Adventure Magazine Cover — page 102: what you’re looking at

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

| ¢ } Pinte (tty yatta nstel ie mt ee i nt Vit i { HU liu! hi HN i ‘ | 1] ‘sf tie, / ii Kg } eee A rd 4 97 ~S%4 map Help = by a Hee Doctor by Author of “The Color of His Boots,” “Assisting Ananias,” etc. N THE middle of the cabin stood Magpie Simpkins, my pardner, and facing him is a fat hombre, dressed like a cross between a short-card artist and a per-fume ped- ler. They don’t see me. From the ex- pression on their faces, I’d say that their minds are null and void as far as I’m concerned. - Magpie ain’t got no gun on his hip, which is unusual, and I can see by the expression in his eyes that he’s laboring under a heavy strain. The fat feller lifts one hand above his head, spreads.the fingers and then shuts all but two. Magpie gazes upon that hand with awe in his eyes, and then up goes the fat feller’s other hand with the first and second fingers crossed. Then the fat man drops his right hand and rubs his finger across his nose. Magpie’s eyes are as wide as saucers and the perspiration seems to gather on his noble brow. Then Magpie lifts his right hand even with his ear, sticks his thumb in said ear and wiggles his fingers. All to once I gets the solution of the mystery. This fat feller is one of them hypnotist-hombres, ahd he’s got poor Magpie into a spell. With the Harper tribe, to think is to act so I bent my gun over the hypnotist’s head. He slumps to the floor and Magpie stares at me, leaning on our table to support his wobbly legs. “As soon as he gets rational I’ll have him snap his fingers and bring you back,” says I, rolling a smoke. Magpie stares at me. “Veah?” says he foolish-like. back?” * “Uh-huh. Just take it easy, old-timer. You likely Ahink you’re Napoleon Bonaparte or Paul Revere right now, so I won’t start no arguments. Just hang on to yourself and I'll hoodle this here brain-mixer into bringing you up to date. Sade?” I don’t know yet what Magpie hit me with, “Bring me I felt insulted a lot. but I suspicion the sirup pitcher, it being the only thing of that weight on the table. Ff fell plumb out into the yard and retaliates by heezing three .44’s through the closed door. I went up to see Doc Milliken, the hofse doctor, and he takes three stitches in my alabaster brow with a sack- needle and binding-twine. I asks him what he knows about hypnotism, and he says— “Tke, you wasn’t hypnotized—you was as- sassinatized.”’ I asks him if a feller could be hypnotized to such an extent that he’d throw a pitcher at his best friend. “Well,” says Doc, ‘I reckon he would. A feller you can stick pins into without hurting him is liable to do anything. You see; Ike, his mind could be influenced by the hypnotist. Did Magpie hit you?” “According to science, Doc, it wasn’t Magpie throwed the pitcher, but he must ’a’ been in- fluenced by another party.’ s “Yeah,” says Doc. “After looking at the cut you got, Ike, Pd Say it was the Democrat or Republican party.” Then I meets “Dirty Shirt” Sees, looks me over careful-like. “Somebody been loving you with a rock, or had you proved the assertion that familiarity breeds contempt and stroked that danged Dirty jassack of yours from the rear? You ought to. get a divorce from that pet. Some day he'll kick you so hard that folks will say, “The poor devil would be a lot better off if the grim reaper would come along and harvest his soul.’ > “T got this through Magpie,” says I. “My ——! He must bea mess, Ike!” “You don’t sabe, Dirty. He was responsible but not accountable. Another mind influenced him.” ree 92 eS GOMicdoo