Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 90: what you’re looking at

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

88 bought it. I may get red-eyed from wobble water but I never loses my sense uh useful and ornamental things. I’m what you’d call uh discerning person—drunk or sober.” All uh which shows that there ain’t no use arguing with Magpie Simpkins. He can do no wrong. Uh course he might do things that he’d be sorry for, but he never figures that he’s wrong—just uh little mis- taken for the time being. “Come back broke?” I asks. “Uh-huh. My gosh, Ike, I must uh spent money like uh timber Willie. If I knowed what that animile cost me I could figure how much the trip cost me.”’ “You don’t have to let X equal the miss- ing quantity, Magpie,” says I. “You had nine hundred when yuh left, and you’re broke now; therefore the trip cost me four hundred and fifty. Sabe?” Magpie don’t sleep well that night. First he has an argument with that Chicago bartender. Uh course, me being an inno- cent bystander or bylayer, I gets hit in the nose. I cautions him to fight the other way. He apologizes uh heap, but inside uh five minutes he starts another fight with some colored person over the way his bed is made and I gets pitched out of the bunk and hits my head on the stove. I’ve been mistook for an Injun, and one time ‘‘Red River’ Radkey absorbs too much of the fermented foam, and mistakes me for uh pink pollywog, but that’s the first time that anybody ever mistook me for uh colored porter, and it makes me mad. I climbs, right back on that bunk, gets Magpie by the feet, and drags him around the yard in the moonlight. He’s plumb awake and docile enough to apologize again when I finishes the third lap around the woodpile, so he climbs back on the bunk and I takes uh blanket and sleeps on the floor. THE next morning we saddles our O:: burros and starts for town. We’re fi out uh spuds, and we needs some drill steel. Magpie leads the procession, setting on the rump of uh fuzzy-looking jackass. He’s wearing that hard hat, green and red shirt—he sheds his vest— and on his hands he wears them gray gloves. He sure is uh thing to see. Even the burros acts bashful around him. “T reckon I’ll make the inhabitants uh Piperock set up and take notice,”’ he states, admiring himself, Adventure He sets the pot-shaped hat on the peak of his head, and brushes off that loco shirt with his gloves. “Yes,” says I. ‘All I hope is that they don’t set up with uh gun in their hands. You sure look like uh cross between uh lodge-pole Christmas tree and uh zebra.”’ We pilgrims down to the main road, and ambles through the dust in the direction of Piperock. We comes to uh turn in the road, where we sees uh man setting along- side on uh rock. He’s all humped up, with his head between his hands, and don’t look up until I hails him. Then we recognizes him as being Chuck Warner, puncher for the Cross-J. JI never did know just how to take that feller. He never growed none to speak of from his waist on down, and I figures that he’s the honestest-looking liar I ever met. He sets there on that rock, sad-like, but when he sizes up our outfit his eyes gets bigger and he sort uh gasps: “My ! It must be true!” ‘Too true,” I replies, glancing at Magpie. “Too true.” He gets off the rock and wobbles over to us. His eyes are blood-shot, like he’d been dallying unduly with the cheerful fluid, and he squints at Magpie. “Tt’s Magpie Simpkins Chuck,”’ says I. ‘““Auh,” says he, sort uh relieved like. “Maybe I ain’t so bad as I thought. You fellers got time to help out uh pilgrim in doubt?” “Your obedient servants,” us to the doubt.” He turns and ambles off across the country, and me and Magpie is right behind him. About two hundred yards from the road he stops and points across an open spot. ‘“‘That’s my bronc,” he states. ‘Yessir, that’s my little hawse, but, but—say, what in is on that rope uh mine, eh?” “Fluttering fool-hens!”’ explodes Magpie, fanning himself with his civilized hat. I looks and swallers uh chaw uh natural eaf. ‘“‘Do—do you see it, too?” asks Chuck. “Just exactly,” states Magpie. ‘What is ste= “Tf it ain’t the granddaddy uh all blue grouse I’ll eat my hat,” orates Chuck. “Yuh see I been down to Piperock for three days, trying to bust Buck’s wheel, and drink all the hooch in town. I comes along in disguise, saysI. “Lead GOmiiGcsoo SS (C@