Friday, December 26, 1941 SOUTHERN OREGON MINER ¿//ALAN-L e MAY INSTALLMENT THREE THE STORY SO FAR: Karen tester- eon. San Francisco girl, convinced by ber lawyer. John Coll, that she has a claim to the Island estate of her grand­ father, Garrett Waterson. arrives tn Hon­ olulu to attempt to gain control ot the property One evening while she and Colt are dining and discussing plans lor pressing her claims. Richard Wayne, or Tonga Dick, as he Is known, enters their dining place. He Is a member ol the Wayne family that has been in control of her grandfather's Island, Alakoa, since the old man's disappearance. Karen meets him. and believing that he Is un­ aware ot her Identity she accepts an offer to go sailing with hint the next day, hoping she can gel some infor- matlon from him. Later that night Dick goes to the home of his half-brothers, Willard and Brnest, and a conference Is being held regarding the validity of Bar- en’s claim. Now continue with the •tory. I I I t < C i c ■ f n o » H UJ U1 cc m tu re eh th< th. th< Tr De A Deft beer posa za tit the < Tl five- W. mem Tr legi« chan rnaki avail c “I always heard.” Tonga Dick said, "that Garrett Waterson was a great old boy—quite a character.” "Character be damned.” Willard fumed. “He had no character at all. He was an outrageous old brawl­ er, always at the center of every disturbance of any kind. He was always doing incredible, outlandish things." "And he sold Alakoa .or fifteen thousand dollars,” Tonga Dick com­ mented. "What’s it worth today? Three million?” “Ridiculous,” Ernest snapped. "The assets, as we carry them on the book—” “Maybe,” Dick said, “after all, Garrett Waterson was a little fuzzy at the edges, when he did that!" "Right there,” Willard said mo­ rosely, "is the whole point. If they can show that Garrett Waterson was incompetent, it follows that his granddaughter was left destitute by this single incompetent act" Tonga Dick considered; and pres­ ently allowed himself a slow grin. “You know, it's just possible that the girl really has you!” Ernest flared up. “You have just as much interest in Alakoa as we have—or ought to have!” “I guess,” Dick said speculative­ ly, “I’d better have a talk with this Waterson girL” "Ridiculous!” "Can’t see how it can hurt any­ thing.” "She won’t talk to you,” Willard said shortly. “She won't do any­ thing at all without consulting John Colt.” “Oh. yes, she will. Tomorrow, Tm going to take her on a cruise up the coast—sight-seeing, you know.” “She won't even see you,” Willard said again. “She already has. I talked with ber nearly an hour tonight” "You what?” "I said. I’ve been talking to her all night Can't you understand plain—' ’ "Did she know who you were?” "Naturally. Do you think she's a dummy?” His two brothers stared at him for a little while in inarticulate outrage. "I absolutely forbid this sailing trip,” Willard got out at last. "And so do I,” Ernest echoed. "Any parley that is made with that adventuress will be in full consulta­ tion with us and our attorneys. I absolutely forbid you to see this girl again without the full concordance of—” "Go ahead and forbid," Tonga Dick encouraged him. “After all here isn't a thing in the world you can do.” John Colt came to take breakfast with Karen Waterson next morning. Their brightly silvered breakfast table overlooked the beach, where the warm sea was breaking in em­ erald combers shot through with the early sun. Looking out at the lazy sea, Karen Waterson knew that she was afraid. The exultant assurance of victory which she had felt the night before was gone, suddenly unable to live in all this sunlight. She could hardly remember what had persuaded her to make an in* cognito date to sail with the one man who had most reason to be her ene­ my. In spite of the evening, Tonga Dick remained a shadowy and mys­ terious figure — an unaccountable stranger whose very name was out­ landish according to any standards she knew. In this mood she found it pleasant to sit across a breakfast table from John Colt. It did not happen very often, and was the more helpful be­ cause it did not. Some day, she knew, John Colt would make love to her; whether they won or lost, that time would come as inevitably as the falling of Hawaiian rain. Often she speculated curiously as to whether this would happen before or after their fight with the Waynes was closed, and amused herself by imagining what she would do about it when it came. "I am very much at a loss to imagine,” he said now, "why you have committed yourself to this pe­ culiar arrangement." On an impulse Karen said, “I’ll tell you why I have to go. I have