Adventure Magazine Cover — page 151: what you’re looking at

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

Big Medicine man, black-mustached, silent to surliness, underhanded, mean, low-down, and very dangerous in the cunning way of a snake in dog days. His description fitted Barberly so well that most of us were dividing our attention between the story and watching how Nig would take it. Flood elaborated. He had just ended a sentence about said party in question being so “‘honery”’ that he would “beat up his own granny’ and “take up sprouted corn” when we noticed Barberly’s face contort into lines of horrible ferocity. His white teeth gleamed through his snarling lips. A volley of oaths roared from his lungs as he cursed Flood for every liar and so-and-so imaginable. Big Medicine sprang three feet in the air and went for him all spraddled out, whoop- ing like an Indian. Barberly whipped out two .45 Colts and began shooting from both hips. Alabam Goodloe always denied being the first to jump through the screen, for it was torn off the entire end of the porch by the swarming crowd. Some ran up the road toward the eating-house and some ran down the road toward New Gatun and some ran around and watched: proceedings, their morbid curiosity to see bloodshed and slaughter getting the better of their judg- ment. I was one of these latter and when I got out in the road Flood was writhing on the floor in horrible fashion and groaning like a stricken bull. He struggled to his knees and from the recesses of his shirt and pants drew forth a sawed-off shotgun with the stock whittled into a pistol handle—the most ghastly shooting-iron that any man ever laid eyes on. When both barrels went off it sounded like the premature blast in Culebra Cut the time Teddy was down. I was nearing the hospital on the hill be- tween there and New Gatun when f heard five feeble little shots like a pop-gun from back in that direction, but I didn’t turn to look back. I was on my way for the ambu- lance and in my heartfelt desire to get help as soon as possible had forgotten that there was a phone in the hook and ladder house a few doors above House 68. Had I remem- bered, it is doubtful whether I would have tried to use the phone, for the girls were very popular and connections hard to get after the men had left off work on the job. 137 A FEW evenings later, when Flood narrated the incident to an unusu-. ally large bunch on the porch, he gave what I hadn’t seen as follows: “Me and Nig both fell sprawlin’ and the few that hadn’t yet joined the bird gang: showed signs of speed and tore up the ground getting away. them four-family houses above the eatin’ house. I peers down the road and they’s a motley crew of them hittin’ the high spots in that direction with Sandy working in the lead in a suit of B. V. D.’s turning sideways to keep from flyin’. I look straight down, below and see Slim and “Banjer-Pickin” Charley tearin’ through the swag for the Z. P. station, buckjumpin’ the high weeds and ditches. “This has all took place in a second and a quarter and we’re yet holdin’ our mouths with our hands to keep from squallin’ and laughin’; and we’re faunching and wringing and twisting all over the floor and makin’ funny noises in our throats at the joke we’ve sprung when Nig and I both glances up and sees something that puts that supper we’ve ate right against our epiglotis. “They’s an arm poked out the winder, weavin’ back and forth, and death, hell, and the grave pintin’ in our general direc- tion in the shape of a New York bull-dog pistol with the barrel an inch and a six- teenth long and the caliber of Ped’Migel tunnel. Whoever he is ain’t lookin’ out but squattin’ on his hunkers on the inside and aimin’ to shoot be-guess and be-god. T reckon he knows his weapon, for them bull- dogs spit and shave lead and kick and are dangerous at all points of the compass when they go off. ‘““As the hammer begins to raise, me and Nig puts for the screen door on our all fours, like a couple of bears before a Kansas cyclone. Nig swears he straddled me and rode me out the door. I remember dis- tinctly that I thought he was that little Six-Bits I rode for Lew Warren in Prickly Pear Valley out near East Helena and [I skinned both heels spurring Nig’s cartridge- belt. He buckjumped from the door to the ground and I reached for leather but there warn’t none and he throwed me. First time I was ever throwed by man or beast, and I’ve forked Catalo in my time and rode Them big poky dot. suits bellied out behind and them red shimmies stuck back like table tops. I hyeard women screaming as they passed Gomicbooks. co =)