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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Owen Clancy's Run of Luck; or, The Motor Wizard in the Garage, by Burt L. Standish.
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<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 55463 ***</div>
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<h2 style="margin-top: 0em">Transcriber’s Notes:</h2>
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<p class="center xlargefont boldfont">TABLE OF CONTENTS</p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#CHAPTER_I_OVER_THE_RIM_ROCK">CHAPTER I. OVER THE RIM ROCK.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#CHAPTER_II_JIMMIE_FORTUNE">CHAPTER II. JIMMIE FORTUNE.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#CHAPTER_III_THE_MOTOR_WIZARD">CHAPTER III. THE MOTOR WIZARD.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV_CLANCY_GETS_A_JOB">CHAPTER IV. CLANCY GETS A JOB.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#CHAPTER_V_HIBBARD_SHOWS_HIS_TEETH">CHAPTER V. HIBBARD SHOWS HIS TEETH.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI_ROCKWELLS_SCHEME">CHAPTER VI. ROCKWELL’S SCHEME.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII_IN_THE_RED_STAR_GARAGE">CHAPTER VII. IN THE RED STAR GARAGE.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII_FORTUNES_MYSTERY">CHAPTER VIII. FORTUNE’S MYSTERY.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX_A_WEIRD_STATE_OF_AFFAIRS">CHAPTER IX. A WEIRD STATE OF AFFAIRS.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#CHAPTER_X_HELPING_THE_JUDGE">CHAPTER X. HELPING THE JUDGE.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI_CAUGHT_RED-HANDED">CHAPTER XI. CAUGHT RED-HANDED.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII_HIBBARD_WEAKENS">CHAPTER XII. HIBBARD WEAKENS.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII_THE_JUDGE_TAKES_A_HAND">CHAPTER XIII. THE JUDGE TAKES A HAND.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#HALL_OF_SHELLS">HALL OF SHELLS.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#The_Wonderful_Adventures_of_Capn_Wiley">The Wonderful Adventures of Cap’n Wiley.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#A_DIVERS_GREATEST_DANGER">A DIVER’S GREATEST DANGER.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#PRESENCE_OF_MIND">PRESENCE OF MIND.</a></p>
<p class="hangindent"><a href="#NEWS_ITEMS_OF_INTEREST">NEWS ITEMS OF INTEREST.</a></p>
</div>
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<p class="center">No. 77. <span style="padding-left:5em; padding-right:5em">NEW YORK, January 17, 1914.</span> Price Five Cents.</p>
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<h1>OWEN CLANCY’S RUN OF LUCK;<br />
<span class="xlargefont">Or, THE MOTOR WIZARD IN THE GARAGE.</span></h1>
<p class="center no-break largefont boldfont">By BURT L. STANDISH.</p>
<h2 class="no-break"><a name="CHAPTER_I_OVER_THE_RIM_ROCK" id="CHAPTER_I_OVER_THE_RIM_ROCK"></a>CHAPTER I.<br />
<span class="cheaderfont">OVER THE RIM ROCK.</span></h2>
<p>Honk, h-o-n-k!</p>
<p>“Look out there! Jump—jump!”</p>
<p>High above these sounds there broke a startled yell.
Owen Clancy, who was tramping along the road with his
coat over his arm, not only heard the yell, but caught
one tragic glimpse of a figure soaring through the cloud
of dust, dropping in a sprawl on the rocks, and then rolling
over the edge of the cliff.</p>
<p>“Great jumping horn toads!” gulped the red-headed chap,
coming to an astounded halt, every nerve in a quiver.
“Right over the precipice, by thunder! That fellow’s done
for, and no mistake. The man behind that steering wheel
ought to be pinched! He didn’t give the fellow in the
trail any chance at all—just ran him down and made him
jump over the edge of the cliff. Now the driver of that
car hasn’t the common decency to come back and see how
much harm has been done!”</p>
<p>The scene of this reckless automobile driving was a
trail leading toward the city of Phoenix, Arizona. It was
one of those mountain-and-desert trails which lead for
miles over thirsty, sun-scorched plains, and occasionally
climb to dizzy heights by narrow, hair-raising spirals
clipped from the mountainside.</p>
<p>Clancy, at the high point of the trail, had been crossing
a rugged, bowlder-covered uplift. At his left was a blank
wall, a hundred feet high; under his feet was a shelf,
barely wide enough for the road; and, on his right, was a
precipice.</p>
<p>Those heights overlooked a dusty stretch of flat desert,
at whose farther edge could be seen the rooftops and spires
of Phoenix peeping out of the green treetops. The city,
from that distance, presented a most enchanting view, and
Clancy had paused to look and to admire.</p>
<p>“Wonder what sort of luck I’m going to have in that
town?” he had asked himself. “I’ve got a notion it is
going to make or break me. Well,” and he frowned resolutely,
“if it breaks me, I’ll make good somewhere else.
I’m the head of the family now, and it is up to me to show
the folks back East just what sort of a little, red-headed
breadwinner I am. I’ll——”</p>
<p>He broke off his reflections abruptly. From behind him,
and altogether too close for comfort, came the toot of
a motor horn. Accompanying the sound there burst forth
the loud run of a motor.</p>
<p>Clancy, always quick to act in an emergency, gave one
leap for the blank wall at the trailside, and flattened against
it. Not an instant too soon did he accomplish this, for,
ere he could draw a full breath, a big, black car lurched
past, the mud guards almost brushing his knees.</p>
<p>It was a six-cylinder machine, built to carry seven passengers,
but there was only the driver aboard. Lightly
ballasted, the huge machine jumped and swayed on that
dangerous path in a manner to make the heart jump.</p>
<p>But there was something else that made Clancy’s heart
jump. He suddenly became aware of another pedestrian in
the road, a fellow he had not seen before.</p>
<p>In the instant of time allowed him for making observation,
Clancy saw only that the other foot traveler was
a youngish chap, and that he was loitering along unconscious
of the speeding car behind him.</p>
<p>The driver of the machine did not slacken gait in the
least, but contented himself with merely sounding the horn.
Wildly Clancy cried out for the stranger to jump. The
stranger, casting one frightened glance over his shoulder,
jumped without delay—but in the wrong direction.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p>
<p>Alighting on the edge of the cliff, he fell and rolled—over
the edge. The car raced on and vanished behind a
shoulder of rock, leaving a cloud of dust to mark its passage.
Clancy ran forward, badly shaken by what he
firmly believed would turn out to be a tragedy.</p>
<p>The dust was flicked away by the wind, and, as the air
cleared, Clancy fell to his knees on the cliff’s edge.</p>
<p>“Hello!” he called, in a voice husky with apprehension.</p>
<p>There was no answer, and the gruesome fears of the
red-headed fellow increased. Some of the dust was rolling
below the brink of the wall and he could not see clearly.
Straining his eyes downward, he shouted again.</p>
<p>This time he was electrified by hearing an answering
shout. It came up through the thinning fog of dust and
was strong and, apparently, from near at hand. The fellow
who had rolled over the edge had not fallen to the bottom
of the cliff, after all.</p>
<p>“Where are you?” demanded Clancy.</p>
<p>“I’m where I’m glad to be, but where I wish I wasn’t,”
was the rather queer response. “Feller that’s born to be
hung or drowned, howsomever, ain’t goin’ to be put out
of business by a chug wagon and a bit of up-and-down
wall. Pard, do somethin’ for me. I don’t reckon I can
do a thing for myself, and the position I’m in is right
juberous.”</p>
<p>By then, the dust had entirely cleared away below and
a strange spectacle presented itself to the eyes of the lad
on the brink.</p>
<p>Ten or fifteen feet down, the steep, smooth wall was
broken by a shelf. The shelf was no more than a foot
and a half in width, and a stunted bush was growing at
its edge. The stranger’s body had met the obstruction in
its fall, and was now lying on the shelf, wedged in between
the bush and the face of the cliff.</p>
<p>The stranger lay quietly in his perilous berth, half on
his back with face upturned. He could not have been
more than seventeen or eighteen years of age, and he wore
a faded shirt of blue flannel, corduroy trousers, and tight,
high-heeled boots.</p>
<p>Those cowboy boots, constructed for riding rather than
for walking, had undoubtedly got him into his dangerous
predicament. They had given him no firm foothold
in alighting from his sudden jump, and he had fallen and
rolled from the edge of the cliff.</p>
<p>“Get up on your feet!” called Clancy, “I’ll lower myself
as far as I can and try to take your hand and pull
you up.”</p>
<p>“Nary, pard,” came the answer. “I reckon as how I’d
better imitate a piece of bloomin’ brick-a-braw on a mantel-shelf.
If I get to squirmin’, that bit of brush pulls out and
lets me down. See how it is? Throw down a rope.”</p>
<p>“I haven’t a rope.”</p>
<p>“Then, by glory, I opine I was born to be busted in
fraggyments at the foot of this here clift. Why ever ain’t
you got a rope?”</p>
<p>The stranger seemed composed enough, and certainly
he took a very peculiar view of the situation. He wasn’t
frightened—at least not so Clancy could notice it.</p>
<p>“You’ve got to up end yourself somehow!” declared
Clancy. “Straighten yourself upright along the wall and
reach as high as you can. Maybe our hands will meet.”</p>
<p>“Bush is givin’ ’way,” was the answer. “I can feel it
pullin’ out. One thing I want you should do for me,
friend.”</p>
<p>“What’s that?”</p>
<p>“Find out who that cimiroon was that was drivin’ that
gas cart; then scalp him, and say you done it for James
Montague Fortune, which is me. Adios, pard. That
blamed bush can’t stand the strain much longer.”</p>
<p>“Oh, take a brace, can’t you?” Clancy answered sharply.
“If you’ve got to drop anyhow, you might as well do it
while trying to save yourself. Here, look!”</p>
<p>With his left arm around a bowlder at the cliff’s edge,
Clancy, flat on the ground, was reaching his right hand
downward.</p>
<p>“See if you can’t get hold of my hand,” he went on.
“Do that, Fortune, and I’ll pull you up. Come on, now.
You can make it if you try.”</p>
<p>“You’re the most persistenest person I ever seen!” grumbled
James Montague Fortune. “You can’t even let a feller
fall down a cliff in peace! Well, if you’re set on it,
I’ll make a stagger to get up, but I’m a-tellin’ you it’s a
powerful small piece o’ standin’ ground I got, and it tips
the wrong way and is smooth, like it was greased. Here’s
where I caper. Reckon I might as well shoot off into the
dizzy void as to go rollin’ down the face of them rocks
with a measly handful of chaparral.”</p>
<p>Slowly, and while Clancy held his breath and waited,
Fortune began twisting himself into a sitting posture. The
bush gave a sudden heave, and its top bent until it was
sticking straight out at right angles to the cliff wall. Clancy
whooped in an agony of fear. The other looked up at
him calmly.</p>
<p>“Told you!” he called. “Couldn’t even hang a persimmum
on that clump o’ brush without givin’ it the wiggle-waggles,
and here I’m tryin’ to balance a hundred and
forty pounds on it. Don’t take no head for ’rithmatec to
figger out what’s goin’ to happen. I’m givin’ myself a
minute and a half. How much do you give me?”</p>
<p>“I’d like to give you a punch,” howled Clancy, “for
wasting time when you haven’t an instant to spare! Get
up! Reach for my hand! Quick!”</p>
<p>“Ain’t you the funny whopper, though! Here’s where
I get up and fall off.”</p>
<p>With a quick, wiry contortion, Fortune hoisted himself
erect and hugged the smooth, steep wall with both arms.
A bushel of rock and débris went bounding downward
from the shelf, booming and echoing into the depths.
The bush went, too, and Fortune, in his absurd boots,
was balanced on a slippery foothold, with a gulf below and
a glassy wall overhead.</p>
<p>“Darned if I can savvy this!” he murmured. “I’m here
yet, ain’t I?”</p>
<p>“Take my hand!” shouted Clancy.</p>
<p>This was something Fortune could not do. One reached
down and the other reached up, but a foot gap separated
their groping fingers.</p>
<p>“Splice out that arm about a foot, pard,” said Fortune,
“and we’ll make it.”</p>
<p>“I’ll do it!” declared Clancy. “Hang on a minute
longer!”</p>
<p>He drew back from the edge, hastily unbuckled the belt
about his waist, removed it, buckled it once more, and
then, clinging tightly to the leather loop, lowered it over
the cliff.</p>
<p>The maneuver was successful. Fortune gripped the band
of stout leather and Clancy, exerting a surprising amount
of strength, dragged the chap below back over the brink
and to safety.</p>
<p>“Blamed if you didn’t make it!” exclaimed Fortune, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
a tone of surprise, as he squatted on the edge of the
precipice. “Wouldn’t ’a’ believed it possible nohow.
