Adventure Magazine Cover — page 157: what you’re looking at

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

A Day on Razorback the job. There ain’t much crowdin’ long this road, but what smithin’ there is, I gits it, and ef a man ain’t satisfied with gittin’ all there is, he oughtn’t to git nothin’,” and he cackled again—a dry cackle, as though he had cackled much to himself in his loneliness. “We want to get across the mountains,” said Boggs. ‘‘ How about the roads?” “This here fork on the left goes fifty miles ’round—all pretty bad but not on- possible. This here fork on the right is the Razorback road, ten miles over and meaner than sin. ,No autermobile has never gone over it.”’ “That settles it!’ said Boggs, his insatiate ambition suddenly fired. “We'll go Razor- back way.’ “Ye’re plumb crazy,” smith. But Boggs was uplifted by a new interest in life and his zeal was contagious. We had crossed the continent, motored California, made our way, much of it over deserts and desolation, to the Gulf of Mexico, turned northward and reached the wilderness of the Southern mountains, where nature makes the sunshine and man the moonshine, where they still vote for Andrew Jackson and the hickory tree and where the simple life knows no surcease—and everywhere we went we found that everything possible for an auto- mobile to do had been done. In short we were taking home nothing of primary value. Our record was as barren as a trip to the suburbs. So Boggs, with firm faith in his 60 H. P. Nameless—the ‘‘Old Lady,” we called her— gloated that at last he had found in Razor- back road an opportunity to be first. “Ye’re crazy to try it,’ repeated the blacksmith. “All right, my friend,” said Boggs, “‘if we break down you'll have the job of fixing us up.” So Boggs drove the Nameless to the right. Razorback road soon began to justify its fame. If ever a name fitted, it was that same and particular designation of thinness, angularity and cragginess. It slipped and it slanted; it was knotty, scabrous, churlish and altogether impolite and unrefined. It was a choppy-sea road, a turned-in and tucked-under road, a gruff, tempestuous, nutmeg-grater road, a fretful and torment- ing road that Well, we got so far, by main strength and said the black- 913 awkwardness, by pushing and pulling and helping the Old Lady up, that we were in it for fair. “It stands to reason,” said Boggs, as if there could possibly be any reason in such imbecility, “that it can’t be worse forward than it is back there. Then, too, the black- smith told us there is some kind of a hotel about midway the mountain, and we'll keep on.’ Keep on we did. That is, on and off. We made the next mile in seventy-three minutes —a mile stretched out; counting ups and downs, it seemed a hundred. Gem FIVE hours had put us a little over ‘a as many miles and then we struck a . plateau whereon trees grew and we slipped gently over a pine-carpeted floor of odorous joy and in a bower of foliage we beheld happiness. It was the hotel, and back of it a mountain stream was singing sweet music. A funny kind of hotel—an old shed, time-stained, weather-beaten, un- kempt, with a sort of wooden awning that passed for a porch. Standing by the doorway, witha long gun in easy reach, was a lank mountaineer, a corncob pipe in his mouth, a single suspend- -er holding him together, and a lonesome look in his inexorable face. The automobile brought no surprise. He was a stoic, a statue. The only sign of emotion was an extra puff of smoke. ‘“‘Can we have dinner?” asked Boggs. He took the pipe from his mouth, gazed at us deliberately and finally replied: “I reckon you can git a snack. , Dinner or supper jist the same—same as breakfast. “Mary ’Liza!”’ he called. “Well?” came a shrill voice. “Two on ’em wants a bite.” *Ain’t got much,” said the voice. “Well, gin it to em.” “There is no other hotel hereabouts?” Boggs asked. “Ye’re just right in that statement—ain’t no other in twenty miles. Ef there was, I mightn’t be eatin’ here.” Over his features stole the suggestion of a smile and he came forward and looked closely at the automobile. We refreshed ourselves in the stream and then sat down to eat positively the worst meal that ever passed for hotel food. But the air of those mountains is marvelous and we had sharpened our appetites on Razor- CO MICLOOKS CO