Adventure Magazine Cover, August 18, 1921 — page 104: what you’re looking at

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

98 “It won't,” he repeated firmly. “Chief Injun Rubber certainly has wild-man elec- tricity beat to a fade-away. With a pair of gum-shoes on you could kick a thunder- cloud from here to Christmas Eve and never start acorn. If you had a pair of rubber gloves you could grab a flash of lightning by the tail and snap it off. “In the islands of Humtiddlyhiti where the rubber-plants sprout in great confusion they have what the dome-brows call “cir- cular lightning.” It starts straight but gets doubled up agin the rubber-trees and runs back again, and so round and round. A fire-insurance agent in them topical isles can’t keep himself in toothpicks. I know because I’ve done tried it. Have I said enough to convince you all of the mar- vealious properties of rubber? I guess I sure have. Well, then, was any of you fel- lers ever in Pecos County, Arizona?” Van Doorn nodded. “T was—born there.” “Was any of you ever in Sand Hills, Wyoming?” “le,” said Long John. “Married there— two or three times, I misremember which. Did you ever meet my second there by any chance? A Sioux squaw by the name of Bluebell.” “Sure,” said the stranger without turning a hair. ‘“‘Knew her well and she ain’t re- pining you any, pardner; she’s bettered her- self, she says. She’s married to a greaser now with one eye and no morals, who steals horses when he ain’t in the calaboose for murder.” “Which is where you met him, I sup- pose?” said Long John. The stranger nodded. ‘Correct. I was acting prison chaplain at the time, doping out up-lift to the stripey denizens. But, say, was any of you ever in Pine [orks, New Mex.?” “Nope,” said Long John. ‘None of us. You’ve done touched our one weak spot. You’re safe to pitch us any yarn you like about that ’yer place. Has the dawgs got two tails there? And does the cows graze backward to keep the sand outer their eyes? Proceed Brother Ananias, proceed.” “WE WAS propounding lightning in all its branches before you horned in with you bigamistical remem- brances, Brother Brigham Young,’ the stranger observed coolly. ‘Well, this ’yer Adventure Pine Forks is the son of a gun of a country for lightning. They have atmospherical bust-ups down thataway which make these northern flimflams look like a five-cent squib. “Now there was an old feller domiciling them parts by the name of Obediah Eph- raim Tennessee Jones. His face was like a cokernut husk for hair, he wore overalls Sun- days and week days and a fur cap Winter and Summer. He bached in a little dobe in the Sierra Guadalupe foot-hills with a patch of corn on one side, a patch of pump- kins on t’other side and a patch of cactus back and front. “The kind-hearted cattle-men uster let him run a few sheep on any bit of public range their steers wouldn’t look at, and he had one old sorrel mare which same was the apple of his eve and her name was Mari- gold. At the time I’m telling of, howsom- ever, the mare was not as springy as she had been twenty-nine years before. When- ever she moved she creaked that loud that she set the whole of Sanguijuela City’s teeth on edge and strong men’d rush out of buildings, tears in their eyes, cans in their hands and beg old Obed to slip a drop of oil into her and stop the racket. “By’mby, not content with having the finest collection of spavins, curbs, wind- galls, capped-hocks, ring and side-bones in the district, the old plug feels she can’t be happy till she’s got corns as well. So she wishes ’em on herself and presently is trapesing around as tender on her toes as a N’Yark policeman in his sister’s boots. This worried Obed all to a frazzle, and he’s all over the country asking learned folk what he’d better do about it. One day he meets up with a horse-wrangler from a cat- tle outfit and he puts the puzzle to him. “Get her shod,” says the wrangler, ‘‘with ‘ubber-pads in between her shoes and her hoofs. That’ll protect her tender soles over the rough going. “Obed thanks the guy, gets the job did rithtaway and presently old Marigold is plunking her feet down as solid as if they was made of cast iron and New Mexico was built of butter. ’Bout this time, business being slack, the real-estate operators, mine- owners, bunco-steerers, missionaries and other leading industrials of Sanguijuela City thinks they’d love to attract a few Eastern capitalists into our fair country and separate ’em from their bank-rolls. They done talked the matter over with the C© MICLOOKS CO 5}