What’s your handle, pard?”</p>
<p>Clancy gave him the “handle,” and the two shook hands.</p>
<p>“Now that you’ve pulled me out o’ that diffukilty,” remarked
James Montague Fortune, “what do you opine to
do with me, huh?”</p>
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<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II_JIMMIE_FORTUNE" id="CHAPTER_II_JIMMIE_FORTUNE"></a>CHAPTER II.<br />
<span class="cheaderfont">JIMMIE FORTUNE.</span></h2>
<p>Fortune had the sort of good-natured face that reflects
an easy-going disposition. He was about as handsome as
Owen Clancy, which is the same as saying that he would
never be hung for his good looks, but his face was attractive
for all that. His nose was a “snub,” and his eyes
were narrow, and crinkled all around where a perennial
smile had puckered them and left its marks.</p>
<p>Handsome is as handsome does, always, and it was safe
to say that James Montague Fortune, while a peculiar
chap in some respects, possessed a cheerful soul and a
nature most companionable.</p>
<p>“What am I going to do with you?” repeated Clancy,
studying Fortune with humorous eyes. “That’s not my
business, is it? This is a free country, and you’re your
own boss.”</p>
<p>“Sure,” was the reply, “but I’m tired of bein’ my own
boss. It’s too big a job and I ain’t able to swing it.
I’m right smart of a feller, Clancy, and husky and able
more’n I can tell, but I’ll be dad-binged if I’m much of
a success. How’d you like to sign me on for my board
and keep and, say, fifty plunks a month? Huh?”</p>
<p>Clancy threw back his red head and burst into a laugh.</p>
<p>“Where’s the joke?” asked Fortune.</p>
<p>“What use have I got for a chap like you?” Clancy returned.
“Why, I’m looking for a job myself. That’s
why I’m going to Phoenix, Fortune. And I’m walking
to save stage fare from Mesa.”</p>
<p>“Didn’t know but you might be a Vandefeller, or a
Rockybilt in disguise,” grinned Fortune. “I’ve worked
for purty nigh everybody in southern Arizona, and I jest
wanted to add you to my list of employers. I don’t seem
able to hold a job long. Shortest time I was ever hired
and fired was fifteen minutes, and the longest time was two
days. Fortune! That’s a bully name, ain’t it? Never
done me no good, though. If you can’t hire me, mebby
you’d like me for a pard? I’ll be your compadre jest
for my board and keep. How about it?”</p>
<p>Clancy shook his head.</p>
<p>“I’m going to have all I can do to corral my own board
and keep, Jimmie,” he answered.</p>
<p>“H’m,” mused Fortune, rubbing his chin. “You’re the
blamedest feller! While I was on that ledge, down there,
you said somethin’ about punchin’ my head. Reckon
you could get away with it?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” said the surprised Clancy. “If you’re
as good as you look I’d probably have a handful.”</p>
<p>Fortune got his feet under him, stepped into the road,
and put up his hands.</p>
<p>“Come on!” he called.</p>
<p>“What do you mean?”</p>
<p>“Can’t you tell what I mean jest by lookin’?” was the
cheerful response. “Take holt o’ me and slam me down.
Bet you can’t.”</p>
<p>“You want to fight?”</p>
<p>“One or t’other of us goes on his back in about two
minutes.” Fortune began hopping around in his high-heeled
boots. “Hit me in the eye!” he begged, sawing the
air with his fists.</p>
<p>For a few moments Clancy was astounded. Fortune’s
grin was wide and inviting—in fact, he was about the
pleasantest slugger Clancy had ever seen.</p>
<p>“Cut out the foolishness,” said Owen. “What reason
have I got to fight with you?”</p>
<p>“Shucks! You got to have a reason for every blame’
thing? Climb my neck—if you got the sand! Ain’t I
beggin’ hard enough?”</p>
<p>Abruptly Clancy made up his mind to enter heartily
into the spirit of the affair. So he sprang erect and sailed
into Jimmie Fortune, whom he had just saved from being
dashed to pieces at the bottom of the cliff.</p>
<p>Thump, thump, thump!</p>
<p>The sodden fall of fists was heard during a sharp give-and-take.
Clancy, who had forgotten more of the “science”
than Fortune ever knew, had all the best of it. Fortune
clinched; and then Clancy, with a fine exemplification of
the old reliable “double grapevine,” laid his antagonist on
his back in the middle of the road.</p>
<p>Fortune got up with a joyous laugh, caressing a bruise
on his chin with one hand, and, with the other, wiping
the dust out of his eyes.</p>
<p>“I reckon you’ll do,” said he. “You’re as good as you
look, Clancy, and then some. Let’s be pards, huh? We’ll
travel together, and I’ll look after my own board and
keep. I’m for Phoenix to find a livin’, same as you. Why
not make a stab at the old burg in double harness? I
could jest love a feller that slammed me down like that!”</p>
<p>Fortune was so delighted that his mirth was infectious.
Clancy saw no occasion for all that abandon of happiness,
and yet it was impossible not to join in his companion’s
rollicking mirth.</p>
<p>“All right, Jimmie,” said he, “we’ll be pards, and we’ll
go on together. Suppose we travel?”</p>
<p>“I allow we’ll have to travel if we ever reach Phoenix.
Pasear it is, Reddy!”</p>
<p>Side by side they continued on along the treacherous
trail.</p>
<p>“I got to uncork,” remarked Fortune, “and tell you more
about myself. Some folks calls me a desert rat, but that
there’s a libel. I’m jest a rollin’ stone, but I’d stop rollin’
blame’ quick if anybody ’u’d hire me and keep me
hired.”</p>
<p>“Why don’t you stay hired?”</p>
<p>“Mainly because I do the wrong thing while ketchin’
onto a new line o’ work. An assayer gave me a chanst
in Prescott, and set me to grindin’ at a muller board. I
tipped over the table and busted a carboy o’ sulphuric
acid, and got run out o’ the place. That’s where I lasted
fifteen minutes. ’Nother time I took a throw at a general
store in Tempe, and believe me, I was busy-izzy for one
hull day. Store was crowded and I had to be in about six
places to oncet. The boss reckoned he had a prize, from
the way I flew around; but he changed his mind when he
diskivered I’d left the spigot o’ the molasses bar’l open.
The floor o’ the back room was ankle deep in sweet stuff,
and the old man made a pass at me with his foot. I
dodged the foot and he slipped and went down in the
black strap. He rolled over and over, and when he chased
me through the front door of the ‘Emporium’ he had
gathered up purty nigh everythin’ in the store like a piece<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
o’ fly paper. A bolt o’ calico, a couple o’ feather dusters,
fifteen or twenty pounds o’ crackers—oh, I can’t begin to
tell all the stuff that was stickin’ to him. The damage
was right considerable, and I ain’t had the nerve to go
back to Tempe since.”</p>
<p>Clancy enjoyed Fortune’s reminiscences. There was no
doubt that the wanderer drew heavily on his imagination,
but that merely made his recital the more interesting.</p>
<p>“It’s been a year since I tackled Phoenix,” went on
Jimmie. “I worked that bunch of adobes up and down
and across, but maybe some of ’em have kind of forgot me,
and I’ll get another show. What field of industry are you
aimin’ to hit, Brick Top?”</p>
<p>“Want to get a job in a garage,” said Owen.</p>
<p>The other looked at him with quickened interest.</p>
<p>“You bug on the motors?”</p>
<p>“Well, you might call it that,” laughed Owen.</p>
<p>“Never tried ’em myself. Looks like a promisin’ field.
Wonder if we couldn’t get jobs in the same garage?”</p>
<p>“Maybe we could; and then, again, maybe there isn’t
a garage in Phoenix that has a place for us. I have a
note for a thousand dollars that I want to collect from
the proprietor of a garage in—— What’s the matter with
you?” demanded Clancy, breaking off suddenly.</p>
<p>Fortune had come to a dead stop in the trail. He
stared at his new “pard,” then craned his head forward
and put a hand behind his ear.</p>
<p>“Otra vez!” he murmured. “Come again with that,
Red. A note for—how much?”</p>
<p>“Thousand dollars.”</p>
<p>“Gee-wollops! I didn’t know there was that much dinero
in the world. And here you tune up and allow you
couldn’t hire me at fifty plunks a month!”</p>
<p>“The note doesn’t belong to me,” Clancy explained,
“but to my father. The folks need the money—and I
may have a hard time collecting it. You say you have
been in Phoenix, Jimmie?”</p>
<p>“I was there good and plenty for six months.”</p>
<p>“Ever hear of a man named Rockwell—Silas Rockwell?”</p>
<p>Jimmie gave a startled jump. “Wow!” he yelled.</p>
<p>“Know Rockwell?” continued Clancy.</p>
<p>“He’s my Uncle Si, but he never had no use for any
the rest of the fambly. Sort of an even thing, Red, ’cause
none of the rest of the fambly ever had much use for him.
He runs the Red Star Garage, on First Avenue, and he
was never knowed to pay a cent if he could dodge or run
away. If he owes your folks money, then you better forget
it. You can get blood out of a turnip quicker’n you
can get cold cash out of Uncle Si. My people knows
him by the lovin’ name of ‘Old Rocks,’ and——”</p>
<p>Fortune’s voice trailed off into silence. He and Clancy
were standing on the slope of the mountain, near the place
where the trail left the uplift and straightened out across
the flat desert. Fortune’s eyes were fixed on something at
the foot of the descent—something which seemed to hold
him spellbound.</p>
<p>Clancy, his wonder aroused by his companion’s behavior,
dropped his gaze to the foot of the slope. What he saw
there surprised him.</p>
<p>The big automobile, which had so recklessly swept past
him and Fortune on the heights, was at a halt at the edge
of the brown, dusty plain. A smaller car, facing the other
way, was drawn up beside the six-cylinder machine.</p>
<p>Two men had got out of the small car. One of them
was stoutly built, well dressed, and of middle age. This
man’s panama hat was pushed back on his head and he
seemed to be violently agitated. The driver of the large
machine was on the ground, and to him the stout gentleman
was addressing himself. The other man hovered
around in the background.</p>
<p>This third member of the party at the foot of the
slope was tall and thin, and wore a linen duster, a cap,
and had a pair of goggles pushed up on his forehead.</p>
<p>“Great jumpin’ tarantulas!” gasped Fortune. “Talk of
the Old Nick and you hear him a-snorin’. Red, that
man in the duster, down there, is Uncle Si! Wouldn’t
this rattle your spurs?”</p>
<p>“Who’s the other man, Jimmie?” queried Owen.</p>
<p>“I’m by; but the feller that other chap’s talkin’ to is
the one that drove me over the cliff! Whoop-ya! Right
here’s where I get even. Watch my smoke!”</p>
<p>With that, Fortune rushed down the sloping trail at
top speed. Clancy followed him swiftly, calling out as
he went:</p>
<p>“Don’t do anything reckless, Jimmie! Look out, or
you’ll get yourself into trouble.”</p>
<p>“Somebody’s goin’ to get into trouble, all right,” Fortune
flung back, over his shoulder, and raced on.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
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<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III_THE_MOTOR_WIZARD" id="CHAPTER_III_THE_MOTOR_WIZARD"></a>CHAPTER III.<br />
<span class="cheaderfont">THE MOTOR WIZARD.</span></h2>
<p>As Clancy drew nearer the group at the foot of the
slope, it became apparent that the stout gentleman was
“laying down the law” to the driver of the big car. Rockwell
continued to hang discreetly in the background.</p>
<p>Into this group Fortune plunged like a whirlwind. In
half a minute he had laid violent hands on the chauffeur,
and the two fell to struggling with might and main.</p>
<p>The chauffeur was older than Fortune, although about
the same size, and he protected himself with a good deal
of vigor. In spite of his utmost efforts, however, the
wanderer threw him and dropped on his chest with both
knees; then, as he drew back his fist to strike, the stout
man grabbed his arm.</p>
<p>“What do you mean, you young savage?” the man cried.
“Here, Rockwell! Help me get these two apart.”</p>
<p>Rockwell helped, and so did Clancy. In a little time
the two antagonists were dragged away from each other
and held firmly at a distance. Their glances crossed
angrily.</p>
<p>“If it’s a fight you want,” snarled the chauffeur, “I’m
willing to accommodate. No one can jump me like that
without takin’ his medicine, by gorry!”</p>
<p>“Y’ought to have your face pounded in!” shouted Fortune.
“You run me down on the narrer trail, up the
mountain, and I had to roll over the edge o’ the clift to
get away from you. What d’you mean by whalin’ along
a road like that, without ever givin’ a feller who’s hoofin’
it a chanst for himself?”</p>
<p>“Look here, Dirk Hibbard,” called the stout man, fastening
a stern glance on the chauffeur, “is that what you
did?”</p>
<p>“You can’t believe that whelp, judge,” answered Hibbard.
