Adventure Magazine Cover — page 108: what you’re looking at

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

yey . eae, Ofer tee : AR ‘ie ae : ‘ : a FN SIVES — by JESSE O. WHITEHEAD and WM. E. SMITH SHOOTER, as perhaps you know, is a familiar figure in the oil regions. His duties are to ad- minister tonics to unhealthy oil wells which show signs of getting tired of ' furnishing oil and are beginning to show symptoms of decreased production. The tonic consists of a liberal dose of nitro-glycerin, carefully lowered down the throat of the ailing well, after which every one leaves the potential danger zone except the shooter. His duty ‘“‘remains to be did”’ and he does it with the nonchalance of a boy absorbing stolen watermelon. He goes over to the mouth of the well, carrying with him an iron weight, carefully spits about a pint of tobacco juice at the best target offer- ing itself, drops the weight down the well and beats a hasty but orderly retreat. According to the law of falling bodies, a weight dropping several thousand feet and landing upon a quantity of explosive pos- sessing the unstable characteristics of nitro- glycerin is bound to cause something to happen. But what happens has nothing to do with the shooter. He has shot the well; it’s up to Mother Nature, or whoever con- trols the destinies of oil wells, to do the - rest. So he climbs upon his wagon, generally a rickety-looking affair, with plenty of springs to provide for easy riding, starts his horse _ and with a red flag flapping over his load of latent destruction moves on to the next job. Speed does not interest him. Sometimes a misguided shooter attempts a burst of speed, which generally results in a burst of 107 noise and a large hole in the roadway, no material being available even for burial purposes. Therefore shooters seldom break the speed laws; they find that speed is not conducive to long life and therefore take their time. Furthermore, a shooter is king of the road; travelers breathe lightly as they pass him, and even the most blatant automobile rolls by with an air of meekness which would bring joy to the soul of the harassed city pedéStrian, were he there to witness it. Wi) SO WHEN, one crisp, cool morning fj in the late Springtime, two mem- i bers of Colorado’s State Constabu- lary force—this occurred before the “‘thirsty- first of July,”’ when Colorado was a parched and dreary desert, while her sister State of Wyoming, to the north, was the nearest available oasis—saw a ramshackle old wagon, drawn by a horse in keeping there- with, and caught the crimson flash of a red flag, one of them remarked to his com- panion— “Here comes a shooter.” To which the other replied: “Yep; looks like old Bill Thompson. I can tell by the way he leans over to spit.” “Vou’re right,” agreed the other. ‘“He’s just about due along here on his regular trip.” And the approaching shooter, catching sight of the two officers, spouted a stream of tobacco juice at the nearest wheel hub,-al- ready stained a rich brown from many simi- lar libations, and remarked to Spot, a wicked- CONMGCIOOKS.E©