Adventure, August 1917 — page 117: what you’re looking at

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

Old Wade Speaks a Parable told him to go home to Ma, and study to be a preacher. Measles came back to us sober. Old Wade smiles, and says: “It’s four-thirty p.m., Measles. If yer has finished all yer business affairs, I guess we had better hit the trail fer the Valley. Some folks gets along better where they don’t meet so many men.” ba WE HAD been three days on the oJ trail after leaving MRandsburg. => Measles had sometimes mumbled replies when we had asked him direct ques- tions, but his experience with Sob had sunk in deep, and he seemed unable to rally | to his usual, good-natured, former self. For two days we had been struggling through a storm. And such a storm. Only those who have experienced a sand-storm in the desert can form an idea of its horrors— of its awfulness. Here, where the sun usually holds sway over everything, burning, scorching, blister- ing, now is an atmosphere turned to a yellow blur with the whirling, cutting, throat- parching sand and alkali. Landmarks are blotted out, trails are obliterated, sand hills are leveled and carried on with hot winds to be piled up at other points, to in a day create new sand hills—yes, at times, moun- tains of sand. One can not breathe with-. out seeming to inhale into mouth, throat and lungs the acrid, stifling sand. The throat fills with the burning mass. The eyes are inflamed, bloodshot, unde- pendable. The flinty particles seem to cut through clothing and irritate theskin. The dried, cut skin of face and hands tells too plainly the force by which these particles are impelled, and the inflamed, burning skin wherever exposed is irritated by the alkali dust which is ever present here. To go forward is to travel aimlessly, for no man can see sufficient distance ahead to distinguish landmarks. Tostruggle against such storm, is death, sure and certain, for human endurance can not successfully com- bat this giant of the desert. This had been our experience for two days, and all through this pelting, choking experi- ence, Measles had been one with us in all its attendant labors, but he had offered never a word. Icame upon him once when he was pushing and urging one of the burros toward the rest of the bunch. His eyes were too full of sand for him to notice me, 115 and I overheard him communing with the beast. “Hunch along,” I heard him yell. ‘Move, yer hump-backed lump of sin. MaybeIam a candy-date fer the sewin’ circle, but there’ ’aint no pie-faced parson I ever see as could play even in sich a game as this. It takes some man to beat this desert game. Par- son—huh—move, blast yer. Yer has a man behind yer.” And now, with stars shining above, with a camp-fire flickering, and with blankets spread ready to roll up in them for the night, my attention is called to Measles by his ' rolling over on his stomach and breaking the ‘silence with his peculiar “huh.” He picks up a pebble and iis it into the fire. Then he says— “Mister Hampton, I’d like to ask yer a question.”’ Old Wade turns and looks at him, and says— **Shoot.”’ “I'd jest like to know who the gent was, up there at the Burg?” “Oh,” says Old Wade. “Him? We used to call him Sob Howland, but he’s ‘Mister’ Howland, now.” “T don’t know nothin’ ’bout his weepin’ fits,” says Measles, ‘“‘but I’ll bank he’s been some right smart man, séme day. “Yep,” says Old Wade. “I’ve took no- tice that when yer finds a man as kin rise right pronto to the occasion, yer kin pretty near bank on him. Yer can’t always size a man up by his togs, nor by the job he’s holdin’ down.” ““Guess I got what was comin’ to me, all right,” says Measles. ‘But there wa’n’t no use of his recommendin’ me to a parson job. “Mebby not,” says Old Wade. ‘But it ain’t what we gets that does us good; it’s what we learns. An’ mebby, what yer got up there will lesson yer somethin’, e “Sob ain’t no name,” says Measles. ‘“‘What’s his real name?” Now I had a hunch, by the way Old Wade and Sob had embraced up at the hotel, that there had been a past betwixt them, and a past between Old Wade and any live man meant a story. So I butts in, and says: ‘‘Where did you make his acquaintance, Wade?” “Daggett,” says Old Wade. “Was he holdin’ down a parson job out there?” asks Measles, kind of sarcastic-like. cCoOmiclsoo CO 5}