“You know I’m a careful driver. He’s making up
that yarn out of whole cloth. I slowed up and sounded
the Gabriel—and he knows it!”</p>
<p>“Slowed up!” jeered Fortune. “You tore past me at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
forty miles an hour. Ain’t that so, pard?” and he appealed
to Clancy.</p>
<p>“Yes,” said Clancy, “it’s so. He sounded the horn, but
never slackened speed at all. I had to be quick to get
out of his way.”</p>
<p>The judge favored Clancy with a keen look. Evidently
he was impressed by the youth’s appearance and truthfulness.</p>
<p>“Well,” remarked the judge, “maybe Hibbard deserves a
licking—but he’ll get worse than that before I’m done
with him. You keep hands off,” he added to Fortune; “I’ll
not stand for any rough-house.”</p>
<p>He pushed Fortune away and nodded to Clancy to take
charge of him and restrain his hostile ardor. Clancy at
once passed to the side of his friend and caught his arm
restrainingly. Rockwell, who did not seem to recognize
Fortune as a relative, got off into the background once
more.</p>
<p>“So,” went on the judge, in scathing tones, again giving
attention to Dirk Hibbard, “you take my car out without
permission and go over mountain trails with it at forty
miles an hour! What have you to say for yourself?”</p>
<p>“Judge Pembroke,” answered Hibbard, “these two hoboes
are pullin’ the wool over your eyes. I don’t see why you
are taking their word against mine. You know me, and
they’re strangers. Is that right?”</p>
<p>“Did I, or did I not, tell you never to take that machine
out of the garage without permission?” flared the judge.</p>
<p>“Why, yes, but——”</p>
<p>“You knew my wishes. To-day you thought I was
going to Prescott, and you deliberately disobeyed instructions.
I changed my mind about going north and telephoned
the garage for the car. Rockwell told me you
had taken the car and gone north by this road. He and
I followed you, and found you at the foot of the mountain,
with the car disabled. Where have you been, Hibbard?”</p>
<p>The chauffeur wore a guilty look, but he made a show
of defending himself.</p>
<p>“The motor wasn’t workin’ well, judge,” said he, “and
I took the car over the trail to get it in shape.”</p>
<p>“Oh, you did!” answered the judge. “You took it over
the mountain trail at forty miles an hour—just to get the
motor in shape! Likely yarn! You seem to have got it
in excellent condition, for the car is disabled and can’t
turn a wheel. Why don’t you fix it?”</p>
<p>“I’m trying to,” answered Hibbard, “but it promises to
be a long job. I don’t know just where the difficulty is.”</p>
<p>The judge whirled on Rockwell.</p>
<p>“Can you locate the trouble?” he asked. “I want to
take this car back to the garage—I’m not going away and
leave it here.”</p>
<p>The garage proprietor came up to the machine. Both
sides of the hood had been lifted, and he stooped down
and looked the motor over critically.</p>
<p>“Engine seems all right,” said he. “Maybe there’s no
gasoline in the tank.”</p>
<p>“Tank’s half full,” returned Hibbard, with a scowl.</p>
<p>“Then maybe the carburetor——”</p>
<p>“Carburetor’s in apple-pie order,” averred the chauffeur.</p>
<p>“All that being the case,” went on Rockwell reflectively,
“I reckon we better hitch a rope to the machine and haul
it back to the garage for an overhauling.”</p>
<p>Clancy’s keen eyes had been going over the motor.
At a glance he had located the difficulty, and he was
amazed to hear the garage owner and the chauffeur assert
their ignorance of it.</p>
<p>“The trouble’s plain enough,” he blurted out. “I can
locate it from here.”</p>
<p>Instantly the red-headed fellow captured the complete attention
of the judge, Rockwell, and Hibbard.</p>
<p>“You must be a wonder!” sneered Hibbard. “I’ve been
drivin’ a car for four years, but maybe you know a heap
more’n I do. You act like one of these chaps that know
it all!”</p>
<p>“Are you a mechanic?” inquired Rockwell.</p>
<p>“Mechanic!” jeered Hibbard. “He’s an expert. Can’t
you tell that by lookin’ at him? Regular red-headed
fix it. You don’t know what’s wrong, Rocks, and I don’t.
Let’s see if he can go ahead and make good.”</p>
<p>Clancy, under this fire of ill-natured talk, kept his
temper well in hand. Fortune grew restive, and was
plainly eager to give Hibbard as good as he sent, but his
“pard” checked him with a look.</p>
<p>“It doesn’t take an expert, nor much of a mechanic, to
tell what is wrong with that engine,” said he. “If the rest
of the car is in order, I can settle the difficulty in thirty
seconds.”</p>
<p>“Wow!” cried Hibbard, with an ugly laugh. “He’s a
wizard, a regular motor wizard. He rolls up out of the
desert, and——”</p>
<p>“That will do!” cut in the judge sharply. “What is
your name, young man?” he asked, turning to Clancy.</p>
<p>Clancy told him. Rockwell, when he heard the name,
gave a start and looked at the lad more closely.</p>
<p>“You say,” continued the judge, pulling a gold timepiece
from his vest, “that you can make my car ready for
the road in thirty seconds. Go ahead and make good.
I’ll time you.”</p>
<p>Clancy smiled as he stepped forward.</p>
<p>“All right,” said he.</p>
<p>He bent down and manipulated a couple of wires leading
from the magneto to the spark plug. Then he straightened
up.</p>
<p>“That’s all,” he remarked.</p>
<p>“You’ve got fifteen seconds more,” said the judge.
“Go on.”</p>
<p>“It’s all over, judge. The wires were crossed, that’s
all. Easy enough to see and easy enough to fix.”</p>
<p>Rockwell and Hibbard exchanged a quick glance. It
was a significant glance and did not escape either Clancy
or Fortune, although it was entirely lost upon the judge.</p>
<p>“You mean to say the trouble is remedied?” inquired
Judge Pembroke incredulously.</p>
<p>“I think so,” Clancy answered, “providing the rest of
the car is in condition. The crossing of wires from magneto
to spark plugs will disable any car.”</p>
<p>“See if you can crank the machine.”</p>
<p>Clancy lowered the sides of the hood, fastened them in
place, and then walked back and adjusted the spark. One
spin of the crank set the engine to humming.</p>
<p>“Well, by George!” exclaimed the judge; “and neither
Rockwell nor Hibbard could tell what was wrong! What
do you know about that?” he asked, turning to the
garage proprietor.</p>
<p>Rockwell merely grunted and began cranking his own
machine preparatory to a return to town. Hibbard’s face
was like a thundercloud. The animosity he had previously
shown toward Fortune had seemingly shifted to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
Clancy. Like Rockwell, however, Hibbard had nothing
to say.</p>
<p>“I suppose you can drive a car, Clancy?” the judge
asked.</p>
<p>“Certainly,” was the reply.</p>
<p>“Then I’d like to have you drive me back to town.”</p>
<p>“I don’t want to take the place of your chauffeur,
judge,” said Clancy, “and, besides, I’ve a little business
with Mr. Rockwell and would like to ride with him. We
can transact the business very nicely on the way to town.”</p>
<p>Rockwell, who was behind the wheel of the other machine,
shot another quick glance at Clancy.</p>
<p>“I reckon I’ll take the rumble seat o’ the other car, and
ride with you, pard,” spoke up Fortune.</p>
<p>“I reckon you won’t,” snapped Rockwell. “You’ll either
ride with the judge, young man, or else you’ll walk.”</p>
<p>Judge Pembroke seemed surprised at this ugly show
of temper.</p>
<p>“You’re welcome to ride in my car,” said he to Fortune.</p>
<p>“Wait for me at the garage, Jimmie,” said Clancy, “providing
you get there before we do. If we get there first,
I’ll wait.”</p>
<p>“Correct,” returned Fortune, and climbed into the tonneau
of the judge’s machine.</p>
<p>The judge, with no very good grace, motioned Hibbard
to climb to the driver’s seat, and then followed and took
the seat beside him.</p>
<p>“I’ll see you again, Clancy,” called the judge, as the
big car started off. “I want to have a talk with you.”</p>
<p>Clancy got in with Rockwell, and the smaller machine
got under way. For several minutes Rockwell sat bowed
over the steering wheel and did not speak. At last he
thawed out enough to remark:</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t have had that happen for a hundred dollars!
What business have you butting into my affairs? If it
comes to that, what’s your business with me, anyway?
Come across with it.”</p>
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<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV_CLANCY_GETS_A_JOB" id="CHAPTER_IV_CLANCY_GETS_A_JOB"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br />
<span class="cheaderfont">CLANCY GETS A JOB.</span></h2>
<p>There was nothing friendly in Rockwell’s voice. In fact,
his very words showed an enmity for which Clancy was
at a loss to account.</p>
<p>“I was helping out the judge,” said he. “I didn’t know
I was butting into your affairs.”</p>
<p>“You made Pembroke think I didn’t know what was
wrong with his car!”</p>
<p>“Well, you didn’t, did you?”</p>
<p>“Think I’m a fool? Think I——” Rockwell broke off
suddenly, as though realizing he was going too far. “Pembroke
is one of my best customers,” he went on. “He
keeps two cars at my garage—that big one and an electric
for his wife. You’ve made him think I don’t know
my business, and I’m liable to lose his trade. That’s why
I’m sore about your butting in.”</p>
<p>There was something here which Clancy could not understand.
If Rockwell knew what was wrong with the
judge’s car—and it was foolish to think that a man who
ran a garage could not locate so simple a difficulty—then
why hadn’t he fixed the motor instead of offering to tow
the car in for an overhauling?</p>
<p>Clancy, who was quick-witted, fell to wondering if Hibbard
and Rockwell might not be in “cahoots” to secure
money from the judge for “repairs” that were not needed.
The chauffeur had shown that he was not to be trusted,
and Clancy had heard stories of Rockwell which were far
from being a credit to him.</p>
<p>All this, however, was merely guesswork. Knowing
nothing absolutely, Clancy reserved judgment.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry if I did you a bad turn, Mr. Rockwell,” said
he, “but it seems queer that Hibbard would misrepresent
things to the judge, and——”</p>
<p>“Never mind that,” cut in Rockwell. “You made a
show of Hibbard and me before the judge, but that’s done
with now, and I’ll see if I can’t smooth things over.
Pembroke seems to have taken a fancy for you, and you
can help me—and maybe Hibbard, too—by keeping away
from him. What’s your business?”</p>
<p>“I like to work with motors and I want a place in a
garage. I was going to Phoenix to see you about it. Have
you a place for me?”</p>
<p>A look of relief crossed Rockwell’s face and his voice
took on a more friendly tone as he answered:</p>
<p>“I’d like to give you a job, but hanged if I see how
I can. Got more men now than I know what to do with.
Is that all?”</p>
<p>“No,” said Clancy, “there’s something else.”</p>
<p>Rockwell grew uneasy again and his former gruffness
came back with a rush.</p>
<p>“What else?” he grunted.</p>
<p>“You know a man named John Clancy, don’t you?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“Well, I’m John Clancy’s son. Owen Clancy is my
name.”</p>
<p>“Your father was killed in Mexico, wasn’t he?”</p>
<p>“No. He went down there to save some of his investments
and just managed to escape with his life. He’s sick,
and in bad shape, and I’ve sent him back East to recover
his health.”</p>
<p>“I see. What about his Mexican investments?”</p>
<p>“He lost everything he had, down below the line. The
revolutionists cleaned him out.”</p>
<p>“Too bad, too bad!” murmured Rockwell. “John Clancy
was well off, and a good sort of a man. But what’s all
this to do with me?”</p>
<p>“The way things are now, Mr. Rockwell,” pursued
Clancy, “the governor needs all the money he can get hold
of. He let you have a thousand dollars and you gave
him a note for it. The note is long past due, and I’m
here to collect the money.”</p>
<p>Rockwell’s brows wrinkled in a hard frown.</p>
<p>“Where’s that note?” he demanded.</p>
<p>Clancy drew an old black wallet from the breast of his
shirt, opened it, and removed an oblong slip of paper.</p>
<p>“Here,” said he, pushing the paper over the steering
wheel and under the eyes of Rockwell.</p>
<p>The latter pushed up his goggles, stared at the note for
a moment, and then pulled the goggles down over his
eyes again.</p>
<p>“That’s the paper, all right,” he observed. “Why wasn’t
it presented when due? I had the money to pay it, then,
but I’m pretty badly crowded just now.”</p>
<p>“You’ll pay it?” asked Clancy hopefully.</p>
<p>“Always pay my obligations, if I’m given time enough.
