Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1917-Feb 1918)

'8 CAPTAIN SUNLIGHT'S LAST RAID horses in some way, they realized, as soon as they saw it. Accordingly, they set to work with such means as they had at hand with constantly increasing zeal, determination and hatred. George Twitchell, the Western representative of the Smith-Lance Automobile Company, the second admirer of Miss Warned, was riding most unhappily westward on the train. The third of the young lady's admirers, wrho had this advantage of the other two that the young lady was riding by his side, was slowly cantering up the long street toward the hotel where it was thought Miss Warned might remain securely harbored until Captain. ..Sunlight had been captured, killed or driven out of the country again and it would be safe for her to go back to the ranch. After that audacious and splendid message to George Twitchell, it was impossible that Jack. Conway could part from Janet Warned without further words. What took place in the little parlor of the hotel, which they fortunately had to themselves, any lover can imagine. Those who are not lovers, or have not been — past, present or expectant ! — are so few in number as to be negligible. Suffice it to say that, after a much longer time than he imagined he had spent, Mr. Conway tore himself away under the pressure of what he conceived to be his duty. How much of it was duty and how much of it was a desire to get Captain Sunlight personally to pay off old scores and to make assurance doubly sure that his new sweetheart would not be molested in the future, each will determine for himself. At any rate, in the early afternoon he tore himself from her arms and, on a fresh horse, galloped away from the little town, denuded of most of its defenders by the posse, intending, if possible, to be in at the death. Now, fortune served him well or ill, as the case may be ; but it so happened that as he rode toward Wild Cat Canyon it occurred to him that the posse would close that way of return to Captain Sunlight, and, as he knew the terrain of the range quite as well as the desperado, he turned his horse southward and galloped toward the other broken and unfrequented, even aban doned trail, with the idea that he might intercept his blond-haired prototype if he came that way. He did it — to his sorrow ! It would be difficult, anyway, he realized, when he had time to think coherently of anything but the beautiful girl he had w'on, to overtake the posse if they were hard on Sunlight's trail. The desperado would either have to cross the range to the northward, which was most unlikely, as every step would take him further from his base of supplies, or he would have to get back to the lowlands and his band, which wyould probably be assembled some place beyond the border. Indeed, as he rode toward the littleknown and little-used trail it suddenly flashed in the mind of Conway that perhaps it had not been wise to strip the town of its fighting men. He checked his horse and looked back from the little rise to the clump of trees that marked the settlement. All was apparently still and quiet, and he reassured. himself as he remembered that Captain Sunlight's men rarely did anything except in his presence and under his direct leadership. So, with a certain amount of confidence in spite of hesitation and doubts, he rode on. Xow, George Twitchell had not the least idea of the presence of Captain Sunlight in the vicinity. He had heard about him, as had everybody in the Southwest, but, never having been brought in contact with him or never having seen the results of one of his raids, the desperado did not bulk very large in his eyes. He had sufficient cause for perturbation in what he had heard from Janet Warned and what he had seen at the station. It was true no engagement had subsisted between him and Janet, but she had allowTed him to make love to her. She had accepted his attentions, even seeming to enjoy them, and she had said that perhaps some day, if she did not fall in love with some one else, she would be his wife. His astonishment, his indignation and his alarm when she turned up at the station platform practically in the arms of another man whom she coolly declared she was going to marry, was easy to imagine. Twitchell was not a Western man. He was not handy with weapons. He had never engaged in a deadly altercation in