By B. M. Bower

CHAPTER I. IN SEARCH OF THE WESTERN TONE

"What do you care, anyway?" asked Reeve Howard philosophically. "It isn't as if you depended on the work for a living. Why worry over the fact that a mere pastime fails to be financially a success. You don't need to write "

"Neither do you need to slave over those dry point things," Thurston retorted, in none the best humor with his comforter "You've an income bigger than mine; yet you toil over Grecian nosed women with untidy hair as if each one meant a meal and a bed."

"A meal and a bed that's good; you must think I live like a king."

"And I notice you hate like the mischief to fail, even though."

"Only I never have failed," put in Reeve Howard, with the amused complacency born of much adulation.

Thurston kicked a foot rest out of his way. "Well, I have. The fashion now is for swashbuckling tales with a haze of powder smoke rising to high heaven. The public taste runs to gore and more gore, and kidnappings of beautiful maidens bah!"