Adventure Magazine, Mid-September 1917 — page 6: what you’re looking at

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

_ for that six-shooter. 4 “Yuh can go plumb to the devil!”’ barked Sam the borrower. “Hey quit! Quit it, you idjits!”’ Sam collapsed into his bunk beneath an avalanche of thrown chaps, boots, and the cook’s war-bags. “All this don’t get me my pants!” reiter- ated Chuck Morgan. ‘““Now I know,” the Kid said, holding up one finger, “now I know what made the coffee taste so funny last night. I’ll bet Chuck’s pants—say, where’s my shirt?” “My boots is gone!” Bill Holliday an- nounced. ‘‘An’ the spurs was on ’em!”’ ‘An’ my hat ain’t here!’ contributed Buff Warren. Sam emerged from the pile of articles of attire that had been hurled upon him with the announcement that his chaps were among the missing. Simultaneously Dave Cantrell made the discovery that his six- shooter and belt had disappeared. “My gun! My gun!” wailed Dave in the accents of a parent lamenting the loss of a favorite offspring. ‘I paid sixty-five wheels By a-hold of the sport who’s made love to it, I'll kick his backbone through the top of his hat.” Chuck Morgan, his blue eyes gazing at nothing, gave his stiff black hair a lick anda promise. He was thinking. Whoever the thief might be, he was certainly a person of some discrimination. For the articles taken were individually the best of their kind in the outfit. In particular Sam’s chaps and Dave’s six-shooter were beautiful things: the chaps of softest leather faced with finest angora; the six-shooter pearl-handled, barrel and cylinder cunningly engraved with tiny figures of longhorned cattle. Still ponder- ing, Chuck slid his legs into his other trou- sers and eased on his boots. “Wonder what the ‘Kid’s Twin’ lost?” speculated Bill Holliday. But that was a question no one of them could answer. For the Kid’s Twin had gone to Farewell for the mail the previous day. He was called the Kid’s Twin, not because he was, for he was not, but because he rivaled the Kid in the perpetrating of mis- chievous acts calculated to render more motley than a Joseph’s-coat the sober hue of life as it was lived at the Bar-S ranch. “Tf the Twin had been here last night—” began Buff Warren, and paused meaningly. “My idea exactly,” said Tim Page, ‘“‘but he wasn’t.” ,if I ever get Adventure “The Kid was!”’ cried Sam. thought of it before!” “Good reason why—yuh got nothin’ to do it with,” flashed the Kid, tranquilly snapping on his leather cuffs. “I s’pose yo’re insinooatin’ I took yore truck. Well, I didn’t, old-timer. Not this trip. But I tell yuh flat if I’d only knowed how pleased yuh’d all be I’d ’a’ done it, y’ betcha. Say, when do we eat? Hey, cookie, what’sa matter with yuh? Got a lame arm, huh?”’ “Kid, where’s my boots?” demanded Bill ‘An’ I never Holliday. “Yuh make me sick!’ snapped the Kid. **H——,, yuh’d makeacowsick! Didn’tcha hear me say I didn’t doit? D’yuh think I’d rustle my own best shirt? What more do yuh want?” “Well, yuh know, Kid, yuh ain’t always over partic’lar what kind o’ tricks yuh play on us long-sufferin’ mortals,’”? defended Holliday. “Yuh know y’ ain’t. Now “He didn’t do it,”’ cut in Chuck Morgan. “How do you know?” asked a dozen. voices together. *“Because when we accuse him of anythin’ he has done he always runs out the door an’ we have to chase him a mile. Now he ain’t _ runnin’. It’s easy when yuh know how.” ‘“‘Oh, is that so?”’ bawled the Kid, as the outfit jostled through the doorway into the dining-room. ‘Yuh talk like I was an innocent murderer or somethin.’ Yuh gimme a pain, Chuck. I’ve a good mind to give yuh a bat on the snoozer.” ‘“‘There’s gratitude for a man,’ com- plained Chuck, sliding limberly into his seat at the table. ‘‘Do all yuh can for folks an’ then they turn round an’ talk to yuh somethin’ brutal. Mister Warren, if I ain’t askin’ too much of yuh, would yuh skate the sugar this way?”’ “T got it! I got it!” bawled Holliday. ‘fAn’ bad too,”’ Chuck remarked with sar- casm, spading the sugar into his cup. ‘‘An’ yuh’ll shore have it a heap worse if yuh beller again in my ear thataway.”’ “T’ll gamble it’s Jimmy done rustled our stuff,” Holliday continued, unheeding. “It ain’t none o’ the rest of us, so it’s gotta be him.” “T told yuh cookie done boiled Chuck’s pants with the coffee,” said the Kid, spear- ing a boiled potato. ‘Why, say, I had to use a pound o’ sugar before she’d taste like anythin’. Hey, Jimmy, what did yuh do with my shirt?” COMmiclsoo CO