Adventure Magazine Cover, February 3, 1921 — page 181: what you’re looking at

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

Law West of the Pecos their tall toddies, and comforted himself as best he could with the thought that he had a trick or two up his sleeve. He kept on until he came to the first old prospect-hole. He kicked about among the dumps, hefting and sorting rocks, and filled his side pockets with the egg-shaped rocks which seemed to be his preference, though some he chose were square-cornered and roughly jagged. Any old prospector would have recognized the specimens for sulfid of lead, or galena. “Life is certainly going to be lively in my orbit,” Mike reflected. “‘Nowis the time to subscribe.” At the office he turned his desk so that it commanded the full length of the room and an unobstructed view of the window and the front door. Then he emptied all but one or two of his specimens into the right-hand top drawer of his desk, which he did not close, hung the editorial hat upon a nail and sat down to re-wallop the tariff against the next day’s issue. During the weeks that followed the office of the Daily Dove was as calm and peacefu! as the babies’ ward in a hospital just after feeding-time. Bill helped dig out the locals as he ran-his morning gantlet between the Bourbon and the rye, and Judge Goode came in now and then with a special. At the judge’s. request Mike wrote a fearlessly scathing attack on the Honorable “Mesquite” Brush, local congressman, who was up for reelection the next year. Mike was prayerfully thankful that the Honor- able Mesquite was in far-away Washington and would be for some time longer. He had no desire to draw first blood from such an eminent source; though if he must be killed, he much preferred that the killing be done by an angry member of Congress rather than by a local bad man. It would look far better in the telegrams home. Mike fairly frothed at the mouth—on paper. But years of such attacks had rendered Mesquite’s hide thick. It served, however, to get Mike’s hand in, and his progress up Main Street was thereafter gratifyingly interrupted by congratulations on his ability to roast a body to a turn. ne | HE DUG into the volumes of poetry TR by Southern bards on the office ———4t book-shelves and into volumes of Confederate history and back numbers of Southern publications in Judge Goode’s 175 small library, and was amazed and thrilled at the wealth of romance which they un- folded. He drew from this illimitable source for his daily filler-in. They were old, old tales to the people of the South, but Michael Connolly’s blood was tingling to them for the first time, and his fresh and boyish perspective, transmitted in his. writing, lent to old tales the charm of the ever new. So far it was the greatest fun in the world getting out a country paper, and all Val Verde and his kinfolk agreed that it was the greatest fun in the world to read the paper Mike got out. In many other ways Mike endeared him- self to his new townspeople. When Val Verde was threatened with a cutting down of the train and mail service, it was Con- nolly who went to San Antonio and con- vinced the powers of the unwisdom of their decision. Again, when Beaufort James shipped cattle to an obscure Kansan packing-firm and the firm went bankrupt; it was Mike’s crisp and knowledgeable legal phraseology that bore down the slick Kansas shyster and won James a proper settlement. Much inspired by these victories, Mike sent home for his law-books, and his spare evenings were spent reading law and dis- cussing it with Judge Goode. He was consulting with Bill, the com- positor, over the splendidly increased ad- vertising early one afternoon, when the judge steamed in. He was singing: “Y dreamt a dream th’ other night, When everything was still; I dreamt I saw my Susan Jane Come rollin’ down th’ hill. A buckwheat cake was in her hand, A tear was in her eye; I sez ‘My dearest Susan, Oh! Susan, don’t yuh cry.’ ” Bill looked up in quick alarm. It was the judge’s storm-signal, and Bill, who knew it of old, oozed silently into the press-room. The judge slammed his hat down on the table and exploded. “Wes Pritchard has just hit town. He’s loaded up already on squirrel-pizen and rot-gut. He’s busted the mirrors in the Tron Front, smashed a crate of eggs all over the Nonpareil Grocery, and he’s up at the Cowboys’ Rest now, raising merry ——. “Of course he always pays the damage when he sobers up, but last two-three econnicbools (E@