Adventure, August 3, 1919 — page 38: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

eB = 28 _ Adventure I’m goin’ to send that note to Campbell again, by you. Savvy?” The engineer thought of his wife, his ranch and all the other elements which claimed his attention. “But how can I leave here?” he : “Take your wife,” grunted Dolan. ‘The trip’ll do her good. Weather’s cool now. Take Bob Lange and Phil Johnson with you. Take the pris’ner to the sheriff. I’'jl deputize you. It might be a good idea for you to git acquainted down below, anyhow.” “Why?” “Oh, I dunno,” said the boss vaguely. “Tt may come in handy. You're a per- fesh’nul man. Helps business. Them two hired men can ’tend to your ranch. No trouble possible now. Finch is sick in bed.” Carlton felt that he was being wafted along in the tide of Dolan’s will, playing a part in some larger drama than he suspected, with the boss pulling the strings. And yet he went. Dolan’s logic was good, and Carlton was impelled by curiosity to visit the county-seat, anyhow. Thus on the next morning, with his khaki- clad wife astride a big black horse, Carlton started out at the head of his cavalcade. Under the engineer’s khaki Norfolk jacket a short-barreled Colt nestled in a holster. Somewhere in a pocket of the girl’s skirt was a little two-barreled derringer, but the other two travelers wore franker weapons, swinging over the hips of their overalls. Only the silent prisoner was unarmed, The party was ready for anything. But nothing happened. No skulking figures lurked in ambush in the long, sunny vistas of sage-brush and greasewood, nor in the rocks and washed-out canons of the foot-hills, nor in the miles of mesquite and yucca-palms. Cool winds made the trip easy, and they ambled along as if on a picnic, taking theig time and putting up at scattered ranch-houses at night. Even the prisoner caused no trouble. The others were armed and had better horses, and during the rests they stood guard over him. They arrived at the county-seat late in the morning, heading for the county jail behind the ramshackle old court-house, upon whose top stood a flagpole and a decorative wooden statue of the period of 1870, once chastely attractive but now grimy and lacking a nose and two hands. Horses and buggies went up and down the unpaved a aba“. * ‘ * a | sare TA | main street. Others were alined along the ; hitching-racks. Wagons arrived with goods from near-by ranches, winding pasta Yamp: ; mine freight-team standing in front of a blacksmith shop, with the leaders of its fourteen big mules jingling bells from their i collars at every movement. | Cow-punchers rode about the street or Joafed among the season’s remaining flies where the board sidewalk jutted into the roadway. The dingy old glass fronts of the : busy little stores advertised the wares ina ~ way, but the main attractions were sacks of oats and bales of hay lying by each open doof and displaying the latest market : quotations on signs done crudely in lamp- black, The whole town was a living contrast. It was dreamy and bustling, civilized and half-savage, modern and bucolic, as if the new West and old West were being intro- ; duced to each other here. A tor, toting many weapons and wearing the long hair of a Buffalo Bill, led his two burros up to a store and mopped his broad- yy oo Om brimmed sombrero. : A man in gray business clothes and a r derby hat went past him into the same store. P A cow-puncher in white angora “chaps,” displaying guns and cartridge-belt, doffed . his hat to a schoolma’am in white, while a yelping dag-fight around the corner brought forth denizens from four sal _ including two brisk Eastern commercial travelers and three Indians wearing giddy red blankets. To Carlton and the girl it seemed like a return to the outside world. They did not realize what hermits they had been in their little valley. Here the roadway had trees— actual umbrella and locust trees, while up above there wasn’t a tree for miles, except in Carlton’s own valley. Here there was a garden or two, with little white-painted , houses nestling among them. The sight made them realize the community feeling F they had lacked. The party registered at the old-fashioned wooden hotel set within wide verandas, and then Carlton and Bob Lange brought the prisoner to the county jail, where the lean-faced, mustached sheriff recovered from his surprize, put the prisoner behind bars and shot a string of questions at > _F Carlton. The engineer told him a straightforw story about the prisoner’s confession |