But I can’t do it right off, Clancy. You’ll have to give me
a week or two to round up the money.”</p>
<p>Clancy returned the note to the wallet and the wallet
to the breast of his shirt.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
<p>“I want to close the matter up as quickly as possible,
Mr. Rockwell,” he answered. “You see, I’ve got to find
a job right away, and get busy. I haven’t any money to
waste loafing around. If there is no garage in Phoenix
that can find a place for me, I’ll have to go to some other
town.”</p>
<p>Rockwell remained thoughtful for several minutes.</p>
<p>“Ever work in a garage?” he asked.</p>
<p>“No,” was the answer. “Up to now I haven’t had to
work. Dad has had plenty of money, and I was attending
an academy and getting ready for college. When the
crash came, I had to quit school and look for work. The
care of the family now falls on me, and—and I’ve got to
make good.”</p>
<p>“Now that I know you’re John Clancy’s son,” said
Rockwell slowly, “I’m inclined to do more than ordinary
to make a place for you. That thousand I got from your
father on my plain note helped me over a mighty tight
pinch, and that’s mainly the reason I’d like to be of some
use to you.”</p>
<p>Clancy was surprised and delighted at the expression of
these sentiments. From what he had heard regarding
Rockwell, he expected to find in the man a cunning, unscrupulous
person who would be exceedingly hard to deal
with. Yet here Rockwell was showing a grateful disposition
which did not tally with the reports of his character
which had come to Clancy.</p>
<p>If Clancy could have seen the guileful light in Rockwell’s
eyes, it is safe to say he would not have been so
pleased. But the goggles hid the garage owner’s eyes, and
the youth was left in the dark as to what was passing in
the man’s mind.</p>
<p>“I’ll appreciate anything you can do for me,” said Clancy,
with feeling.</p>
<p>“Are you willing to do what I tell you to, and to keep
your mouth shut?” asked Rockwell.</p>
<p>“I’ll obey orders, of course, and do the best I can. As
for talking, I’ll close up like a clam about everything
that concerns you and your business.”</p>
<p>It was an honest, straightforward answer, but it failed
to make the proper impression on Rockwell somehow.</p>
<p>“The garage business is peculiar,” remarked Rockwell.
“To make anything at all, the proprietor of a garage has
to pull a lot of wires. Now, Judge Pembroke just wallows
in money, and he wants his cars in the best condition always.
I’ve been at him for a long time to get that big
machine overhauled, but as long as it runs fairly well he
seems to be satisfied. That’s the way with car owners,”
and a complaining note entered the man’s voice. “I know,
a heap better than the judge, what’s best for his car, and
if I don’t do some tinkering with it before long he’ll
have a bad spill on the road. Can’t make him see that,
though. In order to get that machine and put it in A-1
order, I had to resort to tact. Get me?”</p>
<p>“Tact?” echoed Clancy.</p>
<p>“That’s the word. I was doing it all for the judge. I
knew those wires were crossed, and so did Hibbard. What
I was after was to tow the big car back to Phoenix and
put it in apple-pie order. Hibbard and I were working
together. Of course, I had to give Hibbard a bonus; but
then, all chauffeurs draw down a commission on about
everything—they expect it, and if a garage proprietor don’t
pony up, they’ll work it so the car finally lands in some
other garage. When things like that happen, Clancy, I
want you to keep your own counsel. If you do that,
maybe I can find a place for you. If you can’t be—er—diplomatic,
there isn’t much that I can do for John
Clancy’s son. What about it?”</p>
<p>Rockwell was plausible, but he was not plausible enough
to fool Clancy. The red-headed chap was badly disappointed.
Rockwell was crafty, if not downright dishonest.</p>
<p>“I guess you don’t want me, Mr. Rockwell,” said Clancy.
“I haven’t been brought up to stand for that sort of thing.”</p>
<p>“Bosh! You’re too thin-skinned. Business is business,
young fellow, and nowadays a man has to be mighty
shrewd if he makes good. It’s principally the rich men
who keep cars in garages, and it’s necessary to keep their
machines in trim—even if you have to use tact, once in
a while, to get permission to overhaul a car. As for the
driver’s end of it—well, maybe that’s plain graft, but it’s
legitimate so far as the garage owner is concerned. If
he keeps his customers he has to pay the driver his
bit.”</p>
<p>“I need work,” said Clancy, “but I’m going to be square.
If I can’t make good without stealing, then I won’t make
good, that’s all.”</p>
<p>Silence settled down between the two. The car rolled
into Washington Street and along it to First Avenue. As
it turned into the avenue, the front of the garage was
brought plainly into sight. A big red star hung over the
door. Above the star were the words, “Red Star Garage,”
and, below it, the attractive legend, “Free Air.”</p>
<p>The garage was an adobe structure, but it looked rather
imposing and prosperous. A man in greasy overclothes
was out in front, filling a radiator. Another car, spick
and span from recent grooming, was just sliding through
the broad doorway into the street.</p>
<p>In front of the building, on a bench, sat Judge Pembroke
and Jimmie Fortune. Evidently they were waiting
for Clancy to arrive. Rockwell muttered something under
his breath.</p>
<p>“I’ll give you a job as mechanic’s helper at fifty a month
to start,” said he, “and I’ll trust you to do the right thing
by me. Is it a go?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Clancy answered. “When am I to begin?”</p>
<p>“To-morrow morning.”</p>
<p>As Clancy got out of the car in the garage, he turned
to find Judge Pembroke at his elbow.</p>
<p>“I’ve just discharged Hibbard,” said he, “and I want
another driver. I’ll give you seventy-five a month to work
for me, Clancy. Will you take the place?”</p>
<p>Clancy, for a moment, was “stumped.”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry, sir,” he answered, “but I’ve just hired out
to Mr. Rockwell.”</p>
<p>“You’re not half as sorry as I am,” said the judge, turning
away. “If you don’t like it here, come and see me.”</p>
<p>Rockwell, just getting out of the car, chuckled, under
his breath.</p>
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<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V_HIBBARD_SHOWS_HIS_TEETH" id="CHAPTER_V_HIBBARD_SHOWS_HIS_TEETH"></a>CHAPTER V.<br />
<span class="cheaderfont">HIBBARD SHOWS HIS TEETH.</span></h2>
<p>It was hard for Clancy to understand Rockwell. At first,
he had no place open for Clancy at all; after he saw the
thousand-dollar note, he suddenly discovered that he could
put him on the pay roll, providing he could do his work
and keep his own counsel; and finally, when Clancy declined
the position if he must turn his back an his principles,
Rockwell “took him on,” anyway.</p>
<p>It did not occur to Clancy that Rockwell might have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
a design in these shifty tactics, and that the design underwent
changes as Clancy developed his aims and intentions.</p>
<p>As the judge walked off, leaving Clancy poorer by
twenty-five dollars a month because of his promise to
Rockwell, Fortune saw a chance and took quick advantage
of it.</p>
<p>“Hold your bronks a minute, judge,” he called, hurrying
after Pembroke. “I’m big for my size and old for my
age, and I reckon I could pull down that seventy-five allee
same Clancy. What do you say?”</p>
<p>The judge paused and cast a reflective eye over Jimmie.</p>
<p>“Can you drive a car?” he inquired.</p>
<p>“Me? Gee-wollops! Say, I invented cars. If the diaphragm
gets crossways of the razmataz so that the needle
valve back fires, I can fix it in ten seconds with my eyes
done up in a cloth.”</p>
<p>“Bosh!” interfered Rockwell. “You don’t want a thing
to do with that good-for-nothing, judge. I happen to know
him. He can’t tell a radiator from a bale of hay.”</p>
<p>“I don’t think you’ll do,” said the judge to Fortune, and
walked off down the street.</p>
<p>“You’re a fine uncle for a wanderin’ boy that’s tryin’
to get a foothold!” cried Fortune, turning on the garage
owner. “Out with a hammer and knockin’ the rest o’
the fambly as per usual. If I had a disposition like
yourn, blamed if I wouldn’t go down where the boats
come in, and jump off!”</p>
<p>“You get out o’ here!” shouted Rockwell.</p>
<p>“When I get good and ready. I ain’t in your old
chug-wagon corral, but out in front. You don’t own the
street, I reckon. If you don’t like my comp’ny, start your
feet and change locations. Whoosh! Say, if I was as
mean, and back bitin’, and as full o’ low-down schemes
as you, I’d be glad to bob up in straight and honest sassiety
oncet in a while jest to ketch a breath o’ good air.
I’d——”</p>
<p>Rockwell, red with rage and muttering to himself, did
not pause to hear any more, but dived through the front
door of the garage. He looked out again to call to
his new employee:</p>
<p>“I’ll expect you to sleep here nights, Clancy. If you
go away, get back by eight o’clock.”</p>
<p>“All right, sir,” Clancy answered.</p>
<p>Rockwell disappeared, and Fortune dropped down on
the bench and drew Clancy down beside him.</p>
<p>“You locoed, pard?” Fortune demanded.</p>
<p>“I hope not,” was the reply. “Why?”</p>
<p>“What’s Old Rocks payin’ you?”</p>
<p>“Fifty a month.”</p>
<p>“Why didn’t you jump at the judge’s seventy-five?”</p>
<p>“Because I had already agreed to work for Rockwell.”</p>
<p>“Why didn’t you turn Rocks down?”</p>
<p>“When I give a promise I try to stand by it.”</p>
<p>“Who’s goin’ to pin a rose on you for that? Old Rocks?
Fergit it! He’s workin’ a scheme, and already you’re
beginnin’ to get the worst of it. What did he say about
that note?”</p>
<p>“Said he’d pay me the money in a week or two.”</p>
<p>“He never will, and all he’s doin’ is playin’ for time.
You and me can’t trot in double harness if you stay here,
Red. I was sort o’ bankin’ on takin’ your little hand
in mine and goin’ out for a look at the universe. And
here you’ve cut yourself off from Jimmie and Jonah first
clatter out o’ the box.”</p>
<p>“We’ll keep track of each other,” laughed Clancy, “and
maybe I’ll be able to help you to a job before long. How
are you fixed for money, Jimmie?”</p>
<p>“Money?” gasped Fortune. “What’s that? I ain’t on
speakin’ terms with a soo markee.”</p>
<p>Clancy took two silver dollars from his pocket and
pressed them into his friend’s hand.</p>
<p>“That’s not much, Jimmie,” said he, “but it’s the best
I can do for the present. That ought to keep you going
for a short time. I don’t think I’m going to like it at
this garage,” he went on, dropping his voice, “but I’ve
got to stay here till I collect the money on that note. Drop
around occasionally and let me know where you are.”</p>
<p>Fortune looked at the two pieces of silver reflectively.</p>
<p>“You are the clear quill, Red,” he finally observed.
“This here’s a grubstake, and that means you got a half
interest in any vein o’ pay rock I’m able to unkiver. Maybe
I ain’t named Fortune for nothin’, after all, and we go
snooks on whatever grows up from these two plunks after
I’ve planted ’em. Hoop-a-la!”</p>
<p>The queer chap got up from the bench with a wide
smile, jingling the money in his trousers pocket. Just
as he started away, Dirk Hibbard darted around the corner
of the garage and rushed up to Clancy. The fellow’s
manner was distinctly hostile, and, in a flash, Clancy was
on his feet.</p>
<p>“I reckon you’re plumb satisfied now!” exclaimed Hibbard,
bitterly resentful.</p>
<p>Fortune, on his way toward Washington Street, halted
and faced around.</p>
<p>“Well, yes,” drawled Clancy, looking the discharged
chauffeur squarely in the eyes, “I’ve got a job and I suppose
I ought to be satisfied!”</p>
<p>“You laid your plans to get old Pembroke to fire me!”</p>
<p>“It’s nothing to me whether the judge keeps you or fires
you, and I didn’t lay any plans. I’m working for Rockwell
and not for Judge Pembroke.”</p>
<p>“You wanted to get my job for that muttonhead friend
of yours!” breathed Hibbard, through his teeth.</p>
<p>“Who’s the muttonhead?” demanded Fortune, stepping
forward truculently. “Me?”</p>
<p>“Keep off, Jimmie!” said Clancy. “Hibbard’s business
is with me, not with you. I don’t care a rap about you,
one way or the other,” he went on to Hibbard, “but it’s
my private opinion that the judge did a good piece of
work when he pulled the pin on you. I’ve an idea that
you have been double crossing him right along, and that
he has just begun to find it out.”</p>
<p>“Mean to say I’m a thief?” asked the other hotly.</p>
<p>“Any fellow who will disable a car just to get a commission
for having it overhauled isn’t giving much attention
to the interests of his employer; what’s more——”</p>
<p>Hibbard’s face was full of wrath. With a muttered
oath, he struck at Clancy with his fist.</p>
<p>The red-headed chap was not taken by surprise. He
had kept his eyes on the chauffeur’s face, and he knew
that blow was coming an instant before it was launched.</p>
<p>Clancy side-stepped with the swiftness of lightning, and
the clenched hand found only space. Before Hibbard
could recover his balance, Clancy had struck him and sent
him to his knees.</p>
<p>“Gle-ory to snakes, and all sashay!” piped Fortune jubilantly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
“Pard, you found him! That little surprise party
was somethin’ of a jolt. The cimiroon went gunnin’ for
more’n he expected.”</p>
<p>With a bellow of rage, Hibbard regained his feet and
plunged into the garage. The next moment a monkey
wrench came sailing through the door, but Clancy saw it
in time to dodge. Hibbard followed the monkey wrench
in person, armed with a hammer. His face was working
convulsively, and he seemed absolutely beside himself.</p>
<p>“I’ll kill you!” he cried huskily.</p>
<p>Fortune leaped to take a hand in the set-to, but Clancy
ordered him back.</p>
<p>“Leave Hibbard to me,” he said; “I can handle him.”</p>
<p>Fortune, his eyes wide with apprehension for his “pard,”
retreated slowly, and watched.</p>
<p>What he saw was something of a revelation to him in
the art of self-defense. The red-headed chap gave a
pretty demonstration of coolness and skill as opposed to
brute strength and unreasoning rage.</p>
<p>Whirling the hammer in short, vicious circles, Hibbard
executed a furious attack. Clancy stood his ground until
the fellow was close, then he sprang high into the air.