to go because I’m afraid of those Waynes.” "They’re people,” Karen said, "from whom we are about to take everything they have. »• "What you’re taking is yours,” John Colt said. "Sometimes I wonder if it really 1*." On an ini pulse Karen said. “I'll tell you why I have to go. 1 have to go because I’m afraid of those Waynes.” John Colt looked at her curiously. To this man, this watchful and rest­ less planner, honesty was a rigid thing; rights of property were mat­ ters decided only in courts, and no other rights existed. ’’Listen to me.” he said. ‘‘Every­ thing they have is based upon the fact that they took the island of Alakoa from your grandfather after he had become incompetent—as we shall prove. Thus everything they have is literally stolen from you.” Something of John Colt’s own spirit of conquest came back into Karen Waterson. ‘‘Yes.” she said; "and I’m not wavering. John. You can be perfectly sure of this—I’ll never turn back now.” CHAPTER III Lying full length on a deck chair. Karen drank a pre-lunch Martini, and watched the stunning blue and white of the sea stream past the low foredeck of Richard Wayne’s schooner. Here, out upon the slowly breathing Pacific. John Colt him­ self seemed as far away as San Francisco had seemed from the la- nai of the Royal Hawaiian. At first, sheering away from Bar­ ber’s Point. Karen had experienced a sharp sinking of spirits. But during the morning hours on the sea a new vitality had come into her, as if from the long swells of the open sea itself; and after lunch she sought a way to push ahead with her self-elected task of studying Tonga Dick. The Holckai was a two-masted schooner of 110 feet; Dick Wayne called her a trad­ ing schooner, with auxiliary power, but very definitely she was some­ thing else. Her racing-schooner hull, astonishingly loaded by her great Diesel, had hardly any cargo space at all, other than that needed for her own stores. Karen put out a tentative feeler. "I was wondering how your schooner came by her name.” “Holokai means ‘sea-rider,’ " he told her. "That's peculiarly poetic.” “Oh, I didn't name her myself. She was named by the man from whom she came to me.” "Who?” Karen asked innocently. Tonga Dick shrugged. ’There are all manner of boats knocking about the Pacific. You can always get hold of a boat.” She studied Tonga Dick Wayne, covertly. In the bright reflected light of the cloudless sea he still seemed young, even younger than she had believed the night before. She thought now that she detected something faintly ironic in his gaze. It was as if the darkness that was under the blue of the sea had come nearer behind his eyes. Karen turned uneasy. She said, "Dick—what is it?” "You’re very lovely,” he said. "It's only fair to tell you this: in every way that I can imagine, you’re the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen on the earth or the face of the sea.” “Well, really, are you making love to me now?” I was a flimsy de­ fense; in contradiction to his words, she knew that he was not making love. “No man of any sense pretends to know anything about women,” Tonga Dick was saying. “The old Island people drew deadlines past which no woman could come, and those lines were drawn by darkness, and fear. They knew the truth— that it is not possible tor a man to know what things govern a wom­ an. Yet I’ll tell you this: it would be easy for anyone to believe in you, even without understanding you at all.” He was speaking as if from behind a wall. Suddenly Karen Waterson knew what he had meant, and it ac­ counted for the flat sound of words that should have been love-making. A sharp and immediate panic swept her as she understood, all at once and completely, that Richard Wayne knew who she was. She jerked her eyes from hi* face and stood up, bracing herself against the reel of the little schooner. A glance across the face of the sea told her a startling thing, before un­ considered. All that day, since ear­ ly morning, they had been striking straight out from Honolulu into the open Pacific. Had Sign’llicanct In Middle Ages Ç nì.Phillìpr The peculiar figure* constituting THE PAPERH OF PRIVATE the signs of the Zodiac are general- ; Pl'RKEY ly looked upon merely as a curiosity today, but they once were credited Dear Ma— Well I have done a lot of kidding with strange powers. During the fiddle ages the 12 j and squawking in my letters but 1 signs were supposed to influence gess that is ull over now. After human life. As a result each sign I what them double crossing Japs did was connected with a different part there Is no longer no funny side to of the body in addition