ell regarded him as a rock of integrity. As a matter of fact, his
genuine exploits were quite as sensational as those of his manufacture.

When, after supper, Blaze had hitched a pair of driving-mules to his
buckboard, preparatory to showing his guest the glories of Jonesville,
Dave said:

"Paloma's getting mighty pretty."

"She's as pretty as a blue-bonnet flower," her father agreed. "And she
runs me around something scandalous. I 'ain't got the freedom of a
peon." Blaze sighed and shook his shaggy head. "You know me, Dave; I
never used to be scared of nobody. Well, it's different now. She rides
me with a Spanish bit, and my soul ain't my own." With a sudden
lightening of his gloom, he added: "Say, you're going to stay right
here with us as long as you're in town; I want you to see how I
cringe." In spite of Blaze's plaintive tone it was patent that he was
inordinately proud of Paloma and well content with his serfdom.

Jonesville proved to be a typical Texas town of the modern variety, and
altogether different to the pictured frontier village. There were no
one-storied square fronts, no rows of saloons with well-gnawed
hitching-rails, no rioting cowboys. On the contrary, the larger
buildings were of artificial stone, the sidewalks of concrete, and the
store fronts of plate-glass. Arc-lights shed a bluish-white glare over
the wide street-crossings, and all in all the effect was much like that
of a prosperous, orderly Northern farming town.

Not that Jonesville would have filled an eye for beauty. It was too new
and crude and awkward for that. It fitted loosely into its clothes, for
its citizens had patterned it with regard for the future, and it
sprawled over twice its legitimate area. But to its happy founder it
seemed well-nigh perfect, and its destiny roused his maddest
enthusiasm. He showed Dave the little red frame railroad station,
distinguished in some mysterious way above the hundred thousand other
little red frame railroad stations of the identical size and style; he
pointed out the Odd Fellows Hall, the Palace Picture Theater, with its
glaring orange lights and discordant electric piano; he conducted Law
to the First National Bank, of which Blaze was a proud but somewhat
ornamental director; then to the sugar-mill, the ice-plant, and other
points of equally novel interest.

Everywhere he went, Jones was hailed by friends, for everybody seemed
to know him and to want to shake his hand.

"SOME town and