Adventure Magazine Cover — page 174: what you’re looking at

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

The A\postLe cA struggling little newspaper and the Law By John Webb AVE ELLERS, a miserable, cow- ardly braggart, shot Tom Camp- bell—shot him in the back. Dave had remarked on the fecun- dity of the Anchor-O cows, and had suggested that some of the baby cows must have been adopted, so to speak. It was like Dave to say a thing like that, and he said it out loud, and didn’t laugh; and it was like Tom Campbell, who with Frank Jessup owned the Anchor-O, when the talk came to him, to walk into the Mirror Saloon and plant his fist against Dave’s jaw. Well and good; Dave was a no-good son- of-a-gun and much too loose with his tongue, and no one was sorry to see him lying there on the floor with his head in a spittoon. But then Tom Campbell made a mistake; he forgot, or possibly didn’t know, that it is far safer to turn one’s back upon a brave man than upon a coward. Firing from the floor, Dave put a .45 slug between Tom’s shoulder blades. After- ward, he said he had been still half dazed from the blow and had thought Tom was facing him with a gun in his hand, but nobody paid any attention to that; they knew Dave Ellers. Just in time to save Dave from being drilled in turn by one of Tom’s friends, Sheriff Augie Underholtz came along; he disarmed Dave and locked him up. Little Tim Wiley, editor, owner and everything else of Zhe Prairie Flower, which came out once a week—usually—was seen to shake his head sadly as Augie went by with his prisoner. “Another setback,” Tim mourned to Jake Sarney, bronc peeler of the Anchor-O. “‘Law and order’s comin’ creepin’, creepin’, and every once in a while some relic of the barbarous past comes along and puts a spoke in the wheel.”’ Mixed metaphors meant nothing to Tim Wiley; which, perhaps, was one of the reasons why he was a durned good editor. Another reason was that when he had any- thing to say, he said it; he didn’t go dodging and ducking and mixing things up with a lot of “alleges” and ‘“‘it is saids’”? and non- sense like that, like a lot of them Eastern editors do. Tim Wiley wasn’t too particular about spelling, either; at least not too particular. For instance, what was the difference wheth- er a word like, say, ““necessary”’ was spelt with onesortwo? Ifamancould really read and wasn’t a darn fool, he could understand it if it was spelt with a dozen s’s, couldn’t he? Tim wasn’t one of these here pedantists; he often said so himself. Young Jake Sarney, standing there watching the sheriff go down the street with Dave Ellers, snorted disgustedly. “Law an’ order? Humph! Law an’ order ’n’ yeller-livered mongrels who shoot good 168 SH C© COMMUCLIOO