His feet shot out, and the toe of one shoe landed on
the wrist of the hand that held the hammer. The heavy
weapon went clattering to the cement walk.</p>
<p>Then, while the driver stood disarmed, Clancy sailed
into him with vigor and determination. In almost less
time than it takes to tell of it, Hibbard was tripped, flung
from his feet, and cast against the adobe wall.</p>
<p>The force of his fall dazed him, and he sat in a quivering
heap, his back to the adobe and his eyes blinking up
at Clancy.</p>
<p>“What’s this?” called the sharp voice of Rockwell, who
came hurrying through the door.</p>
<p>“Hibbard picked a quarrel with me,” answered Clancy
calmly. “His fists weren’t good enough, and he went after
a monkey wrench and a hammer.”</p>
<p>The garage owner looked down on the driver.</p>
<p>“Haven’t you got any sense at all?” he asked sternly.
“Do you think you’re helping yourself any by this kind
of work?”</p>
<p>Hibbard shook his head, as though to clear the fog
from his brain, and got up slowly.</p>
<p>“That red-headed skunk has euchered me out of a job,”
he growled. “I’ll get even with him, by thunder! If I
can’t get him one way, I will another.”</p>
<p>“<a id="Ref_9"></a>My advice to you, Hibbard, is to sing small,” said
Rockwell. “Don’t want to get yourself in the lockup, do
you?”</p>
<p>“I don’t care a whoop where I get myself, if I can saw
off even with that dub!”</p>
<p>He made another pass at Clancy with his fist, but Rockwell
grabbed the doubled arm and pulled the baffled chauffeur
off along the walk toward the main street. The two
presently turned the corner and were lost to sight.</p>
<p>“Hibbard’s no match for you, Reddy,” said Fortune,
“but you look out for him, jest the same. He’s the sort
that’ll hit from behind, and strike in the dark. Mind
that!”</p>
<p>Clancy laughed lightly.</p>
<p>“Hibbard can’t scare me,” he answered. “He’s sore because
he lost his job—and he’s blaming everybody but
himself.”</p>
<p>“While you’re watchin’ him, pard,” said Fortune, “keep
a weather eye out for old Rocks. He allers has a few
tricks up his wide and flowin’ sleeve, and I don’t like the
looks o’ things around these diggin’s. That’s honest.”</p>
<hr class="chap" />
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<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI_ROCKWELLS_SCHEME" id="CHAPTER_VI_ROCKWELLS_SCHEME"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br />
<span class="cheaderfont">ROCKWELL’S SCHEME.</span></h2>
<p>Hibbard sputtered wrathfully while Rockwell led him
across the street and to a bench in the city hall plaza.
The bench was partly screened from passers-by by a clump
of tall oleanders.</p>
<p>“Sit down, Hibbard,” said Rockwell. “I want to talk
a little sense into that foolish brain of yours, if I can.”</p>
<p>“I don’t want to do any chinning,” protested Hibbard.
“I lost a good job, and I want to get even with the chap
that stole it away from me. Pembroke paid me seventy-five
a month, but the ’coms’ and—er—other things brought
me in a hundred and fifty, and sometimes two hundred.
I ain’t a-going to be pried loose from that snap without
makin’ that red-headed robber smart for it!”</p>
<p>“Oh, hush!” returned the garage owner impatiently.
“You’re talking at the top of your voice, and it would be
easy for some one to overhear you. That wouldn’t do,
Hibbard; you know pesky well it might get you into
trouble.”</p>
<p>“Me?” was the grim response. “I allow there are some
others that would get into trouble, too.” He peered at
Rockwell significantly. “Eh?”</p>
<p>“Never mind about that,” was the uneasy response.
“Just cool off, will you, so we can talk sensibly.”</p>
<p>Hibbard seemed to get himself better in hand. His
voice dropped, his manner changed, and he sank down
on the bench.</p>
<p>“Did you give that red-headed buttinsky a job?” he
asked resentfully.</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“If you’ve got any jobs to throw around you might toss
one my way. Why in blazes did you want to hire that
other yap?”</p>
<p>“I hired him to keep him away from Pembroke. The
judge was waiting when we got back to the garage. But
he was too late. I had already taken Clancy into my
employ at fifty dollars a month.”</p>
<p>“Didn’t the judge offer him what I was getting?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” chuckled Rockwell, “but the fellow has got peculiar
ideas about business. He wouldn’t accept the judge’s
offer of seventy-five a month when he had hired out to
me for fifty.”</p>
<p>“I thought he was a fool!” grunted Hibbard.</p>
<p>“He’s easy. He wants to be straight and square, he says,
and——”</p>
<p>“And work for you!” struck in the other significantly.</p>
<p>“No comments, Dirk. I do as legitimate a garage business
as I can, but, with the commissions demanded by
you drivers, I have to figure close and use tact in order
to make a living. If chauffeurs would play fair, garage
keepers wouldn’t have to scheme so confounded hard to
make both ends meet.”</p>
<p>“Piffle!” sneered Hibbard. “Everybody knows you’re a
skinner, Rocks, and if the drivers didn’t make you whack
up with them you’d stuff all the ‘velvet’ into your own
pocket.”</p>
<p>“That’s your way of looking at it,” Rockwell answered
patiently, “but you’re wrong. That has nothing to do with
this case, though.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p>
<p>“That red-headed chump beat me out of a big commission
on overhauling the judge’s machine, didn’t he? I
was to get twenty-five per cent of the bill you ran up
on the judge, in addition to ten and five on extra parts
for repairs. Whose scheme was that, eh? You hatched
it up and asked me to work it out for you. Your new
employee got next to the crossed wires. Now I’m out of
a job, and the judge don’t even suspect that you had a
hand in putting the car out of commission! Is that right?
You ought to find a place for me, Rockwell.”</p>
<p>The garage owner did not reply at once. He appeared
to be turning something over in his mind.</p>
<p>“Why didn’t you let Pembroke take him on?” continued
Hibbard. “Then I could have had this place you’ve given
him.”</p>
<p>“I had to give Clancy a job,” Rockwell answered.</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>Rockwell peered around cautiously. There was no one
on the graveled walks of the plaza, in their vicinity.</p>
<p>“There’s something you can do for me, Hibbard,” he
proceeded. “I’ll give you a couple of hundred if you
pull it off. If you have a grouch against young Clancy,
you can wipe it out at the same time.”</p>
<p>Hibbard was profoundly interested on the instant.</p>
<p>“Tell me about it,” said he. “I’d do anything to play
even with Clancy.”</p>
<p>Rockwell’s face grew stern and uncompromising as he
went on:</p>
<p>“If I let you in on this, and you betray my confidence in
any way, you’ll get yourself into a peck of trouble, Hibbard.”</p>
<p>The chauffeur looked at him curiously.</p>
<p>“When it comes to handing out trouble, Rocks,” he returned
grimly, “I allow two can play at that game. We
know too much about each other to do any double-crossing.
Play square with me and I’ll do the same with
you.”</p>
<p>“You’ve got such a blooming temper,” the garage man
hesitated, “that I don’t know whether it would be wise to
trust you. The minute you lose the whiphand of yourself,
you fly all to pieces, and blurt out everything you
know.”</p>
<p>“Don’t you believe it! I never blurt out anything that’s
liable to get me into hot water. But why did you bring
this matter up, if you think I can’t be trusted?”</p>
<p>“Well, I’m going to take a chance. You’re about the
only one that fills the bill for this particular piece of
work, and circumstances have shaped themselves so that
you are the logical man. I’ll have to explain a few details
so that you’ll get the matter straight. This Owen
Clancy, the fellow I have just hired, is the son of a man
named John Clancy. John Clancy hired cars from the
garage a good many times, and we got to know each other
pretty well. He’s a mining engineer, and picked up a pot
of money. I understand, though, that he has lost most
of it in Mexico, and that he has now gone back to his
home in the East, a physical and mental wreck. Young
Clancy is taking care of the family.”</p>
<p>“What has all that to do with my work?”</p>
<p>“It has a bearing on it. Several months ago I was
pretty hard pressed, and needed a thousand dollars to see
me through. I got the money of John Clancy, giving
him my plain, unendorsed note. The note became due,
but was not presented for payment. I heard Clancy had
been killed by Mexican revolutionists, and I naturally believed
I never would have to pay that note. Now,” and
the sharp lines gathered in Rockwell’s face, “young Clancy
turns up with the paper, and wants the money.”</p>
<p>Hibbard laughed softly.</p>
<p>“And you don’t want to cough up, eh?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Not just at present. What’s more, Hibbard, I don’t
want any trouble on account of that note.”</p>
<p>“You’ll not have any trouble. Everybody knows that
all your property is in your wife’s name. She didn’t sign
the note with you, did she?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>“Then let Clancy whistle.”</p>
<p>“I can’t do that. If young Clancy sues and tries to
collect, the publicity would be a bad thing for the business.”</p>
<p>“Why didn’t Clancy’s father deposit the note in the bank
before he went to Mexico?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know. The thing that concerns me is that
young Clancy is here with the note, and demands payment.
I have told him that I would try and give him the
money in a couple of weeks.”</p>
<p>“So,” remarked Hibbard, “in order to keep him quiet
and comfortable, you have given him a job. Is that the
way of it?”</p>
<p>“That is partly the way of it. So long as he has the
note, he possesses a weapon which he can use against me
at any time. Frankly, Hibbard, I don’t see how I can get
the money together in a couple of weeks.”</p>
<p>“Borrow it of Mrs. Rockwell.”</p>
<p>The garage owner winked.</p>
<p>“That is out of the question,” he answered. “I borrowed
the money of Clancy to pay a gambling debt, and I want
to keep the whole thing quiet.”</p>
<p>“Where do I come in? What do you want me to do?”</p>
<p>“Here’s the way of it,” returned Rockwell. “If I had
that note in my possession—if I could get hold of it without
young Clancy’s knowledge—I could——”</p>
<p>“You could tear it up, and save yourself a thousand
dollars, plus the interest,” said Hibbard, with an evil grin.
“I get you, old Rocks!”</p>
<p>The other frowned.</p>
<p>“No, you don’t get me,” he growled. “You’re too ready
to think me crooked. If I had the note in my own hands,
and if it got to me without young Clancy’s knowledge, I
could hold it until I was ready to pay over the money.
And, while I was getting ready, Clancy couldn’t make
me any trouble at all. He’d simply think he lost the note,
see? I’d be white with him, too. While I was getting
the money together to take up the note, I’ll let him work
for me at fifty a month.”</p>
<p>“Then, coming down to cases,” observed Hibbard, “you
want me to steal that note from young Clancy, turn it
over to you, and get a couple of hundred for my trouble.”</p>
<p>“I’m not interested particularly in how you secure the
paper from Clancy. The moment you put it into my hands
I will give you two hundred dollars. It will be worth
that to me to have two or three months’ extension of time
on the obligation.”</p>
<p>“Does Clancy carry the note around with him?” asked
Hibbard, already beginning to figure on ways and means
for his rascally exploit.</p>
<p>“Yes. It is in a black wallet in the breast of his flannel
shirt.”</p>
<p>“Where does he hang out nights?”</p>
<p>“He’ll be in the little room back of the garage,” was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
the significant rejoinder. “I’m having him sleep there to
help out the night man in case there is a rush of work.
