B M Bower

The Lure of the Dim Trails B M Bower

"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.