The Complete Novels of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

have to be pinched before I shout," drawled Denver, eyes following across the dining room. A man came in with a printed broadside and tacked it to the wall; black type announced to Sundown city the following entertainment:

      LOLA MONTEREY!

       AND THE WESTERN OPERA COMPANY

       WILL PRESENT AT OUR OPERA HOUSE

       THIS EVENING

       AN OLD FAVORITE

       CAVALIER OF SPAIN!

       LOLA, SUNDOWN'S OWN SINGING BEAUTY,

       COMES BACK TO HER BIRTHPLACE

       AFTER A TRIUMPHAL TOUR

       OF EUROPE TO PLEASE THE FOLKS

       OF THE OLD HOMETOWN TONIGHT!

      Jake Leverage scanned the notice. "They sure got the country plastered with them notices. I see 'em on every juniper shrub along the road. Been three years since we saw Lola in a play, ain't it, Eve? What's she want to come back to this sun-cooked scope of alkali-crusted land for, anyhow? I got no admiration for foreign places like Yurrup, but if I was a gal with Lola's talents I sure wouldn't waste no time around here. I'd go away and stay away."

      Eve tried to catch her father's attention, but he went on blandly. "A great girl. I'm no hand for this fa-so-la music as a rule, but it was a genuine pleasure to sit back in the old Palace and hear her sing. Yes, sir. Well, I reckon you got to go to that, uh, Eve?"

      He turned to his daughter and received in full measure the impact of her warning glance. She shook her head slightly, at which the old man muttered under his breath and combed back his mustache to drink the rest of his coffee. Eve's clear face seemed sharp and troubled as she watched Dave Denver. He had turned to the notice and was staring at it, all features caught up in a brooding, stormy expression. For a time he appeared to forget all others in the room, to forget that there were people around who might be interested in observing his reaction to Lola Monterey's name. Eve lowered her eyes to the table, knowing very well how many quick and covert glances were thrown toward Dave Denver. Lola was back, bringing with her a breath of the old story and the old gossip.

      Denver squared himself to the table and reached for his cigarette papers. "Yeah," he observed casually, "she always had a fine voice. The outside world was her place."

      "Then why should she come back?" Leverage wanted to know and received a kick on his booted leg under the table.

      "I couldn't say," mused Denver. "Probably Lola doesn't know herself. That's the way she does things."

      "All wimmen's alike," grunted Leverage and scowled on his daughter. His leg hurt.

      Outside was the jangle and clatter of the Ysabel Junction stage making the right-angle turn from Prairie Street to Main. By common consent the people in the dining room adjourned dinner and headed for the door. Denver walked behind Leverage and Eve; the girl, never knowing why she should let herself say such a thing, spoke over her shoulder.

      "Old times for you, David. Aren't you glad?"

      She was instantly sorry, and a little ashamed when she heard Denver's slow answer come gently forward.

      "You've convinced me you're no longer a little girl, Eve. I'm not sure I like the change."

      "And why?"

      "Little girls are more charitable minded than big ones."

      They were on the porch. The stages—there were three of them this trip instead of one—veered up to the hotel porch and stopped. Some courteous citizen opened the door of the front coach and lifted his hat. A woman stepped daintily down, and there was a flash of even teeth as she smiled on the crowd. Eve's small fists tightened; she threw a glance behind her, but Dave Denver had disappeared from the porch and was not to be seen. Eve thought Lola Monterey's eyes went through the ranks of the assembled Sundowners with more than passing interest, but if the woman was disappointed she was too accomplished an actress to reveal it. Old man Leverage muttered, "By Jodey, the girl's pretty, Eve. She's got beyond Sundown."

      Eve nodded, a small ache in her heart. The tempestuous, flamboyant dance-hall girl of three years ago had returned from her conquests with the veneer of fine manners and proud self- confidence. Her jet-black hair bobbed in the sun, and the slim, pointed face, showing the satin smoothness of Spanish blood, had the stirring dignity of actual beauty. Moving up the steps with the same lithe grace that had brought her out of poverty and mean surroundings, she paused, swung around, and smiled again on Sundown. Soft and husky words fell into the silence with a queer vitality.

      "I am home—and glad."

      Then she passed into the hotel, the rest of the opera company following after. A traveling salesman, calling heartily to his friends, swept past. And at the end of the procession strolled an extremely tall man with the jaw and the nose and the eye of England. He seemed weary, bored, puzzled. At the door he paused to ask a plaintive question of a bystander, and those nearest him caught the full fragrance of a broad and richly blurred speech freshly blown from Albion's misty shores.

      "I say, my friend, one of my bally braces has burst a stitching. Can you direct me to the local haberdashery?"

      The crowd was dissolving. Leverage turned on his daughter. "I reckon you'll be wantin' to see the show tonight, uh?"

      "I do," said Eve, "but why in the world did you mention it in front of David? It made me feel as small as—"

      "Good grief, why?" demanded the astonished Leverage. "It ain't a crime."

      "Do you think I want him to believe I was fishing for an invitation? And you shouldn't have mentioned Lola around him, Dad."

      Leverage shook his head. "Wimmen beat me. Danged if they don't. Now a kid like you has got to go and join the ranks. Well, we'll stay over then."

      "We'll go right home," said Eve, "so I can get into some clothes. Folks don't go to shows in gingham dresses, and there's Mother."

      "Imagine that," grinned Leverage. "Well, don't forget that the most important ceremony you been through so far, which was bein' born, didn't call for no clothes at all. And I have et with three Senators and a governor with nothin' better than overalls on which had a red flannel patch in the seat. But you can go home and come back, though Ma won't want to come. I know better'n to argue. Wait till I get Joe Peake to take you in a rig. I got to stay over for the Association meetin'."

      Eve smiled at her father and strolled down the street, leaving the porch deserted except for two lackadaisical gentlemen who somehow had witnessed all the recent excitement from the comfortable vantage point of the porch rockers.

      "Buck," said Wango, "whut's that brace business which the Englishman was cryin' over?"

      "I heard somewhere that those fellas called suspenders braces," replied Meems.

      "Hell, ain't that peculiar? And whut's a habadashery, anyhow?"

      "Your turn to guess," drawled Meems. "I done my share."

      "Well," growled Wango, "he ain't a-gunta git by with no foreign hooch-a-ma-cooch like that around here."

      "Lola sure has got pritty," reflected Meems.

      "Yeah. Reckon Denver figgers so."

      "Shut up," admonished Meems without heat. "Don't drag in dead cats."

      "Ain't you a moral son of a gun? Pardon me for chewin' tobacco in yore presence. But what I'm wonderin' is how the stage got through without excitement today. Yuh know, they's supposed to be money in the Wells-Fargo box this trip."

      "Don't be mellerdramatic, Wango. Who'd bring money into a joint like Sundown?"

      "I heard," said Meems lazily. "Well, mebbe Lou Redmain was asleep at the switch."

      Buck Meems rose from the depths of the rocker and stared at his partner with a penetrating eye and said very coldly, "Was I you, Pete, I'd git me some packthread and sew up that four- cornered thing yuh call a mouth."

      "Well—"

      "Shut up," stated