A REAL LIFE ROMANCE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 53, 11 June 1910, Page 10

A REAL LIFE ROMANCE

Hi cour,c. everyone e1.,, 1,:., even been io a well-regulated melodrama knows how the ragged hero save- the heroine fi'iim the eruel. omii--hinu 'train, the >awniill, or the dynamite bomb win,..]] her father's enemies have plaeed in dreadful proximity. They know how the noble stage father takes the rescuer's hand and says something like this: "What if yon are in rags? Half my fortune is yours 'because you have saved my daughter's life." Now, in real life', in The Slate of Texas. U.S.A.. a tramp rescued a little girl, the daughter of a millionaire, out of heart-felt gratitude, gave him half his Valere cattle-range, valued at 1,111.10,000 dollars. The millionaire ranchman—squatter, as he would be called in Australia—is named Colonel Jennings. His wife died some years a so, and since then he has centred all his affections on his seven-year-old daughter, Helene. She can ride and shoot as becomes the daughter of a Texan cattle king.

A few weeks ago the child went cvoivn to the tiny station on the Southern Pacific railway, which crosses her father's property. The Galveston express, from El Paso, was just about due, and after it comes the slow local train tnat stops at Valere station. Just how little Miss Helene got on the track no tme seemed to know. But she got there just as the express came thundering along, and the child, paralysed by fear, stood stock stijl between the rails. Just as the engine appeared to he upon her a man raced from a clump of hushes beside the track, darted on to the rails, and, catching the gir] in h.\s arms, hurled himself and her into safety. Another half-minute, .perhaps less, and both would have been killed. The man raised himself, scratched and bleeding. The child was entirely unhurt.

"Come with us up to the ranch," said some cowlboys, who had witnessed the brave deed. "Colonel Jennings will want to see you. That girl is the apple of his eve."

"Oh ; no," said the rescuer. ''You see I'm just a tramp and this couldn't hurt my clothes much. You see I wasn't risking much when I jumped to save the child. Now I guess I'll travel along." "You'll not," said one of the cowboys, "Why, the Colonel'd never forgive 'us if we didn't bring you with us." Just then a freight train went by, slowing up a ibit as it passed the Valere station. With a laugh the tramp swung himself on the last car and disappeared. Colonel Jennings, as soon 1 as he heard the story," started off with a party to search for his daughter's rescuer, f hey hunted for three days and then came across him in a ibush camp, the other side of El Paso. The ranchman persuaded him to go back with him. "My name is "Frank Strome," said the tramp. "I've been on the road for 15 yeans. We lived in Chicago and I was fairly well off. Then my wife died and there didn't seem to be any use ot anything. I don't want anything for saving the little girl. Colonel. For a few days at the ranch Jennings watched Strome. He found him to be well educated and capable. A great friendship sprang up .between the former tramp and .the ranchman's little daughter.

It was last month that Colonel Jennings made up his mind. "Strome," he said, ''what do you think this Valere range is worth?" "Oh, a lot, I guess," said Strome. "It's worth a clean million," said Jennings. 'And look at this. This is something I got for you in Galveston yesterday."

Strome took the piece of paiper he was handed. He almost fainted. It was a deed in his name for half the Valere range, a little gift of half a million dollars.

"My little girl's worth a lot more than that to me." said Jennings. "I guess you and I had better go in partnership for a time. I'll show you the ropes." And now the tramp is living (says the Xew York American) at the ranch house, well on the way towards becoming a milionaire.