The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-03-25

A best way to make man do thing N is to tell him to avoid it. The most jaded appetite tastes the forbidden with a relish The boy climbs the fence not be- cause he wants to get on the other side, but because the fence is there, telling him to keep out; and the heart of the debutante yarns toward the dangerous" man whom her mother has ''ruled out"
 Consequently, though the world lay al the feet of young Ed Raleigh, and he could have travelled to Paris or Pekin with full pocketbook and the consent of his father, the one region to which his heart turned was the forbidden Bald Eagle Mountains.
 ''In the mountains" he was won't te say, "they's jest enough gold to breal mans heart and turn him into a vast er." Yet Pete Raleigh had made his stake and found his wife in those same noun tains ana the very ground he cursed wa: the scene of the tales he loved to spin.
 The Raleigh ranch had spread through the length and breadth of the valley, but while this might be called the common sense kingdom of Pete Raleigh, the king. dom of his fancy to which his memory inevitably turned was the Bald Eagle mountains-the burned Drowned peaks along the valley and the far-away crests of the upper range, blue with distance and tipped with snow.
 To young Ed Raleigh that land was 2 fairy realm peopled with the men and wom en of his fathers stories; and what thu ancestral sword, rust-eaten, and the battle the dark ages, the old li spoon and drill set of Pete Raleigh were to his son.
 Until finally having one day ridden g pitching outlaw in fashion to have swelleo the heart of the most hardy bronco-peele with pride, Ed Raleigh awoke to the knowl edge that he was a man. He reasoned, no without justification, that if he could sticl to wild horse without bucking-roll, he could fight his own way and follow his nose through the world
 When he arrived at this decision the first place his eyes turned was toward the Left-Hand Cut, that deep defle like a knife cut through the Bald Eagle range where the railroads slid over the heights and down into the valley; for the Left Hand Cut was the gate of fairyland, and il the center of the cut stood the town o1 Sierra Padre, in whose streets the mer of his fathers yarns had fought and drunl and gambled and died.
 Ed : Raleigh was too wise to tell his father where he was going. He merel! kissed the white head of his mother, whis pered in her ear, and then fled from hel tears. An hour later he was plodding down the valley behind pack burro ant seeing the world through the long, flap ping ears in the most approved prospec tor fashion. And in his hand he carried hi hammer, and started chipping rocks within five miles of the ranch house.
 To be sure, he knew nothing, or next to nothing, about one; but six feet two of arrow-straight manhood, 25 care-free years on the range, and nearly 200 pounds of stcingy muscles, hard as sinews, are ar equipment complete in themselves. Ed Raleigh did not know the color of hemati:e from the colcr of wild violets, but he in- tended to learn. He was eager enough to dig for the center of the earth, and about strong enough to get there.
 Twenty-four hours brought him to the foothills, and two days more carried him into the cut In the middle of the after noon he drove his borro into Sierra Padre and paused at the head of the singl. street. He could have shouted with joy for everything was in place, everything was exactly as it had been when his father was there. He closed his eyes and winked hard