Adventure, February 1917 — page 175: what you’re looking at

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

Author of “Riding Steel” HE telephone onthe desk of the chief deputy sheriff of Los An- geles County rang sharply. He reached out a hand for the phone without stopping his writing and called his “hello”? into the transmitter while he went on dotting and crossing and punctuating the letter he was writing to a little woman up at Camp Baldy with the children. The first sentence after he had assured his caller at the other end of the wire that this was the sheriff’s office, brought his body upright with a jerk and the pen drop- ped across the written page, making a blot just under the words “nothing doing now” which he had just written. “Where? Any one hurt? What? Say that again. Not Jim Lacy? Which way did they go? How much? We'll have a posse up there in the shortest possible time. Two of them. Good-by.” _ “What’s doing, Dick?” called a deputy from the outer office. “Holdup at Saugus, Jim Lacy killed, S. P. train robbed, nineteen thou’ in bills from Wells-Fargo, six thou’ in gold. Mail not touched. Band of four, headed up into the Acton Mountains. Last seen they were mounted and hiking to beat ——!” A tall man in snuff-brown clothes who had been sitting by the window looking out across Temple Street got up and walked over to the chief deputy’s desk. His face was lean and his jaws shut hard, making the muscles swell out like little balls at the base of each jaw. His hat was pulled low over his forehead and his eyes were always seeing things off at either side. “Did you say Jim Lacy is dead?” he asked in a perfectly level tone. -His face did not move as he spoke, his lips hardly showing any movement and his voice was low, but clear. : “Yes, they got him. He was messenger for Wells-Fargo, you know.” “Yes, I know. Any description of the men?” = “fA little. One is short with a scar across his lip that his mustache partly hides and. limps in his off leg. One is about six feet, thin, with a long nose and the left forefin- ger gone at the second joint. They were not masked. The other two were ordinary Mexicans. The short man is dark, with black hair, the other sandy.” “Stub Leavitt and Coyote Parsons. Any marks about the greasers?”’ “Nothing but a puckered mark on the side of the biggest one’s nose. The con- stable who phoned said some /of the men claimed it was on the left side and some on. - the right.” _ “Tt’s on both.” “How in blazes do you know?”’ 173 “T put it there. Twenty-two. Talked nasty to ten-year-old girl.” COMIC OO SAE) / ; J . nt AS. ty \ Pa 4 ae Pee. |