You know all about the garage, Hibbard. The trick ought
to come easy for you. All I want is a little more time
on that note—and this is about the only way I can get it.”</p>
<p>Hibbard, knowing Rockwell so well, felt positive in his
own mind that the note, once in the signer’s hands, would
be destroyed. The garage man had a way of giving a
plausible touch to his rascally undertakings that fooled
very few of those who understood his character.</p>
<p>“Are you going to help me, or aren’t you?” demanded
Rockwell.</p>
<p>“I’m going to earn that two hundred, and get even with
Clancy, providing——”</p>
<p>Hibbard paused, looking at Rockwell out of the tails
of his eyes.</p>
<p>“Providing what?” the other asked.</p>
<p>“Providing you give me young Clancy’s job, or another
where the chance of a rake-off is as good, after the thing
is over. I’ve got to live—and where, in this burg, can I
get another job as chauffeur without a recommendation
from Pembroke?”</p>
<p>“I’ll take care of you, Hibbard,” said Rockwell.</p>
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<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII_IN_THE_RED_STAR_GARAGE" id="CHAPTER_VII_IN_THE_RED_STAR_GARAGE"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br />
<span class="cheaderfont">IN THE RED STAR GARAGE.</span></h2>
<p>As soon as Rockwell and Hibbard had disappeared,
Jimmie Fortune took rather an abrupt leave of Owen.
He walked rapidly in the direction taken by the garage
man and the chauffeur, jingling his silver dollars as he
went.</p>
<p>“I’ll bet something handsome he’s going to keep an eye
on Rockwell and Hibbard,” muttered Clancy. “Those two
fellows trouble him a lot more than they do me. Jimmie’s
a pretty good sort of a chap, though, if I’m any hand at
reading character.”</p>
<p>Truth to tell, Owen had taken a great liking to the irresponsible,
happy-go-lucky Jimmie. The wanderer had
shown no great capacity for anything but celerity in losing
the various jobs which he managed to secure, and yet his
oddness and good nature made him likable and a good
companion.</p>
<p>Clancy went into the garage and looked around with
considerable interest. One corner of the huge room was
partitioned off for an office. A couple of young fellows,
who looked as though they might be chauffeurs, sat at
a table in the office, smoking cigarettes and playing cards.</p>
<p>The interior walls of the garage were painted white,
and marked off with perpendicular black lines, six or
seven feet apart. Cars of many different makes were
berthed between these lines. Other cars were drawn out
toward the middle of the floor and workmen were tinkering
with them.</p>
<p>In an “L” opening off the rear end of the big room machines
were being washed. In another L on the opposite
side a sandy-whiskered man was vulcanizing a tire. His
face was smudged with oil and grease, but the flame,
striking his features sharply, revealed eyes that captured
Owen’s confidence.</p>
<p>“You’re the mechanic here?” the new employee asked,
approaching the bench where the man was at work.</p>
<p>“You’ve hit it, son,” was the reply.</p>
<p>“I’m going to begin work here to-morrow, and I’m sort
of looking around to get an idea of the place.”</p>
<p>The man leaned back against the side of the bench,
picked up a pipe, lighted it, and surveyed Clancy thoughtfully
through wreaths of smoke.</p>
<p>“Don’t do it,” said he, shaking his head. “I don’t know
why in blazes Rockwell is hiring more help, but that’s
his business. I suppose it’s none of my business, either,
where you work or what you do, but you look to be as
square as a die. If that’s the case, then the Red Star
Garage is no place for you.”</p>
<p>Clancy was surprised at this bit of advice coming from
one of Rockwell’s men. He must have shown how he
felt, for the other went on quickly:</p>
<p>“Of course, I’m not yellin’ my advice to you in Rockwell’s
ears. What I’m saying to you is strictly on the q. t.
If you’ve got a job here, chuck it!”</p>
<p>“But Mr. Rockwell made me an offer, and I accepted
it,” returned Clancy.</p>
<p>“Did he say anything to you about ‘tact,’ and all that?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“Then you’re going into the game with your eyes open.
I guess I didn’t read you right.”</p>
<p>“I guess you did,” said Owen. “I won’t stand for the
kind of ‘tact’ Rockwell mentioned, and I told him so.”</p>
<p>“Sufferin’ snakes! And then he hired you after that?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“I’m by! You must have some kind of a hold on him,
I reckon. This garage is a good place for a young fellow
to start on the down grade. If you can work here and
keep square you’re entitled to a medal. My name is Barton,
Andy Barton. In case you bump into anything here
where you think a little advice would help, call on me.”</p>
<p>“Much obliged, Andy. My name’s Owen Clancy, and I
guess I’m to take hold as one of your helpers.”</p>
<p>“Ever worked with cars any?”</p>
<p>“Not in a garage. This is my first job.”</p>
<p>Andy Barton shook his head gruesomely.</p>
<p>“I reckon I hadn’t better talk to you much, just now,”
said he. “The boss will want to do that. There he
comes,” and Barton went back to his work.</p>
<p>Clancy looked around, and saw Rockwell just coming
into the shop wing of the building.</p>
<p>“Getting the lay of the land, Clancy?” the garage man
asked, pleasantly enough.</p>
<p>“Yes,” was the reply. “This looks like a pretty good-sized
establishment.”</p>
<p>“There are bigger ones in town, but I don’t think you’ll
find any much better. You’ve met Barton? Good! He’ll
tell you what to do when you show up for work in the
morning. Of course,” he added, as Owen strolled away
with him, “there are a lot of cars stored here that are
looked after by the owners themselves. We get six dollars
a month for space between two of those black lines.
The rent, along with the sale of gasoline and oil, is about
all the revenue we get from that class of customers. It’s
the big bugs, like Judge Pembroke, who make the business
worth while.”</p>
<p>He opened a door at the rear of the big room and ushered
Owen into a small apartment equipped with a bunk,
washstand, and chair, and having a single window for
light and air.</p>
<p>“My night man’s name is Pruitt,” continued Rockwell.
“He takes care of the business during the off hours. Occasionally—not
very often—he is rushed, and needs help.
That’s why I want you to sleep in this room, Clancy, and
I wish you’d sleep here to-night.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p>
<p>“If Pruitt has much for me to do,” said Owen, “I can
see where I’m not going to be of much help to Barton.”</p>
<p>“You may never be routed out during the night, but I
want some one around in case Pruitt has to leave the
garage with a car. You’ll show up here this evening?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“All right, I’ll depend on you. I’ll tell the helper, who
has been sleeping here, that he can begin berthing at
home. Give me faithful service, Clancy, and I’ll see that
your wages are raised from time to time. I reckon that
will be all. You’d better go and hunt your supper.
Where’s your baggage?”</p>
<p>“I’ve got a grip coming over from Tempe on the
stage.”</p>
<p>“Why didn’t you bring it with you?”</p>
<p>“Because I walked to save stage fare.”</p>
<p>Rockwell stared, and whistled.</p>
<p>“Your old man must be pretty badly crimped, if you had
to do that,” he remarked. “Show up here at eight o’clock.
You’ll not be on duty, you understand, except in case
you’re needed. You can turn in at eight, or light up and
read, or spend your time in the office—please yourself
about that. Report to Barton in the morning.”</p>
<p>Clancy went away to find a place where he could get
his supper. As he went, he wondered a little why it was
necessary for the proprietor of such a prosperous establishment
to take so much time getting together a thousand
dollars.</p>
<p>“I guess Rockwell’s a bandit, all right,” he muttered,
“but I’m going to be on my guard and see that he doesn’t
get the better of me. That note is a thing he can’t dodge,
and I’m going to keep it right in my hands until he takes
it up.”</p>
<p>Clancy found a modest restaurant in Washington Street
where the food was good and prices reasonable. Although
it was still early in the evening, the electric lights were
sparkling up and down the business thoroughfare as he
came out of the short-order place.</p>
<p>He felt like a stranger in a strange land, and would
have given a good deal for the companionship of Jimmie
Fortune just then. Never before had he been so impressed
with the responsibilities that had been heaped
upon his shoulders, and he was hungry for a little friendly
talk—and Fortune was his only friend in that big town.</p>
<p>In better and happier times, the money represented by
that note of Rockwell’s would have had small bearing on
the fortunes of the Clancys. But now, with his father
sick and his financial affairs gone to wreck and ruin, a
thousand dollars was a lot of money. Clancy had been
told that collecting the amount of that note from Rockwell
was a hopeless undertaking, that the garage man
would exercise every resource of an unscrupulous nature
to get out of paying. So he had been surprised and
pleased when promised the money in a week or two.</p>
<p>Perhaps—he told himself—Rockwell wasn’t so bad, after
all. He appeared to want to do the square thing, and
maybe he was not so prosperous as he seemed, and would
have to hustle a little to get the money to take up his
note.</p>
<p>“I’ll wait on him,” murmured Clancy, “and while I’m
waiting I’ll be earning something and getting a start in
this garage business. The Clancys are about due for a
run of luck, and maybe this is where it starts.”</p>
<p>The big clock on the courthouse in the plaza was booming
the hour of eight as Clancy got back to the Red Star
Garage. At that time there was not much doing about the
place, and Clancy passed through the wide doors and
made his way to the rear room. A man—Pruitt, no doubt—was
smoking a pipe in the office. Clancy did not stop
to speak with him, but went directly to his own quarters.</p>
<p>He had bought a “jumper,” a pair of overalls, and a
pair of gloves. These he took out of the paper in which
they were wrapped, and laid them to one side.</p>
<p>“In the morning,” he thought whimsically, “I’ll get
into them and begin rooting for the family. I’m going
to make good, too, although I wish I was starting out
with any other fellow than Rockwell.”</p>
<p>For a long time he sat in that dingy little room, thinking
over the past, and trying to forecast the future. There
was a man’s work ahead of Owen Clancy, but he faced
it with an indomitable spirit. Collecting that note was
only the beginning. After that had been accomplished,
bigger things lay ahead.</p>
<p>An hour or two passed while he sat in the little room
wrapped up in his reflections. Then, suddenly, he heard
a sound that caused him to start bolt upright in his chair.
Some one was tapping on the window. He turned to look,
and saw a face pressed against the glass. It was the face
of Jimmie Fortune, and Jimmie had a warning finger laid
against his lips.</p>
<p>Clancy got to his feet and slowly approached the window.
Fortune motioned upward with his hands, and
Clancy carefully raised the sash.</p>
<p>“Somethin’ doin’, pard!” said Fortune, in a husky whisper.
“I got to come in and tell you about it. Lock the door
over there. I don’t want nobody buttin’ in on us. Make
everythin’ tight, and then I’ll crawl in and bat the hull
propersition up to you.”</p>
<p>Clancy secured the door, sliding the bolt softly. Meanwhile,
Fortune had been climbing into the room. As soon
as he was inside, he lowered the sash noiselessly and
pulled down the shade.</p>
<p>“What’s the matter, Jimmie?” Owen inquired excitedly.</p>
<p>“I don’t know jest what’s the matter, compadre,” was
the guarded response, “but I allow I’ve got the tail end
of a whalin’ big mystery. I’ve come to you for help in
figgerin’ it out.”</p>
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<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII_FORTUNES_MYSTERY" id="CHAPTER_VIII_FORTUNES_MYSTERY"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br />
<span class="cheaderfont">FORTUNE’S MYSTERY.</span></h2>
<p>Jimmie walked over and sat down on the edge of the
bed.</p>
<p>“I’m all in a takin’ over what I’ve found out,” he remarked,
“but in spite o’ that, I could slop down on this
bunk and sleep to beat four of a kind. Er-wow!” and
he threw up his arms and yawned. “Ain’t it orful,” he
went on, “to be so chock full of agitatin’ things and yet
feel like layin’ right down on ’em and poundin’ your ear?”</p>
<p>“If you’ve got anything in your system, Jimmie,” said
Owen, “now is your chance to get it out. When you’ve
done that, you can crawl in between those blankets and
sleep as long as you please.”</p>
<p>“Mebby I won’t have no chanst to sleep. It all depends
on how you figger out my diskiveries. Fust off,
pard, I’ve found where Dirk Hibbard went when he hiked
off with the jedge’s car. It wasn’t no joy ride, you can
gamble, and he wasn’t jest tryin’ out the machine to see
what was wrong with it. He was acrost the mountain
palaverin’ with Tom Long, who’s got a past like a bandit.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
<p>“Tom Long? Never heard of him.”</p>
<p>“That cimiroon has been keepin’ purty quiet for some
sort of a while, and I opine he’s about due to break out.
If there’s a train robbery or any other kind of a hold-up
anywheres on this part o’ the range, fust thing the sher’ff
does is to go inquirin’ for Tom Long, otherwise Chantay
Seeche Tom. That’s the sort of a maverick he is. Whyever
d’you suppose Hibbard went acrost the mountain to
talk to a feller like that?”</p>
<p>“Give it up.”</p>
<p>“That ain’t all. Mebby I’ve got somethin’ that’ll help us
git a twist on this little game o’ muggins. But I sort o’
begun my yarnin’ wrong end to. I ort to have commenced
at the start, ’stead o’ goin’ along down toward where
you write finish. When your trail and mine forked, a
spell ago, I had a notion I’d keep track o’ Uncle Si and
the shuffer. I seen ’em on a bench in the plaza, thick
as two thieves, but I couldn’t get nigh enough to catch
the run o’ their conversation. I’ll bet it was crooked
palaver, though, ’cause old Rocks ain’t no better than Hibbard,
and you and me sabe what Hibbard is.</p>
<p>“I didn’t linger long around the plaza when them two
got up and hiked. Two silver dollars was burnin’ a hole
in my pocket, so I moseyed over to the Palace and played
’em on the red——”</p>
<p>“You gambled with that money?” Owen demanded
sharply.</p>
<p>“I didn’t think it was gamblin’, pard—I reckoned it was
a cinch. You’d saved my scalp on the cliftside, hadn’t
you? And you and me was pards, wasn’t we? And
that thatch o’ yours is carmine! Figgerin’ from all that,
I allowed I’d drop two cases on the red and pull out
four, then I’d stake the four on red to win and corral
eight, leave the eight on the same color and grab sixteen.
