IN SUNNY MEXICO

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 23, 28 January 1928, Page 21

IN SUNNY MEXICO

"A White Man's Chance." By Johnston M'Culley. New York: G. Howard Watt. Few novelists can maintain the heroic vein with increasing interest to the reader, but Mr. M'Culley starts off at high pressure and keeps calling in additional characters to sit on the safety valve. Most Americans have a humorous eye on Spanish customs and manners. He makes his Mexican characters most amusing, but it can readily be seen that he writes of what he knows and the many fine traits of Spanish folk are not omitted. Humour vies with romance in the presentation of a hero who seems coo good to be true, but who improves with every chapter. Dorothy Charlton, a beautiful heiress and orphan, lives with Roberta, an American, who has bought out one of the historic old Spanish haciendas, and is farming it scientifically, surrounded chiefly by other Americans, who are humbly served by the original inhabitants. The purchasing centre is Quebrada, chiefly noted for the emptiness and squalor of its streets and the impalpability of its all pervading dust. Into Quebrada rides Don .Jose, respendant, youthful, and very much alive. Smothered in silverware, an immaculate dandy, he makes enemies and friends with equal facility, and in an afternoon had a light, caused by the brutality of Lopez, Koberts's superintendonte, to his horse, fallen promptly in love with Dorothy, in Quebrada on a charitable mission, and started a deadly feud with Hankins, an almost excellent American running a bogus mine, to whom Dorothy is engaged. Don Jose is no sluggard. He visits the Roberta's hacienda next day, letting it be thought he is a descendant of the original owners, and is made thoroughly welcome. On the way home he is waylaid by Lopez and another peon, and comes well out of that only to be accused of a murder in Quebrada, which, by circumstantial evidence, and his bloodstained condition, he committed without doubt to the Magistrate. Escaping by sheer bluff and pluck, Don Jose, between slipping sticks on the wheels of Han kins's love chariot and fighting most of the rest of the inhabitants, who think he is a Government spy, and whose slothful life he has sadly disturbed, has a busy time, and stumbles on a pretty plot. Dorothy gradually succumbs to his merry humour, courage, and graces, and at times regrets that he is a "greaser." It seems that she loses her fortune unless her lover is approved by New York trustees she has never seen, and it is gradually borne on her, chiefly by comparisons with Jose, that Hankins lacks nearly every manly quality. Hankins says Jose is just like any other greaser, and is due to "blow up and bust.". This happens, but not at all as expected by Hankins. Excellent characters are Valentino, an ancient Spanish servant, who adores this dashing hidalgo as worthy of the vanished glories of the time of his own youth, and the magistrado, thorough-faced rascal. This is a whirlwind story, the exciting climax having the charm of the unexpected.