Adventure Magazine Cover — page 116: what you’re looking at

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

106 is setting on the edge of the loft. He’s got the rope snubbed to the cross-pole of the loft, and on each end is a cougar, and if anybody asks me, I’ll orate aloud that them cats are peeved. “How did you get up-there, Mighty?” asks Magpie. “Up here? Say, this ain t high to go— under them circumstances.’ “By Jove, that’s wonderful!” gasps Lord Waghburn. ‘‘Cawn’t we get them as they are, professor? It will be instructive in a Way, don’t you think?” “Um-m-m-m,” says Aloysius, and then he nods. ‘A still!” he exclaims. ‘‘Wait until I set up the other camera.” ‘He comes back with a different outfit, and sets it up inside the doorway. Them two cats just set there and spit. After Aloysius gets through looking through the rigging, he gets awful excited. “Wonderful opportunity,” he announces. “T will make several exposures. I will have Bettina, Lord Washburn, Mrs. Van Fleet, the guide and the chef in the picture with the lions. Immense!” Then he turns to me and says— “You will be my assistant.” “Veah?” says I. ‘What do I do?” He places Magpie and Lord Washburn on one side and on the other he puts Bettina, mum-maw and Tip. In the middle is them two spitting cougars, and setting on the edge of the loft is Tippecanoe Seeley. Aloysius peeks at them through the camera and then loads the thing. He takes the dingus and pours it full of some kind of powder and hands if to me. “Hold that over your head,” says he. “Put your finger into that ring and when I requests it of you, pull down on it.” I follers directions. Aloysius tells every- body to stand perfectly still, and then says— “Pull!” I PULLED. Yeah, I pulled. Ike Harper seems to have been created to foller directions. Looking back at it, I comes to the conclusion that if I’d ’a’ killed the professor when I first seen him, this world would have been sweeter. As I said before, I pulled. Comes a blinding flash of light, the yowl of a scared cougar, the splintering crash of overweighted timbers, and, as “‘Hip-Shot’’ Squires used to say, ““——— took a recess.” Adventure It appeared that one of them cougars came unto my bosom, and I sure took it in. I went high, wide and handsome, and got clawed from heels to dandruff. Some- thing got me by the feet and something got me by the head, and they pulled opposite directions. The feet end of me was pointe d towards the door, and whatever the power was on that end—it won. I remembers skidding on the seat of my pants off our door-step and down that danged hill. I hooked my feet against a rock, and then the power on my neck raises me upright and yanks me upside down again, and all this time I’m locked in deadly combat with that danged cougar. Suddenly we stops in a blaze of glory. I dodges a flock of stars and tries to set up. Then the cougar in which I have my teeth, fingers and spurs seems to set a precedent of natural history when it says in a faint voice— : “Well, by , 1 hope we stay stopped! I unhooks from said cougar and looks into the peaceful face of Magpie Simpkins. “T thought you was a cougar,” says I. He looks at me painful-like and says— “Since when did you start eating raw cougars, Ike?”’ I didn’t answer him because I didn’t care to answer such fool questions. We both got up and started back for the cabin. , There was a sight for sore eyes. Them two cougars busted loose when the balcony went down, and they must ’a’ swept the cabin clean with that rope. Mum-maw has got the rope around her body, and is half under the machine. Lord Washburn has got both feet twisted in the rope and is standing on the back of his neck with his feet cinched up to the seat where one of the cougars is reared back, trving to get loose. - The other cougar is still fastened to the other end of the rope and is about six feet away from the machine, all twisted up in that camera. Every time the cougar moves the camera moves, and then the cat wallops it with both paws while it searches the depths of its soul to try and find cat-talk enough to describe its opinion of photography. Setting on the door-step is Tip with his hands on his knees and a beautiful expres- sion on his homely face. He is looking at the scene before him; but he don’t see it, 193 cause his thoughts are of spiritual, not cCOmiclbooks CO