Adventure Magazine Cover, December 18, 1919 — page 182: what you’re looking at

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

A) a hes. ha arts Se : ; Aas We roe 4 168 after cloud of tobacco smoke. Switser soon learned that he was being thus closely watched and he flared up hotly— “T sure hope you'll know me next time you see me!” “T will, all right,” was the easy reply. “What's your name, son?” ‘None o’ your business. What’s yours ?” “Bud Ketcham.” “Mine’s Cain’t Ketch ’Em,” quirked Connie. “say, you've got an awful foot, I’m goin’ to call you ‘Number Ten Boo =f 7 “And I’m goin’ to call you ‘Rat o’ the Rancho.’”’ Connie darkened even more. Those rat nicknames annoyed him. “If I was as big as you do you know what I’d do?” he asked suddenly. “I’d beat you up, that’s what. Say,“ Number Ten Boots, did you ever steal cattle?” “Steal cattle!” It was Ketcham’s turn to darken and he certainly did it. “Who says I stole cattle?” Switser took a parting puff at his cigaret and deftly snapped it straight through the open doorway that led to the living-room, “Bull’s-eye!” he observed. “Oh, no- body says it. I just wondered. Bring me another smoke-stick, Number Ten Boots.” Bud Ketcham rose with not very much grace and went for it. Rancher Tom met him at the table. The doctor had gone, “Another cigaret already?” Alden frowned. “Not on your life, bud—no more until morning. Better stay with him until midnight and don’t leave him - then if he ain’t restin’ easy and sleepin’ sound. I’m in the left front bedroom, if you want me. Good-night.” — He limped away. Ketcham went back to Switser’s bedside and sat down. “Rancher says there ain’t nothin’ -doin’,” he told Connie, “until broad day- >») light in the mornin’. “The big rube!” ‘C—_—”? “Aw, shet up,” “You make me tired. You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Rat. done several things for you that I wouldn’t ha’ done.” The little crook sneered. cried Switser. Ketcham broke in, » Rancher. Adventure “Why, Number Ten! Oh, ‘dear—and you lovin’ me the way you do! It’s awful touchin’. What was it he done, anyway ?”’ UD Ketcham bent forward, his elbows on his knees. “You hit them fool sorrels when you was drivin’ through the gate—rémem- ber? They jumped and smashed the left front wheel on that rotten snag pine; ark then they hung the left hind wheel against the tree and pulled it right down on you and the buckboard, smashin’ it to splinters. One o’ them sorrels, Brim- stone, the worst one, he got all tangled in the wire o’. the fence and fell down. There he laid, kickin’ twenty kicks to the second and hittin’ the tree half an inch from your head every time. You was layin’ under the tree-with blood runnin’ out your mouth. - “So what does Rancher do?” the cow- man continued. “He runs in and the hoss soaks him half a dozen licks that would ha’ busted your pecan-shell head. It sure looked like certain death and I don’t yet see why it wasn’t. He’s bruised blue and black all-over. Notice how he walked? Then he had to take out that gun Bill Maddon put on him and shoot the Brimstone hoss to save you. Why, Rat o’ the Rancho, that hogs, low- down mean as he was, was wo tha heap more’n ou! “Then Rancher, abe does he do? He lifts that tree off o’ you, carries you here and sends me cuttin’ the buck after the doctor. And that pine snag was some heavy, too, Rat. I tried to lift it myself wien I'd got back from Dale, and I sure couldn’t! All o’ them things he done for you, Rat, when it was your own fault. Now you got the nerve: to call him a ‘big rube!’ It ain’t right, by jingoes, it ain’t right!” Connie Switser’s eyes searched the heavy, copper-brown countenance of his temporary nurse for some sign of a lie. He found none. Ketcham had given a modest enough account of the accident. Switser turned his face from the yel- low-flamed lamp and was silent for a long time., It was a strange thing, an almost unbelievable thing, a thing un- heard of in all his life before, that a man whom he hardly knew had shot to death