Adventure Magazine Cover, February 3, 1921 — page 127: what you’re looking at

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

Hooley’s Hen Hastener they don’t get their money back either. And he’s got a yip-house, too, in the base- ment, if anybody has a fit and hollers. Old Lady Mahaffy stood at the winder once and screeched at some folks passin’ in an auto- mobile, and Doc sent f’r her folks to take her away. “Tf any nut here feels like yellin’, Doc reads him a chapter out of his book, ‘Worry.’ Then Doc sells him the book for six dollars. The nut tries to read a chapter o’ ‘Worry,’ and he goes plumb asleep, and then he wakes up the next mornin’ ca’m and peace- ful and goes tg buildin’ fence f’r Doc, or somethin’.”’ “Gosh, look over at my place,” pursued Mr. Watts-Wright absently. ‘Fences all down and weeds growing up. Then look at Doc’s place. He’s been trying to buy our old family home ever since my old man died, but the family would rise in their graves if I sold out to him.” ‘A half-dozen of Doc’s husky bats could shingle y’r house and paint the barn and clean up the yard in ho time. Sunshine, fresh air, plenty o’ work, and read a chapter o ‘Worry’ a day, and——” “Say,” put in Watts-Wright, as if illu- mined by a gleam that had been struggling under the murky interest that held him strangely to Mr. Fraley. “Do you know you look remarkably like me?” : Mr. Fraley considered: “Well, I’m kind 0” more stooped in the shoulders than you.” “And | you’re some years older than me—— ‘cual I been takin’ Nature’s bammy cure. Mebbe that’s why I look that way. “You got the same features and hair, only a little thin!” exclaimed Mr. Watts-Wright eagerly. “And pretty near my build!” “Doggone if you ain’t pretty near right, Mr. Wright. And I understand you’re about the richest young man around here, too.” “Oh, that isn’t it. I just came back here unknown to any one after six years abroad - and found the old town about the same— river still runs under Main Street bridge and Doc Freihut still bullin’ the town trustees into handin’ him everything that isn’t nailed down. I always was sore on that infernal old ‘don’t worry’ buzzard, and I’d like to get him. And especially since he’s got poor old Dippy ee a in his buzz-shop. {21 “Bill McGuire, Yale, Engineering; the class with me. We hooked out of college together and went into service together. And we came back together, only Bill, the Dip, went in for commerical aviation, bemg that he was one of the big aces Over There. And then four months ago he took an awful spill up in Syracuse at some county fair and woke up a trifle woggy.” Young Mr. Watts-Wright bent his swag- ger-stick a bit and looked anxiously at Mr. Fraley. “Say,” he went on meaningly, “are you getting all this?” “Go ahead,” retorted Mr. Fraley. “I ain’t crazy except about hens; that’s why Doc keeps me away from hjs chickens.” “Well, there’s no hens in this, but there’s a chicken. She’s about nineteen and five feet, four “Hold on!” yelled Mr. Fraley, arising from the stone fence agitatedly. “That was what Hooley said!” “Hooley?” “Oh, Lordy!” Mr. Fraley sat down and glanced back to the big house under the trees where a patient or two and an attend- ant could be seen. “Hooley said I could raise ’em that way, but he’s a liar!” “Who—? Hooley?” gasped Mr. Watts- Wright. “Who’s Hooley?” “Listen,” said Mr. Fraley mysteriously. “T can’t tell these nuts on this place about Hooley because none of ’em’ll listen. But listen He came closer and took young Mr. Watts-Wright by the lapel. ““‘Listen—I was an honest, well-meanin’ sort of rube raisin’ chickens four miles east of Dogwood post-office when I gets mixed up with this Hooley. Hooley—H. Hooley, lock-box 234, Yonkers, N. Y. Get that?” “Sure, I get that. But let go my sleeve!’’ “°T’s’ll right! Hooley advertises some dope that’d mean millions in chickens. He gets me in correspondence tryin’ to under- stand his system and I digs up a hundred dollars in that chicken-raisin’ course. D’ye hear me? ~ Hooley says there’s a great waste o time and nervous: energy about hens. Hens, he says, can do more bluffin’ and stallin’ about their durn eggs than any crit- ters alive. He wrote me that the amount of cackling they do over one cussed egg and then the amount of time they stand around doin’ nothing is why eggs is so high. He sells me some dope that he guaranteed’d COnmmMicloookxs (C@