had heard that before his
marriage. There appeared to have
been no doubts as to the death of his
wife's first husband. The singular
thing was that both Nelrs father and
grandfather had been lost somewhere
in the Sonora desert.
Bedding did not oppose his wife's
desire to visit her old home. He
thought it would be a wholesome trip
for her, and did all in his power to
PERSUADE Nell to accompany her. But
Nell would not go.
It was after Mrs. Belongs depar-
ture that Bedding discovered in Nell
a condition of mind that amazed and
distressed him. She had suddenly be-
came strangely wretched. She would
tell him nothing. But after a while,
when he had thought it out, he dated
this deplorable change in Nell back
to a day on which he had met Nell
with Radford Chase. This indefatiga-
BILE wooer had not in the least aban-
doned his suit. A slow surprise gath
cred upon Tom Bedding when he saw
that Nell, apparently, was accepting
young Chase's attentions. At least,
she no longer hid from him. Bedding
could not account for this, because he
was sure Nell cordially despised the
fellow. And toward the end he di-
vined, if he did not actually know,
that these Chases possessed some
strange power over Nell, and were u.s.
ing it. That stirred a hate in Bedding
"a hate he had felt at the first and
had manfully striven against, which
now gave him wei to dark ~brooding
thoughts.
Midsummer passed, and the storms
came late. But when they arrived
they made up for hardness. Beld-
ing did not remember so terrible a
storm of wind and rain as that which
broke the summers drought.
The Chases had extended a main
irrigation ditch down to Belongs
farm, skipped the width of his ground,
then had gone on down through Altar
valley. They had exerted every infiu-
ence to obtain right to connect these
bitches by digging through his land,
but Bedding had remained obdurate.
He refused to have any dealings with
them. 1t was therefore with some
curiosity and suspicion that he saw a
gang of Mexicans once more at work
upon these bitches.
AT daylight mex morning a ire
mendous blast almost threw Bedding
out of his bed. 1t cracked the adobe
walls of his house and broke windows
and sent pans and crockery to the
floor with a crash. Belongs idea was
that the store of dynamite kept by
the Chases for blasting had blown up.
Hurriedly getting into his clothes, he
went to Nelrs room to reassure her
and, telling her to have a thought for
their guests, he went out to see what
had happened.
A great yellow cloud, like smoke,
hunp ovpr tho river This annaa rod