Argosy All-Story Weekly, March 15, 1924 — page 83: what you’re looking at

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

i ye. 712 _Just to give-Napoleon .a chance to show - me the new tricks he had thought up during three days of idleness, I Jet him cut up all the way across the flat to Tony Garcia’s "dobe. Tony was my helper for almost five years, and during that time he learned-to. do as he was told: I sent him over to our shack and told him to stay tHere until I returned, and theri;“E ‘tutned. old Napoleon into. the desert, his ‘head pointed toward Sunset Pass, and said, ‘‘ Here goes noth-. " CHAPTER Vv. JIM BARBER ENTERTAINS HIS GUESTS, SHE less said about that sixty miles across the desert, the better. Doing sixty miles, stuck up on old Napo- leon’s summit, is nothing to remember if a. fellow can. forget it. Sunup found us at the water hole near the head of Bowlder Arroyo, completely surrounded. by dry weather. through the sea of heat above Eagle Mesa, ‘and by the time the sun was dip- ping below the Frisco range we were in the scrub oaks, and poor old ‘Napoleon was. SO ‘tired in his front feet that he could scarce- ly walk twenty yards on them, when I ac- cidentally touched him in the flank with a spur... I finally got the critter to understand that it was my mistake, and he swung into that stiff legged lope of his that eats up distance like an outfit eats up grub. With the sun down, and my red head relieved from the heat, I began to do a little thinking, which isn’t just the easiest thing in the world to do when you are riding’ a cayuse that has a gait that comes near’ “splitting you clear up to your Adam’s ap- ple every time it hits the ground, meaning, of course, every time the horse hits the ground. If Rube. Howell’ Ss count on the cards was right, there was just a chance that the trail I was traveling might be infested with . vermin; one of them with an eagle-beak nose and the other with a- voice like a horse with the heaves. . Of course, my boss, Rip Jaimson, had By noon we were ‘swimming: ARGOSY-ALLSTORY ‘WEEKLY. Sent me out to bring in Jim Barber, but if I met up with these two gentlemen and, giving them the benefit of the doubt, brought them in alive, I had a feeling that Rip wouldn’t fire me for going outside my. jurisprudence, the which is a legal term that Squire Glynn frequently uses in his. business of squiring. Even though it meant ‘that I would have to finish my journey by moonlight, I pulled Napoleon down to a walk so there would be less danger of him busting through a cluster of scrub oaks into the midst of a couple of Lombres who, more than likely, would be all broken out with . shooting irons. | We had been creeping along the trail for or: half an hour, I reckon, when Napoleon ° . woke up. Napoleon is an equine some-. ambulist, the which Rip says is Latin for a horse that walks in its sleep; and when he is suddenly aroused out of his some- ambul there’s always hell to pay. He'll be someambuling with his head to the north and wake up with his head to the south, making the switch with no warning. If you. make the switch with him you’re apt to twist your neck out of place, and if you don’t make the switch with him you get. — your anatomy all mussed up. - . | Just where the trail turns sharply onto Sawyer’s Flat, Napoleon came out of his ~ someambul and switched ends. My thought being back there in the *dobe with Rip, I . was sort of out of balance, and I. found myself all spread out on the trail, with my cayuse some ten feet away, blowing his . mose as if he had a bad cold and had ‘been eating hot soup. While [ sat there in the trail trying to figure out just how that horse could slip out from under me that way, Napoleon walked two or three rods, stopped, looked back and snorted again. Stant the evening breeze brought me the sound of blatting sheep, the which sound always gets me all fussed up inside,. causing me to break out with. profanity. I looked up the trail to where, across the flat, it topped a scrub fringed ridge before drop- At the same in-. ping into McKenna’s draw, and what I saw | _ didn’t look much like Jacoh’s ladder. Over the ridge came a herd: of woollies, and the. very sight of sheep gives me de- A ,or - cae “ be Fa 2 OR ey a ¥ ‘é ‘4 4 COMNNMUC DOO! S CO@