I was plannin’ to keep this up till I had dinero
sufficient to buy a garage for you and a private yacht and
a few other things for myself, but—dog-gone it! red
didn’t win that fust time, and the croupier juggled my little
two bones into the till. Ain’t it scandalous?”</p>
<p>“I should say so!” muttered Clancy. “I didn’t give you
that money to use in gambling, Fortune, but to keep you
going till you landed a job. Now your money’s gone,
and you haven’t a thing to show for it!”</p>
<p>“Easy, pard! Sure I’ve got somethin’ to show for it.
If I hadn’t gone to the Palace I wouldn’t ’a’ met Slim
Simmons, would I?”</p>
<p>“Who is Slim Simmons?”</p>
<p>“Desert rat. I’ve seen him a heap o’ times, and we sabe
each other a hull lot. He come over the same trail we
did, but he was ahead of us. I got to palaverin’ with
Slim, and refers incidental to Hibbard and the way he
forked me over the cliffs. Simmons allows Hibbard was
the same juniper he’d seen gassin’ with Long Tom, otherwise
Tom Long. You see, Slim stopped at Chantay
Seeche’s for a drink, and he glimpsed Hibbard and Long
powwowin’ cautious and careful by the ranch corral. Slim
asked Hibbard for a ride into town, and Hibbard wouldn’t
have it. Hibbard must have stayed at Tom Long’s quite
a while, for Slim was able to get pretty well over the
trail afore Hibbard came along and passed you and me.
That’s how I diskivered where Hibbard had been. There’s
more, though. While Slim and me was gassin’ in one
corner o’ the Palace, who rolls into the place but Chantay
Seeche himself?”</p>
<p>“This Long Tom came to the gambling house?”</p>
<p>“Surest thing you know. He walked in, big as life,
and twicet as ornery, and dropped down at a table behind
the pianner. I allowed I’d walk over to him, pass the
time o’ day, and inquire as to what Hibbard was doin’ at
his ranch. That was my idee, and jest as I was goin’ to
carry it out, in comes Hibbard and sits down at the same
table with Long. Neither of ’em saw me, so I jest hung
back and watched.</p>
<p>“They got real confidential, them two. Bymby, Hibbard
takes a pencil and paper from his pocket and makes a diagram.
Chantay Seeche considers it. There’s more talk,
a little drinkin’, then the two shakes hands and separates.
They leave the table together, and they fergit to take the
diagram. I ain’t more’n a minute freezin’ to that paper
and lookin’ it over.</p>
<p>“I haven’t got savvy enough to make head or tail to it,
but I thinks of my red-headed pard, and hikes for here.
Not bein’ what they call persona gratter to the front of
the establishment, I sneak up to your room from the rear.
So here I am, gappin’ like Rip Van Winkle gettin’ ready
for thirty years o’ sleep; and here’s the paper, and you’re
welcome to tell me what it’s about—if you can.”</p>
<p>Jimmie handed over the paper. It was a small sheet,
and seemed to have been torn from a memorandum book.
It was marked with lines in the form of a rough, oblong
square. This square was crossed and recrossed with other
lines, and there were subdivisions indicated here and there.
Clancy studied the diagram closely.</p>
<p>“Looks like a chink puzzle, eh?” said Fortune. “Can
you make anythin’ of it, Red?”</p>
<p>“Seems to be the ground plan of a house,” Clancy answered
thoughtfully.</p>
<p>“Well, now!” murmured the other. “Blamed if I’d
thought o’ that! It might be the ground plan of a house,
or the picter of tracks in a chicken yard. What makes
you think it’s a diagram of a ’dobe?”</p>
<p>“The plan is divided into rooms, and there are little
marks in the outside walls that may indicate doors and
windows. But the best proof that this is a diagram of a
house is given by the only written words on the paper.
Along one side is the word ‘second,’ and along the other
side we find the two words, ‘Cerro Gordo.’ Is there
a street in this town called Cerro Gordo Street, Jimmie?”</p>
<p>“By glory!” gulped Fortune. “You’ve hit it right between
the eyes! Sure there’s a street called Cerro Gordo,
and it’s the best residence street in town. Corner of Cerro
Gordo and Second Av’noo is right in the middle of Magnateville
and Upper-tendom! You’ve cracked the shell of
the mystery, Red!”</p>
<p>Clancy smiled, and shook his head.</p>
<p>“We’re a good way yet from cracking the shell of the
mystery,” said he. “If this is really the ground plan of
a house at the corner of Second and Cerro Gordo, why
did Hibbard draw it and show it to Chantay Seeche?
That’s the mystery, Jimmie, and we haven’t begun to
solve it.”</p>
<p>Fortune’s face went blank.</p>
<p>“That’s you! I missed the p’int, and no mistake. But
Hibbard and Chantay wasn’t considerin’ that plan for
any good purpose, believe me. There’s a hen on, and
trouble’s hatchin’. How we goin’ to find out what’s in the
wind?”</p>
<p>“I believe I’ll go over on Washington Street, and see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
if I can find out anything. You stay here, Jimmie. Get
in bed and go to sleep, if you want to.”</p>
<p>“Don’t go out by the front, pard,” begged Fortune.</p>
<p>“I’ll go out the way you came in.”</p>
<p>“Suppose somebody wants you for somethin’ while you’re
gone? I might help out, but, not bein’ on good terms
with the boss o’ this establishment, I reckon I hadn’t
better try.”</p>
<p>“No,” said Clancy, “don’t try. We’ll take chances, and
hope the night man won’t call on me for anything. Anyhow,
I’ll not be gone long. Crawl into the blankets and
go to sleep. The bed’s big enough for two, and I’ll make
use of my half of it when I get back.”</p>
<p>Fortune had already kicked off his boots and removed
his flannel shirt. He was out of his trousers in a jiffy
and had rolled up head and ears in a blanket.</p>
<p>“Buenas noches, pard!” came in muffled tones from the
depths of the blanket.</p>
<p>Clancy turned off the light, passed to the window, raised
the shade, and then the sash, and softly climbed through
and dropped to the ground. By a roundabout course he
gained First Avenue, went by the front of the garage on
the opposite side of the street, and so came into the main
thoroughfare of the town.</p>
<p>Clancy did not intend to be gone long for he believed
that he could discover all he wanted to know in a very
few minutes. He was longer in his quest, however, than
he had supposed he would be.</p>
<p>He went into a hotel across from the courthouse plaza,
and approached the desk in the lobby. Eleven o’clock was
just chiming from the courthouse bell.</p>
<p>The night clerk, after surveying Clancy rather uncertainly,
pushed the register around and handed him a pen.</p>
<p>“No,” said the youth, “I’m not going to put up here. All
I want is a little information.”</p>
<p>“Fire away,” said the clerk.</p>
<p>“Can you tell me who lives at the corner of Second
Avenue and Cerro Gordo Street?”</p>
<p>“Hanged if I can! I haven’t been here long, and don’t
know this town very well. Why don’t you go to the
place and find out?”</p>
<p>Clancy didn’t care to do that, and carried his search
farther. Place after place was visited fruitlessly, until it
seemed that the only way for him to learn what he wanted
to know was by really going to the house and making his
inquiries on the spot. At last, however, he found himself
in the same restaurant where he had taken supper,
and the cashier gave him the required information.</p>
<p>“Cerro Gordo and Second?” repeated the cashier.
“That’s easy. Judge Pembroke lives there and—— What’s
the matter with you?”</p>
<p>A sudden whiteness had flashed into Clancy’s face, and
he had drawn a quick, rasping breath.</p>
<p>“Nothing,” he answered, turning away, “nothing at all.
Much obliged.”</p>
<p>He ran out of the restaurant and started back to the
Red Star Garage, greatly excited. Twelve o’clock came
booming from the courthouse plaza as he turned into First
Avenue from Washington Street.</p>
<p>“It has taken me an hour to find out what I wanted to
know,” he murmured. “If there is lawlessness going on,
I wonder if we’re too late to stop it? Maybe here’s a
chance for Fortune and me to do something for the
judge! My guesses may be all wrong, but if they’re right
Jimmie and I will have to do some quick work.”</p>
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<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX_A_WEIRD_STATE_OF_AFFAIRS" id="CHAPTER_IX_A_WEIRD_STATE_OF_AFFAIRS"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br />
<span class="cheaderfont">A WEIRD STATE OF AFFAIRS.</span></h2>
<p>Clancy regained the rear of the garage by the same
devious course he had taken in leaving it. All was dark
and silent within the little room.</p>
<p>“Jimmie!” he whispered, thrusting his head through the
window.</p>
<p>There was no answer, and he repeated the call as loudly
as he dared. Still there was no response from Fortune.</p>
<p>“He’s sleeping like a log,” thought Clancy. “I’ll have
to get in and give him a shaking.”</p>
<p>With great care, he climbed through the window, groped
his way through the dark to the bed, and laid both hands
on the blanketed form.</p>
<p>“Jimmie!” he muttered, and shook the form briskly.</p>
<p>A stifled gurgle came from Jimmie, but no words which
Owen could understand. In some alarm, the red-headed
chap whirled to the window, drew the shade, and snapped
on the light. What he saw startled him.</p>
<p>Jimmie’s trousers lay on the floor. Beside them lay his
shirt, fairly torn to ribbons. The door leading into the
garage was unbolted and swinging open by a couple of
inches.</p>
<p>Jimmie, entirely swathed in a blanket, lay on the bed.
He was wrapped, outside the blanket, with coil on coil of
stout rope, and looked more like a mummy than anything
else. The blanket covered his head and face, so that it
was impossible for him to talk, and it must have been
almost impossible for him to breathe. Jimmie, in his helplessness,
was twisting and writhing about on the bed.</p>
<p>Clancy, astounded by all this, hurried to Jimmie and began
removing the rope. First he freed his friend’s head,
pulled back the blanket, and Jimmie began gasping like
a stranded fish. While he was pumping the fresh, cool
air into his lungs, Clancy removed the rest of the rope
and pulled the blanket away entirely.</p>
<p>Fortune lay on his back, looking up at his pard with
astonished eyes.</p>
<p>“What the deuce has been going on here?” demanded
Owen.</p>
<p>Jimmie sat up on the edge of the bed and rubbed his
arms.</p>
<p>“Whoosh!” he answered. “Here’s a fine kittle o’ fish,
I must say! A couple o’ plug-uglies was here and raisin’
Cain, pard. They thought I was you, and they was after
that note.”</p>
<p>“After the note?”</p>
<p>“Ain’t I tellin’ you? Gee-wollops, but this is fierce! I
took all that was comin’ to you, that trip. You see, I was
all kivered up with the blanket, and them junipers couldn’t
tell the diff’rence between Jimmie, the Jonah, and Red
Owen—so they handed it to me proper.” He chuckled.
“But they got fooled,” he added.</p>
<p>“When did this happen, Jimmie?” asked Owen, trying
to keep down his excitement.</p>
<p>“No sabe, pard. I was sleepin’ like old Rip Van when
I felt some un ropin’ me. The blanket was twisted about
my head and tied close to my neck, and I couldn’t talk
and couldn’t hardly breathe. Then my hands was lashed
to my sides and my feet tied at the ankles, and there
wasn’t a thing I could do.” Again he chuckled, rubbing
his throat tenderly. “But they sure got fooled plumb out
of their eye teeth!” he finished.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
<p>“They thought you were me, and they were trying to
get that thousand-dollar note?”</p>
<p>“I wasn’t so badly wrapped up that I couldn’t hear a
little o’ what went on,” proceeded Fortune. “The feller
that was tyin’ me says to some un else, ‘Get that note out
o’ the wallet in his shirt,’ he says.</p>
<p>“‘It ain’t here,’ the other comes back.</p>
<p>“‘Look in his pants,’ says Number One.</p>
<p>“‘Not there, nuther,’ says Number Two. ‘See if he
ain’t got it under his piller.’</p>
<p>“Then Number One throws me around and looks under
the piller, and he don’t find a thing. I heerd somebody
swear good and hearty.</p>
<p>“‘Ask him what he’s done with it,’ says Number Two.
