



Produced by Simon Page





THE LURE OF THE DIM TRAILS

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!"

"Follow the fashion then--if you must write. Get out of your pink tea
and orchid atmosphere, and take your heroines out West--away out, beyond
the Mississippi, and let them be kidnapped. Or New Mexico would do."

"New Mexico is also beyond the Mississippi, I believe," Thurston hinted.

"Perhaps it is. What I mean is, write what the public wants, since you
don't relish failure. Why don't you do things about the plains? It
ought to be easy, and you were born out there somewhere. It should come
natural."

"I have," Thurston sighed. "My last rejection states that the local
color is weak and unconvincing. Hang the local color!" The foot-rest
suffered again.

Reeve-Howard was getting into his topcoat languidly, as he did
everything else. "The thing to do, then," he drawled, "is to go out and
study up on it. Get in touch with that country, and your local color
will convince. Personally though, I like those little society skits you
do--"

"Skits!" exploded Thurston. "My last was a four-part serial. I never did
a skit in my life."

"Beg pardon-which is more than you did after accusing my studies of
having untidy hair. Don't look so gl