Motion Picture Story Magazine (Aug 1911-Jan 1912)

76 TEE MOTION PICTURE STORY MAGAZINE family one dark night, and killed his parents. Jimmie was taken prisoner. Later he was recaptured by settlers, and given a home on the Two-star Ranch. Mary, the sweet-faced little daughter of the rancher, had been his playmate, and always his special charge. He had been lonely during her absence at school, for Jim Burgess was not sociable, and had no boon companions. Quiet, steady, reliable, he was never conspicuous, either by words or acts, but he held the respect and admiration of every man on the ranch. It was Jim Burgess, who, laden with recent purchases at the nearest trader's, and driving a team attached ,to a light buckboard, drove steadily along the trail over which the roistering sheepmen had galloped but a few moments before. Suddenly the bronchos halted. There, right before them, at the side of the trail, braced against the remnants of a fence that had once encircled a ranch house, long deserted, waved a pair of unmistakable cowboy legs, and equally unmistakably upside down. " Hello, pard! What's the trouble?" called Jim, springing from the buckboard and striding toward the now feebly kicking legs. ' ' Good thing you caught on the side of the fence, or you'd have been gone for sure," he remarked, pulling the maudlin and bedaubed youth from the pool into which he had fallen. The man's horse was nowhere in sight, so Jim bundled his unsavory burden into the bottom of the buckboard and drove homeward at a sharp clip. "If the boys ever hear of it, he'll be called ' Stick-in-th '-Mud ' forever after," thought Jim, looking back over his shoulder at the man in the wagon. "It's the young Easterner, Squire Harris' nephew. Those sheepmen from the South Annex have been giving him bad whisky. I'll do th' best I can for him." So it happened that Johnnie Elliot awoke next morning to find himself clean, and well shaven, clothed in Jim's garments, and occupying a bunk in Jim's quarters. Slowly he looked around upon his strange surroundings, and as slowly recalled the unpleasant events of the night before. ••'It was that little red devil," he muttered, angrily, to himself, as he recalled an imaginary imp. "He dared me to jump that fence, and then he pushed me into the hole." He was still apostrophizing the little red devil when Jim entered. There was something about Jim's kindly, honest face and self-reliant poise which appealed to the man in the bunk. Gratitude was one of the few virtues which Johnnie Elliot possessed to a pronounced degree, but he had been given little opportunity for its cultivation. "It just seems as if everybody has been against me from the time I came out here," he remarked, fretfully, to his rescuer, as the two were exchanging confidences. John soon learned, however, that Jim was not against him. His heart went out toward his grave-faced young rescuer, and he readily promised the future good behavior which Jim insisted upon, under condition that the episode of the previous evening be kept secret. From that time on there existed a friendship and comradeship between the two which no one could understand. And so Abner Harris had no opportunity to carry out his threat of turning his nephew adrift. The very next day a cowboy brought him a message to the effect that the youth had a good job on the Two-starRanch, and would send over later for his outfit. It was to get this outfit that Johnnie accompanied Jim the following Saturday, when the latter drove down to the Porks to meet the returning schoolgirl. Mary Baird was undeniably a beauty. She would have graced any drawing-room. Her brief sojourn at the little Western academy had been just sufficient to make her socially ambitious, and desirous for travel. She had not been particularly pleased at the prospect of returning to the ranch, tho she looked forward happily