Winning Kings

Winning Kings Captain Langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth chapter: "Upon my soul!" cried the sultana of the inflammable name. "You're a corker! Do you mean to say, Miss Pat, that this buccaneer is the lady from the rural districts you were spouting about?",“Indeed there was,” was the answer. “The Indians were the first irrigators. The Pueblo or village Indians, as they were called, while it was in a crude way, irrigated all the land on which they raised corn. They were the first settlers of the Rio Grande Valley. We know this is so, for one of the Spanish Conquistadores, Coronado by name, wrote it down in the record of his travels. When he marched from the south into what is now New Mexico in search of the gold which was the aim and hope of all the adventurers of his time, he found the Indians irrigating the land by means of crude ditches dug with their primitive implements. This was the first record we have, but it has been established beyond any reasonable doubt that such irrigation as he found was practiced here by this river that flows below us long before Columbus discovered America. The theory is that in all probability irrigation along the Rio Grande was in vogue even before the Egyptians used the waters of the Nile for the same purpose. When the first Spanish settlers came along, and later the Americans, they adopted the same methods of making the ground productive as had the Indians. All we have done as time went on is to improve the general principles taken from the savages. Of course, as we made better tools, we have been able to build larger ditches and so increase the area of fertile land far beyond the dreams of the Indians.”,Jerry recognized the type at once. It was a desert rat, one of those old men who, lured by the dream of gold, haunt the desert, usually alone. Years pass over their heads in the search which never ends. At last the gold mine that they will find some day becomes merely the excuse not the aim of the unending pilgrimage. The desert, the loneliness is claiming them. If they found a mine worth the developing, probably they would sell it and blow in the proceeds and be off again as soon as possible. They have been too long away from civilization for anything to surprise them. The desert is mysterious, the loneliness makes everything possible.,"I will tell you exactly," said Lucy, and the Admiral bent his ear. "It was a very fine morning and I was awake early, and I thought I would walk as far as the pier and back, intending to be home before you read prayers. I left Mamie behind, as she has a trick of running into the water, and she swims so badly that I am afraid she will one day be drowned. On the way I met the red-haired hunchback whom I had seen about Old Harbour Town at times. There was something in his manner that made me think he was making for Old Harbour House. He saluted me very respectfully, and gave me a letter written in pencil. In my excitement and alarm I did not know what I did with it. If I put it in my pocket it was not there when I felt. It was signed by Walter Lawrence, who wrote that Captain Acton had come on[Pg 373] board the Minorca, had stumbled over something the name of which I forget, and fallen a few feet into the hold, which lay open. Mr Lawrence believed that Captain Acton was not dangerously hurt, but he was in a very bad way and in great pain, and he had asked Mr Lawrence to write to his daughter Lucy and acquaint her with the accident and beg her immediate presence, but she must on no account make the disaster known to her aunt or to any other member of the household.,The man Jerry had addressed as Link got up and gravely extended his hand to Bob.，No one dared to answer, but all followed, in silent fear, the marquis, who ascended the great stair-case, and entered the gallery. 'Unlock that door,' said he, pointing to one on the left, 'and we will soon unhouse these ghosts.' Robert applied the key, but his hand shook so violently that he could not turn it. 'Here is a fellow,' cried the marquis, 'fit to encounter a whole legion of spirits. Do you, Anthony, take the key, and try your valour.'，"Then you didn't go out much in Ireland?" she says, thinking it more graceful to change the conversation at this point.，"Are you going to promulgate that doctrine at the Suffrage League?" he asked, beginning to turn the knob.Patricia, who denounced recklessness in others, flew to meet him with loud reproaches, regardless of the thronging crowd of undergraduates that were nimbly springing off after him.

"Tell me about your mother," she says, folding her hands easily in her lap. "I mean,—what is she like? Is she cold, or proud, or stand-off?" There is keen anxiety in her tone.,When we are gone,,Doatie and Geoffrey have walked to a distant slit. Nolly is gazing vacantly through another, trying feebly to discern the landscape beyond. Lady Rodney is on thorns. They are all listening to what Mona is going to say next.,“Here’s to our mothers,,"I shall not be disappointed. I have read all about it," returns he, enthusiastically. Then, as though the thought has just struck him, he says,—,“I hear they call you the heir of Kingthorpe,” said Grandmother, “and I believe you are going to be just like the old master.”,"Oh, no," says Mona, shocked at this interpretation of her manner. "I did not mean all that; only I really did not require it; at least"—truthfully—"not much. And, besides, a song is not like a gold chain; and you are quite different from them; and besides, again,"—growing slightly confused, yet with a last remnant of courage,—"there is no reason why you should give me anything. Shall I"—hurriedly—"sing something else for you?","Well, Dido can do nothing," said Maurice, in a jesting tone, "unless you want her to forbid the banns.",MY, oh, my! Tomorrow would be the day before Christmas and Johnny Blossom hadn’t thought about a single present yet, for any one. He would have to hurry now, though after all he wasn’t in such a bad fix, for he had some money—fifty cents, in fact—and that was surely enough and to spare.,"Birds of exquisite plumage, and beyond all forms of known grace in flight.","You are very much to be admired," says his mother, in an abominable tone.,One thing was sure. After what he had seen he could no longer pretend even to himself that Jerry was not mixed up somehow in what certainly seemed to be a disgraceful business. He could put no other explanation on it. Although it was hard to think that the boy who had shared the adventure of the Labyrinth with him could be guilty of anything really wrong, he realized the time had come when he could not let anything but facts sway him. Jerry was on the other side without a doubt. Most probably he was the connecting link between the cattlemen who wished to stir up trouble for the dam by means of the Mexicans, and the leaders of the Mexicans themselves..