San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1923-04-18
Begin Here Today.

! JOHN HARMON, wealthy ranch
owner. his blind wife, BELLE, ana
| their beautiful daughter, VAL, live
happily together in lannon's wonder.
full ranch home, Paradise. Redstar is
the king of the Red Brood of horses
owned by the master of the ranch
In game at HUNNEWELL'S store
| VELANTRIE from the Border wins
LOLA SANCHEZ, who offers herself
as stake for BRIDEMAN, man OF
mystery. Velantrie sends Lola home
to her father.
Val attends the Fourth of July eel
eoratlon at Santa Lcandra. Escorted
by the Paradise cowboys in the af-
ternoon, Val watches the races where
the Red Brood wins honors. At the
dance in the evening Val dances the
first dance with TOM BRISTON, the
foreman of Paradise, who loves Val
sincerely.
Go on With the Story.
These strangers came in unostenta-
tiously and stood in bunch, some
what close together. There were nine
of them, all clad in good garments,
the best that money could buy in a
wider market than the rangeland
owned. Their soft fine boots were
stitched in colors, their hats were
very wide and ornamented with
much silver after the fashion OF their
kind across the line.
They stood quietly and watched
the dancers, and in their midst stood
one who was of a different mold.
Tall, slim, fine of feature and form,
smiling, his reckless face a-sparlile
with the joy of youth in music and
motion, this man was not so guard
eddy alert, arJ he carried his hat in
his hand. Thick black hair waved
back from a handsome brow, white
with the bleach of the swaziland,
sign manual of him who rides much
in the open.
His blue eyes with their black
lashes roved over the dancers with a
bright bold glance.
AS the couples drifted out again
Lolo Sanchez, living flower in her
black and scarlet, came down the
room in the arms of big blond boy,
her small, face, upturned, her CO.
quette's heart playing the old game
in her dusky eyes. -,
And then-the boy swung her past
the door and she looked up full into
the smiling face of the stranger.
"VelantrieS she breathed to her
self.
WHAT" asked the boy, but she
did not hear.
From that moment she forgot him
utterly.
When the dance ended Lolo
cfn b,, onniIanE
about the tiny slipper that encased
her light foot-bent and Strengthened
it-close by the door. As she rose,
quick as a willow wand released, she
looked into Velantrie's eyes and her
own were eloquent.
Master" she murmured in Span
ish, so low that none but he saught
the soft word.
who's tn chap by tn door, the
blond boy asked suspiciously, but Lolo
looked up innocently.
(which one?" she asked, and the
suspicion died.
The newcomers did not dance. They
had come because Velantrie gave the
word, because he chose to look upon
Santa Leandra at her merrymakers,
and that was all.
Velantries did not dance either.
There was none whom he knew upon
the floor save and except the small
girl who called him master, and he
only smiled with amusement as he
watched her.
But Lolo Sanchezs quick little
brain was working and she meant to
change that very soon. Therefore she
sent the least of her followers, a meek
brown Mexican, unnoticeable in the
crowd. to whisper something in the
fiddler's ear.
And then the music stopped. the
crowds drifted to the bench. and the
fiddler was tuning his fiddle to an
other key.
He tucked the fiddle in his neck
and began abruptly to play-and no
one called this number.
Wild, swift, beautiful music it was,
Spanish to the core.
1t lifted and swung and at regular
intervals there came a thrum of the
bass that sounded like the stroke of
foot upon the floor. And then,
softly, swiftly, like a leaf before a
wind, LolJ Sanchez came drifting
down the floor alone. From some