Adventure Magazine Cover — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

106 in every day, he’s as touchy an’ grumpy as a moltin’ canary. . Sick? You bet he is—homesick. He’s homesick for that cold, hard, silent land that has tortured an’ starved him for thirty years, from Bering to the boundary; he’s achin’ to get back to the country where there’s lots of things money won’t buy; the old man is fairly bustin’ with longin’ for a - down-river boat, a pipe an’ a chair on deck an’ a sight of old Jim’s, his tillicum’s, face. An’ when you get right down to the hole card, this last is what ails him most of all. The old boy has got a bad an’ acute case of pardneritis. Also, let me stop to remark, this here disease is maybe one of the worst an’ most persistent ailments that mankind is heir to. An’ the rarest. Women-folks Gont get 1 =. -For it’s thisaway: Somehow, Providence don’t often allow two real he men to yard up together an’ get sure enough acquainted; but when she does, each of them said he hombres has been done a favor that nothin’ can’t ever equal, no matter how the Luck Lady favors em. Not even if they falls in love an’ gets away without gettin’ married. Moreover, pardners that is really an’ truly tillicums is mighty near as rare as blue roses. But if ever you meet up with a pair of such, they’ll sure leave behind ’em a bright an’ shinin’ mark for you an’ your best friend to shoot at. As a example, there was Michael Joseph Ryan an’ Ole Erickson. Them two was pardners all over the Northwest, B. C., an’ the Yukon for more’n twenty years; an’ unless they’ve passed out, they’re still wearin’ each other’s socks, sleepin’ under the same blankets, carryin’ their dust in the same poke—an’ quarrelin’. Yes, sir! Them two inseparables fussed an’ fumed at each other about everythin’ an’ nothin’ from mornin’ until night an’ even later. They beefed an’ roared an’ snarled back an’ forth an’ across until it was fairly sickenin’ to be near ’em. Yet they was pardners an’ real friends, an’ you couldn’t pry ’em apart with a crowbar. An’ right here I’m pausin’ to say that no two hombres ever amounted to shucks as compadres until they learned to reserve to themselves an’ to eaca other the right to jaw, an’ criticize at all times an’ opportu- nities. Or oftener. These here hombres that has a few drinks together an’ then starts out as_blood- Adventure brothers an’ pals, only to bust up an’ sepa- rate after the first or second little rumpus, ain’t pardners nor never was nor never will be—not with anybody. They ain’t big enough. But the two that can fight an’ fuss steady an’ contin’ous an’ all the time, an’ still stick together, is a sure-enough real pair, an’ they outrank any set of threes in the deck. | They’ve got Damon an’ Pythias beat to a feather-edged frazzle. The Siamese twins was miles apart compared to such a twain. Gettin’ back to Michael Joseph an’ Ole, I want to state that while they extracts the sweetest nectar from their joint disputes, they resents any interference in their affairs, . an’ they invariably presents a solid an’ impregnable front to the world at large. They might an’ does come to blows some- times an’ again; but let any third party take sides with either contestant an’ said out- sider has got a pair of wild-cats to lick, right there. For a brief spell, I’m pardners with these two, myself; likewise, they engages in tem- porary arrangements of amity an’ general welfare with other galoots that I know; but invariably they pulls out after a while an’ resumes herdin’ by themselves. I kinda get interested in these two locos after a time, an’ durin’ a long period of years I make it a point to observe an’ study their fads an’ foibles an’ the free-an’-easy way of everlastin’ly engagin’ in them satisfyin’ controversies they pulls off. They sure do live constant in an atmosphere of har- monious discord. An’ to hear ’em talk, nobody would take "em for anything but born Americans— which they wasn’t. But they sure talked United States as good as anybody. : The first time I get a good dose of the turbulent amity they maintains is up in the Forty-Mile country. They blow into my cabin one afternoon an’ allow they’re goin’ to roost overnight. Of course, I know ’em; also, I know a lot about ’em. More’n that, I got definite an’ long-established ideas about the way pard- ners is supposed to treat each other. But long before them imbeciles pulls away from my shack, I got altogether different views on the pardnership business. In a short twelve hours after the arrival of Ireland an’ Sweden in my peaceful domicile, I’m firmly con- vinced that the first thing pardners ought to do is to kill each other. IOOK (E€©) (E@) im