Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 3, 1924 — page 88: what you’re looking at

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

4ULhuee By EARL WAYLAND BOWMAN “This is the howl of a horntoad— When horntoads were nimble and swift; But laws we now got won't let them get ‘ shot,’ And all those poor horntoads are mitted!” —Sungs of the Sufferin’ Seven. T was one of the driest afternoons of the season. ‘Iwo veteran prospectors paused and prepared to rest until evening in the shade of the lone Joshua tree at Arsenic Springs. They were yet a short day’s jour- ney from the two hundred and seven souls single street, seven saloon metropolis of Red Bluff, out in the midst of the tremen- dous desert radiating over the solar plexus of southwestern Nevada. The two ancient prospectors were “Solemn” Johnson and “ Dirty Shirt ” Smith; the very same Solemn and _ the identical Dirty Shirt who discovered the borax mine across the gulch, thereby mak- ing Red Bluff inevitable and famous. For five days Solemn and Dirty Shirt had drifted south by southwest, in the gen- eral direction of Red Bluff. After one of their periodical seclusions among the soli- tudes surrounding Hellfire Basin, near Dead Angel Mountain, they again were questing for alleviation from the inexorable dryness which enveloped the entire apogee of south- western Nevada and extended beyond the borders of the neighboring mecca of cafeteria worshipers named southern Cali- fornia. Solemn Johnson flung a blanket down on the ground, dropped face foremost upon it and announced: “I’m goin’ to take a nap!” ‘“Go on and take it, nobody’s carin’!” Dirty Shirt Smith retorted. , A few yards away, Solemn and Dirty Shirt’s mouse-colored, long eared burro, christened ‘‘ Versus,” stood dejectedly and idly chewed on a fallen branch. Dirty 678 COMG DOO! S CO