to being as­ this training and ull I want to do is sociated with various months of the get a crack at them. All the boys year. The Zodiac itself is an imag­ feel die same way. Up to Ute time inary band in the sky within which they heard about them Japs stab­ He the apparent paths of the sun. bing Uncle Sam in the back under u flag of truce 1 gess they ail felt the moon and major planets. same as me Unit the war was too fur Unlike the present calendar which awuy to bother much mid thut will begin the new year 19-12 on ' army training was u puln in January 1, the Babylonian year be­ neck. But it woke us all up gan in April. Because rams were no bugle ever did. sacrificed to the gods during this month, it was associated with Aries, I kind of felt that nobody wood the ram. ever tackle tills country on account of we got two big oceans to depend on and ull that and I gess I never sweated in a manoover without say­ ing to myself thia is the bunk as Hitler wood be crazy to get more trouble on his hands. I never thought that Japan would be even crazier. I j hated the hikes, 1 hated the drills OCTOBER APRIL Artos. thé Ram Libré, thé Haloncé and inspeckshun* and 1 could not | bathe u new crop of corns without burning up Inside. But all of n sud- I den 1 feel different. Even my bun- I ions seem patriotic now. • • • "I think.” she said, "we’d better go back, hadn't we?” There was defeat and admission of defeat in that; but, knowing what sne now knew, she could hope for nothing in the world here, except a means of return. "We’ll be very late into’Honolulu.” It's the same way all through my “A little," Dick said. outfit. Jeeps who have been squawk­ “But if you'll turn now—” ing eight hours a day look like they "The funny thing about it,” he NOVEMBER MAY Txurux. th» Bull Scar pt». th» Scar pt at become fighting men over night. said oddly, "is that we can't turn They know it is not all a lot of fool­ back. At least not yet.” ishness no more and any boy in “You mean—you mean—” camp will attack a tank single hand­ “Don't worry,” Dick said: "there ed now if you just tell him there is isn't anything to worry about. Mean­ a Japanese doll Inside. while—if you'll look across the star­ board bow, you'll see Alakoa—Kar­ en.” As for me personally ma I got a I clear picture of what the country is Alakoa, as seen from this ap­ DECEMBER i up against for the first time and I JUNE proach, rose steeply from the wa­ Stgitttriua. thé ter; the folds of her hills were of a Cenuai. Ih» Tarta» ■ wonder now that I did not get the Archér shadowy and unearthly blue, but the ' right slant long before thl*. I gess rays of the sun, slanting low now, it was just because 1 got snatched struck her tall up-thrusting ridges ■ so sudden from all the comforts of with traceries of red gold. There I civilun life that I didn't see straight. was something terribly appealing ! I was soar over giving up a box about Alakoa as Karen saw it then. I spring mattress, a personal alarm In one way it seemed so little in that clock and the right to do what 1 vast expanse of salt water, the very 1 pleased. But Emperor Hotsy-Togo JULY intensity of whose deep blue seemed j or whatever you call him woke me JANUARY Caacvr, th» Crab to speak of a vital strength, a vast Copricoraut thé Gott . up like nobody's business. 1 am living will which nothing could with­ so soar now that I am sorry 1 stand nor deny. Yet Alakoa rose I ever applauded Japanese tightrope bravely from the heart of the sea. walkers. so tall that it seemed slenderly tall. Tonga Dick stood up, rising lightly This war has all of * sudden be- on one heel instead of two. and . come a great exciting show, ma reached for her hand. When she i It don't seem just like a optical al- did not give it he took her wrist, I lusion no more All the tank* don’t FEBRUARY AUGUST and pulled her to the forward rail, [ seem like they was just a few things A quotiti». thé Lee. eh» Li»» beside the reaching bowsprit W otormoa , being demonstrated by a auto sales- "Of course," he said, "you don't ’ man My rifle witch has just seemed see much of it from here. There's i something I wood like to have car- four thousand feet of rise in those ■ ried for me by a caddy ha* all of a highest hills. The cane fields, the j sudden become my BUDDY! It’s rice paddies, and the little fishing real and human. And my uniform villages are all on the other side.” even when it i* wet and wrinkled "And now what?” she asked. now look* like the grande»t uniform “We'll land in another hour,” he anybody could ever climb into. What SEPTEMBER MARCH told her. hat come over me I don’t know for Vir