Adventure Magazine Cover, February 3, 1921 — page 180: what you’re looking at

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

174 They passed the last tumbled-down Mexican jacals and followed an informal road that meandered over a gentle rise to the Val Verde cemetery. At the gate of the wire enclosure the judge paused. “Mike, I got a proposition for you.” Mike hung his elbows on the top wire and gloomed moodily over the purple and gold plains, where the early heat-devils were shimmering above the mesquite and the cactus. “Propose, judge. I’m a-listening.”’ “This here paper of mine, the Daily Dove, that’s been coming out hit and miss as you may’ve noticed; it needs an editor. The one I had left me kinda sudden three-four days before you came.”’ “All right, judge.” “T’m on:”” “Wait a minute, Mike.” The judge opened the gate and they * entered the little graveyard. The old man pointed a solemn finger to three wooden headboards, one freshly painted white, one a mellow gray, and one weather-beaten and undecipherable. “Young man, there sleep three of your predecessors!”’ “Well, judge, there’s room for another between that end and the fence. I'll take a chance.” “But quick and accurate shooting is the only way a man can hold down this here job. You a good shot?” ‘Never toted a gun in my life.” “Dad burn it, [never thought the Yankees were that short on a man’s education.” “Judge, what’s this job worth?” “Well, if you’re worth anything to any- body except the undertaker at the end of the week, you'll be worth twenty dollars to me.” “From sudden and unprovided death, O Lord, deliver us,’ prayed Mike laughingly. “Let’s get back to town and start editing.” At the door of the Daily Dove, Judge Goode fumbled for the keys in the tail- pocket of his frock coat. “By gracious, sir, I almost kinder hate to see you start. It ain’t too Slate yet to back out.” “Tm all out of backing-out-juice,” re- sponded Mike stubbornly. The judge sighed resignedly. “They’s a printer should be here, but I reckon he’s out somewhere h’isting a few. Mike brightened. Adventure He’s leaded and he thinks Doc Hermitage is his only cure. You want me to go over to Clabe Terril’s and choose you out a nice little gun?” “You forget, friend, that for generations the Winthrops have wielded the pen, and the Connollys the shillalah and the half- brick. I’m one of the fools who believe, as the advertisement says, that you need a hammer to hammer the hammer. Id be as helpless with a gun as a two-year-old.” “You certainly are sot in your ways, by gracious— Just a parting word about the policy of the Daily Dove. Fearless and uncompromising is the idee. Them that set in high places has the same chance of being showed up as them that set in low places; if they’re up to any monkey-shines. And bear in mind, Mike, that a right smart dog-fight on the main street of Val Verde, well writ up, is a sight more important and readable to our subscribers than a passel of anarchists chasing the Grand Duke of Russia through Moscow in his shirt-tail.” Mike took his bearings in the office, wandered about in the press-room, spoke a few well-chosen words to the printer, who had returned via the back door, decided that he would leave this end of the business to the victim of printer’s poisoning, and returned to his battered flat-topped desk. “Oh, Lord, if father could see where his erring. son has landed!” With the thought of his father there came the realization that he had one thing in common with the citizens of Val Verde. The sons of Erin and the sons of the solid South both followed the Democratic mule until death us do part. “J shall write a Democratic editorial,” he decided with satisfaction. “Walloping the tariff is always safe.”’ And wallop it he did with Boston purity of language and Hibernian strength of idea. “Thank goodness the tariff doesn’t tote a gun,” he chuckled, when, having handed his maiden editorial to the printer, he clapped on his hat, and singing under his breath as contentedly as a white leghorn hen about to lay an egg, he struck out on the main street for the gulch by the cemetery. The town loafers eyed him commiser- atingly as a brand about to be thrown to the burning, for the word had already gone out about his new editorial position. He pictured these lean, wind-bitten sons of Texas discussing his sudden demise over CORICLOO S (C@