Adventure Magazine Cover, October 10, 1921 — page 172: what you’re looking at

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

162 There had been a score or more of en- tries, not more than one from each outfit, but El Diablo and Billy Day had proved superior to all the rest. The evening meal was a buzz of questions and conjecture. All knew the big sorrel stallion to be fast, and possessed of won- drous endurance, but that he should have outrun the fleet bay, carrying a sixty pound handicap was scarcely believable. Confi- dence was deep rooted—these were not men to swing quickly from one favorite to an- other—and they had been willing to back Billy Day to the limit. The affirmation from Stub’s own lips, however, was convincing. The sorrel had beaten the bay, and beaten him badly. J. B.’s chair scraped back from the table asherose. There was a grim smile upon his bronzed old face as he thumped the boards with a ponderous fist. ‘Boys, this is somethin’ to keep under our hats. Let the greaser think he’s nothin’ but the little bay to beat. He'll offer the sky as the limit. We'll tip off the Bar B and Cir- cle K crowds on the quiet, an’ when the shoutin’s all over the Don’ll be busted higher’n a kite, an’ off for the south to save a whole skin!”’ “Tt sounds to me!”’ chorused the men as they jostled boisterously from the room and trooped toward the corrals to look over the horse that was to carry their money and up- hold the Horse Shoe name and fame in the coming rodeo—Solomon. Next morning Chip Dawson pelted over the fifteen miles to the Circle K, returning in the afternoon. MacQueen’s men pom- melled his back in hearty approbation, and sent him off with the assurance of secrecy and ready financial suport. All loved a sporting proposition, and the Don was not unfavorably known by the Horse Shoe alone. The Circle K could be depended upon to be on hand when the time came—pockets well lined with dinero. Stub dropped in on the Bar B, finding an even more volatile crowd there. Belding was ready to stand good personally for five thousand, and his men were willing and eager to bet all they owned and as much ad- vance pay as Belding would stand for. Stub’s account of the manner in which the desert stallion had outrun the Horse Shoe’s bay was impressive evidence. They knew Stub as a rider and they trusted his judgment implicitly. Sure they’d Adventure all be there—r’arin’ to go—and gracias, gra- clas, a thousand times over! SecrecyP— Mum would be the word. A had been. The Bucket-o’-Blood had more than lived up to its sanguine name, and the Oasis, across the way, had seen a man die with his head in a noose that hung from her ridge-pole. Adobe walls and heavy wooden sills displayed the lead scars of drunken punchers and of marauding bandits. The little gravevard, on the outskirts of town, told its tale in bleak crosses of the men who once had been. But all that had been in the free, wild “) GILA was not the town she once _days—before the début of law and order. Now there remained to the little town of Gila nothing but the rodeo, to which last reminder of the crumbled glory of the past she clung with the ardor of a religious fanatic for her sacred creed. It was high noon, and the sun beat down upon the yellow dusty trench that sliced its ugly way through the center of town— Division Street. Sleepy saddle horses dozed at the rails before the Bucket-o’- Blood and the Oasis, and farther down the street, where the Rio held forth mducement to thirsty souls assembled there on Gila Day. Sulkies, rigs, and buckboards lined the street, the horses between the shafts be- decked with ribbons, nose bag, and fly net, content to doze and eat, and eat and doze, despite the blinding heat. Gila’s human population wisely sought the comparative comfort of sheltered mteriors. Activities did not begin till two o’clock and they were averse to braving the heat of a noon-day sun without due cause. Within the Oasis saloon, for the Oasis was still a saloon, sweating men in gala garb lined the bar or gathered ’round the tables. The mayor of Gila stood for law and order— so did her sheriff—but who could have the hardness of heart to deny these lonely boys “ from off the range their black jack, poker, and eraps on this, Gila’s gala day—dearer to the stanch hearts of her citizens than the well-known Fourth of July. Colors clashed and blended—reds, blues, yellows, and greens—silk scarfs, fleecy chaps, and burnished tinkling spurs. There was Duncan and his crowd from the Pelon- cillo Range, the Triangle boys, Gleason from the San Carlos, the Hartmann COnmiclboooks Cc C@