Adventure Magazine Cover, March 20, 1925 — page 163: what you’re looking at

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

Close-In Lands of Adventure anxious looks we’re a packin’ of, he does his dangest tuh set our minds at rest. “Wyoming?” says he, a-showin’ of a full set of the whitest teeth I ever seen. “Wyo- ming ees still jus’ where your United States Presidente pu heem. Land of the free and long may thev wave!” And he swells out his chest fit tuh bust every brass button on his coat. Then from the tent door comes a funny sound that’s a sorter cross between a sob and a laugh. And we whirls around tuh see a ga’ant, ragged gent a-standin’ there. Yuh guessed it; it’s Wyoming hisse’f. Nigh petered out from no sleep and some nasty knife cuts which he gits the night he runs the rebel guards. “Here I am, McCloud!” he croaks, and tosses his gun at the foot of the Ranger’s bed. Then his knees gives under him and Bill ketches him as he falls. 145 2a DID Wyoming stand trial? I’d tell @ a green hand he did. And it takes Li the jury less’n five minutes tuh leas him. They like tuh tore off their dewclaws a-climbin’ outa the jury box tuh shake the pris’ner’s hand. The Lazy Y is there entire. From Bill Wagner tuh ole High Pockets. And it cost us fifty dollars fer a new roof which we plumb spiles when we empties our smoke- poles by way uh showin’ our sentiments. Backed by book learnin’, such as Wyo- ming has, a man kin go a shore long ways in ten years. Yeah. Folks down Texas way knows him as the Honorable Lee Crawford, the fairest, squarest jedge that ever held down this here job as straw-boss uh the Soopreme Court. But to a few uh us bench- legged, o’n’ary ole cow hands he’s still Wyoming. Wyoming, the gent that owns the Lazy Y and signs our pay checks. CLOSE-IN LANDS OF ADVENTURE by Raymond S. Spears EOPLE who keep their gaze too much on the horizon often miss the things they would like most to see close at hand. It is so in seeking adventure, in traveling, in thinking too much in terms of thousands of miles. Often, just around the corner lies an un- known land, as strange as anything to be found on the far side of the continent. Strange people live in the recesses of the Ramapo and Catskill Mountains in sight of New York City, and in the Adirondacks, the Green Mountains, the Alleghanies— the farthest lands of the continent have no more interesting conditions than within a day’s automobile drive of Manhattan Island. When the urge to wander far comes, and one has only a week’s vacation or perhaps two weeks’, it seems almost useless to try to crowd into so short a space of time the experience, travel, adventure for which one longs. But it should not be forgotten that the strange and unusual is within a day’s run of any city, any community, in the United States. Out from Chicago lie the Lake Michigan marshes, the shell rivers, the sand dunes, the back countries of many river bottoms. Maine, New Hampshire, western Massachusetts, lie within a day of Boston. New York has from the Adirondacks to the wilds of eastern Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh has the feudlands, the dying struggles of the old Whisky Rebellion in the Alleghanies, Lake Erie, the Ohio shantyboaters, the big woods along the New York border. No city has a greater variety of back country than Pittsburgh. St. Louis, with the Missouri, Mississippi, the Ozarks, has even fewer varieties than, for example Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We are accustomed to think of the great West as a land of varied interests. Life in Nevada is simpler, has fewer variations, than can be found within a day’s run of Albany, New York. Those who study their opportunities never lack for experiences! oF Ig COMiicloOoe