Adventure Magazine, April 10, 1924 — page 75: what you’re looking at

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

) 2 ae Ee he 4 3 - 9 b ore. a A at Wodil) } Gay ; Was (he | | ongstriker g cS a e Kc Robe < “ a v4 . n a PF ee) hI eet! Ors re Vs 2. J ‘ 1] Fl aa tee ge ne oh Vig eek et Pete ae fg eA Rss PO BIS Ke ooo wg oi Ka, on za). a Author of “This Bandit Business Is the Bunk,’ “The Regeneration of Pesokie,’’ etc. HE Spring of 1916 promised the longest shearing season on rec- ord, and as usual me an’ Owen Davis booked our dates _to- gether. We were to start bendin’ our backs in ‘‘Dad” Shipman’s corral on the Rattle- snake in southern Arizona in January, an’ we arranged our bookin’s so’s not to lose any but travelin’ time till we wound up the season in George Buell’s corral on the Black- foot up in Idaho some time in July. To anybody who’s ever been called upon to shear sheep it will be plumb clear that we’d give ourself some job. But we had dreams of a perfect shearin’ season; not less’n a hundred an’ fifty days. The reason for undertakin’ a long stretch o’ that kind can be explained by quotin’ a letter I got from Owen just before Christmas. It’s a peculiar fact about sheep-shearers that after the shearin’ season they simply seem to disappear from the face o’ the earth, but the next Spring they bob up again as fresh as daisies. An’ although I’d sheared side by side with Owen Davis for five Springs it was a peculiar fact that I didn’t know a single thing about his life the other seven or eight months of the year. The only connectin’ link between us was that he knew my address, me bein’ perma- nently located in a pool-hall in a little town not far out o’ Pocatello when I wasn’t gatherin’ in the mazuma by the crick in my back. I didn’t have to shear sheep, for my pool- hall was a nice payin’ little business, but “The Lonxsiviker,"' copyright, 1924, by Prank Robertson. question mark outa my back-bone. 73 every time I’d git that annual letter from Owen I’d arrange to hire a feller to take my place an’ git ready to make a human You see, while I’m not a longstriker I can aver- age my hundred an’ twenty-five sheep a day, an’ you can see that at fourteen cents a fleece I can afford to hire a man in the pool-hall for three dollars a day. Here, then, is the letter I got from Owen word for word except that I ain’t givin’ him away by namin’ even the state it was sent from: “DEAR BILL: “How do you feel about going the whole route from the Rio Grande to the Bitter Roots this Spring? DPve got to doit. I’ve been a careless cuss, Bill, when I wasn’t shearing, and never saved any money like you done. To cut it short, old pal, I’ve got to raise five thousand dollars by the first of August or—I won’t bother you about that. Shear- ing is the only way I’ve got to make money. “You maybe think it can’t be done, Bill, but I’ve got it figured out almost to a cent. By going the whole route I ought to get in a hundred and fifty days. Men are scarce this Spring so it will be a long run and we'll get fourteen cents a fleece or better. Board will be a dollar a day. I figure I can keep my expenses down to four hundred dollars by being a tight-wad. “Now, Bill, you know my record. Take it day in and day out nobody has ever beat me shearing wherever we’ve worked. Of course there’s faster ones than me for a day, but for the whole season [ strike two hundred more days than I miss. I once sheared two hundred and thirty-five sheep in ten hours. I figure I can do two hundred every day and more some days in order to average two hun- dred and ten every day for a hundred and fifty days. That'll be forty-four-hundred dollars, leaving me four thousand clear of expenses. NOOK (C@