‘Blow his head off for him, if he don’t tell.’</p>
<p>“Somethin’ hard was poked ag’inst my head, and I allow
it was the muzzle of a six-gun, although, o’ course, I
ain’t able to see a thing.</p>
<p>“‘Where’s that note?’ says Number One, real cross.
‘Speak out, or I’ll start you for Kingdom Come.’</p>
<p>“‘You don’t get it,’ I says, pantin’ for air. ‘I put it in
the bank.’</p>
<p>“They couldn’t tell, pard, that it wasn’t you talkin’, the
blanket gagged me so, and my voice was low and husky.
After that there was more piratical langwidge, then them
fellers went at somethin’ else.</p>
<p>“‘Now’s our chance,’ says Number One, ‘to carry out the
other scheme. If we can’t make good at this game we
will at that one.’</p>
<p>“‘We got to have a car,’ says Number Two, ‘and we
got to get it from this garage.’</p>
<p>“‘How’ll we work it?’ asked the juniper who stands clost
to me.</p>
<p>“‘You go out to a telephone,’ says the other, ‘and call
up this place. Pruitt’ll answer. Tell him you got to have
a car for a night trip some’r’s and that you’ll furnish your
own driver. Say it’s Job Arnold, or Colonel Chiswick, or
any o’ them big bugs, talkin’. Pruitt’ll bite. As soon as
he leaves, I’ll steal a car and pick you up on First Av’noo,
cornder Hackberry. That’s clost, and you can get there
easy.’</p>
<p>“‘I’m off,’ says Number One, and I hear him crossin’
the room and gettin’ through the winder. Bymby—seemed
like a year to me, fighting for air in that blanket—some un
pounds on the door leadin’ into the garage.</p>
<p>“‘Hey, you helper!’ calls a voice.</p>
<p>“Number Two answers, right off, ‘What’s wanted?’</p>
<p>“‘I’ve got a call to take a car to Mr. Arnold’s,’ says
Pruitt, ‘and I want you to keep an eye on the garage till
I get back. I won’t be gone more’n twenty minutes.’</p>
<p>“‘All right,’ says Number Two.</p>
<p>“Right after that I hear a car hummin’ and glidin’
away. The machine was hardly out o’ the garage afore
the bolt on that door was shoved back. Then another
car began to hum, and that slipped away, too. By then,
I was wide awake, you better believe, and right excited.
I tried to yell, but the best I could make of it was a gasp
and a gurgle. Tried to get up, too, but it was no go.
Right after that, pard, you got here. What d’you suppose
is goin’ on?”</p>
<p>“Those two men are going to commit a crime of some
sort,” answered Clancy.</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t put it past ’em none. I reckernized their
voices, pard.”</p>
<p>“You did? Who were they?”</p>
<p>“One was Hibbard—Number Two—and t’other—Number
One, the feller that done the telephonin’—was Chantay
Seeche Tom. They’re a fine pair to turn loose at the
dead o’ night in a stolen automobile! Somebody’s due for
a holdup.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” said Clancy, “and that somebody is Judge Pembroke!”</p>
<p>“It never ain’t!”</p>
<p>“He lives at the corner of Second Avenue and Cerro
Gordo Street. As soon as I discovered that, I came right
back to the garage. Can’t you see what is going on,
Jimmie?”</p>
<p>Clancy paced the floor of the little room nervously while
he talked.</p>
<p>“I know somethin’ of what’s goin’ on, pard,” returned
Fortune, “because I was right in the middle o’ the excitement.
I can’t see ahead very far, though, and that’s allers
been the trouble with me. How does the business stack
up to you?”</p>
<p>“Why, Hibbard was the judge’s driver. He must have
known a good deal about the judge’s affairs, and probably
could have traveled all around his residence blindfolded.
Hibbard has some reason for wanting to be at the judge’s
house to-night. What it is we don’t know, but the business
looks black. The fact that Hibbard got this rascal,
Long Tom, to help him, gives the whole thing a criminal
appearance.”</p>
<p>“Who put Hibbard up to get that note away from you?”</p>
<p>“Never mind that, now. We——”</p>
<p>“It was old Rocks, and I’ll bet a bushel of pesos. That
must have been what them two was chinnin’ about in the
plaza. But Hibbard didn’t get the note,” and Fortune
laughed gleefully, “because I was here in place o’ you!
By glory, them fellows got hocused good!”</p>
<p>“We’ve got to do something to help the judge, Jimmie,
and time is limited. Long Tom and Hibbard have stolen
a car and gone to Second Avenue and Cerro Gordo Street.
How long since Hibbard left with the machine?”</p>
<p>“Not such a blamed long while, pard. Not many minutes
passed since he left and you got here and took the
lashings off me.”</p>
<p>Clancy pulled the door wide and stepped out into the
garage.</p>
<p>“I can’t see anything of Pruitt,” he reported.</p>
<p>“’Cause why,” returned Fortune. “’Cause he’s waitin’
at Arnold’s for some un to come out and take the car off’n
his hands. He’ll keep waitin’ and honkin’ the horn till
somebody shows up and tells him there’s nothin’ doin’.
Reckon we ort to put the police wise to this, eh?”</p>
<p>“By the time we got the police on the trail, Hibbard
and Long Tom might be able to do their work and rush
for the hills in that stolen car. Do you know how to get
to Second and Cerro Gordo?”</p>
<p>“If I don’t, pard, nobody does. Didn’t I tell you I
worked for people here? I can take you right to the
place by the shortest cut.”</p>
<p>“Then let’s be moving. The quicker we reach the judge
and tell him what is going on, the better.”</p>
<p>Fortune pulled on his boots and trousers. There was
no use trying to put on the flannel shirt, for it was literally
torn in pieces. He slipped into his coat, however,
and buttoned it up.</p>
<p>“All ready, compadre,” he announced.</p>
<p>They went out through the front of the garage. Clancy
hated to leave the place alone, but he reflected that Pruitt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
would soon be back, and that this was a case of facing
circumstances as they were, and not as he would like to
have them. He took the precaution of closing the big
garage doors.</p>
<p>“I don’t like to start till Pruitt comes back,” remarked
Clancy, “but there’s no help for it.”</p>
<p>“Don’t you care,” said Fortune. “Jest think what old
Rocks tried to do to you to-night, pard! You don’t owe
that old schemer nothin’. Anyway, I don’t reckon anybody
will run away with the old shebang.”</p>
<p>Fortune turned out of First Avenue into a cross street
that ran parallel with the main business thoroughfare.
A block brought them into Second Avenue, and they
started along it in the direction of Cerro Gordo Street.</p>
<p>Very soon pretentious houses showed themselves on
either hand, and, after a time, Fortune slowed his pace
and dropped a hand on Clancy’s arm.</p>
<p>“That’s Cerro Gordo Street jest ahead,” he whispered,
“and the judge’s house must be on the cornder. I never
knowed where he lived, but if your information is kerect
we’re clost to the place.”</p>
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<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X_HELPING_THE_JUDGE" id="CHAPTER_X_HELPING_THE_JUDGE"></a>CHAPTER X.<br />
<span class="cheaderfont">HELPING THE JUDGE.</span></h2>
<p>Cerro Gordo Street was a wide, paved thoroughfare,
with date palms bordering it on both sides between walk
and curb. There were four corners, of course, to the
intersection of the two streets, and the two youths halted
in the shadow of a palm to decide which corner was the
one that ought to claim their attention.</p>
<p>“How we goin’ to know which casa is the judge’s?”
murmured Fortune blankly.</p>
<p>“According to that diagram of Hibbard’s,” Owen returned,
“there’s an addition jutting out from the Pembroke
house toward Cerro Gordo Street. Maybe that will
give us a clew.”</p>
<p>“Look for the automobile. That’ll be a clew.”</p>
<p>“I don’t think so, Jimmie. They’d be foolish to leave
the machine too close to the house. You stay here while
I do a little quiet investigating.”</p>
<p>“If you need me, yell. I’ll come hotfoot.”</p>
<p>Leaving Fortune in the black shadow of the palm,
Clancy moved off cautiously along Cerro Gordo Street,
toward the right. In that direction he failed to find the
house that seemed to tally with Hibbard’s roughly drawn
plan.</p>
<p>Returning on the opposite side of the street, creeping
like a wraith from the shadow of one palm to the shadow
of another, he crossed Second Avenue and reconnoitered
in another direction.</p>
<p>Here he had better success. On the other side of Cerro
Gordo Street was a house with a glass conservatory jutting
out. The yard was a mass of dark shrubbery which
the faint glow from the electric light on the corner could
not penetrate.</p>
<p>“That must be the place,” thought Clancy. “I’ll go
down a little farther and cross over. If I’m careful, I
may find out what Hibbard and Long Tom are doing.”</p>
<p>From palm to palm he skulked along Cerro Gordo
Street, and then, suddenly, came to a halt. Ahead of him,
at the curb, stood a motor car. It did not show a light.</p>
<p>“There’s the machine Hibbard took from the garage,”
thought Clancy, “and it proves we’re on the right trail.”</p>
<p>He investigated the car and found that it was Pembroke’s
big six-cylinder machine, the one that had figured
in events earlier in the day. There was no one around
the car, and this proved that both plotters were giving
their attention to the house.</p>
<p>“Here’s nerve!” muttered Clancy. “Hibbard is using
the judge’s car for his night’s work, and will run away
with it when he gets through at the house, unless—— Well,
I’ll fix the machine so he won’t run away with it.”</p>
<p>Getting up on the running board, Clancy reached over to
the dash and removed the switch plug. After that he sped
lightly to the opposite side of the street and returned
along the side of the judge’s premises.</p>
<p>Getting down on his knees under the lee of an iron
fence, he crawled past the house, listening sharply as he
proceeded. He could hear nothing. Not a sound reached
his ears that would indicate that anything unusual was
taking place around the house or inside it.</p>
<p>At the corner, Clancy arose to his feet. A few seconds
later he was with his comrade again.</p>
<p>“Find out what you wanted to know?” queried Fortune
eagerly.</p>
<p>“I’ve spotted the house,” Clancy answered, “and the
car. Fixed the car so it can’t be used. If those chaps
try to get away in it, they’ll have their trouble for their
pains.”</p>
<p>“That’s you! Where’s the house?”</p>
<p>Clancy faced Fortune in the right direction, and pointed.</p>
<p>“Are them coyotes around the place?” asked Fortune.</p>
<p>“I came past the yard but couldn’t hear or see anything
of them. We’ll have to get over the iron fence and prowl
through the shrubbery, Jimmie. Of course, they’re there—they
must be. And it’s up to us to find them and block
their game, whatever it is.”</p>
<p>“Wisht I had a gun,” said Fortune. “Both them fellers
are heeled, and I’ll bet my spurs! What’ll we do if they
poke a muzzle in our faces, huh?”</p>
<p>“Dodge,” answered Clancy shortly. “Come on!”</p>
<p>Clancy led the way to the Cerro Gordo Street side of
the Pembroke property, and he and Fortune crouched
under the iron fence and listened intently. Still there was
not a sound to be heard.</p>
<p>“Mebby we’ve made a mistake, pard,” whispered Fortune.
“Like enough it’s another house. Wisht I knowed
more about the jedge and the wigwam where he camps.
What if we’re wrong? While we’re loafin’ here, Hibbard
and Chantay Seeche may be doin’ their work on one of
the other three cornders.”</p>
<p>“I don’t think we’re wrong,” returned Clancy, in a tense
undertone. “This is our best bet, anyway. We’ve got to
get over the fence and look around, Jimmie. Make as
little noise as you can, and keep close to me.”</p>
<p>“It ’u’d take a hull lot to pry me loose from you at this
stage o’ the game, Red,” answered Fortune. “Two’s comp’ny,
jest about now, and I’m right hongry for comp’ny.”</p>
<p>Laying hands on top of the iron fence, Clancy bounded
lightly over and into the yard. Fortune tried to vault, but
his boots handicapped him. The toe of one of them caught
on an iron picket and he came down among the bushes in
a sprawl. He started to sputter, but Clancy laid a quick
hand over his lips.</p>
<p>“Sh-h-h!” hissed Clancy warningly.</p>
<p>So far as they could discover, Fortune’s floundering
had not aroused any one. After a few moments, they
began crawling toward the side wall of the house.</p>
<p>They reached the wall about midway of the length of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
the house. There they paused and continued to listen
and peer around them.</p>
<p>“Wrong trail, pard,” murmured Fortune.</p>
<p>“Let’s make sure of it before we leave,” returned
Clancy. “You crawl toward the front and I’ll go toward
the rear. If you hear or see anything suspicious, don’t
try to let me know. I’ll join you before long, and then
you can tell me.”</p>
<p>Clancy’s maneuvers brought him point-blank against the
glass side of the conservatory. He had found not the
least sign of intruders. Half convinced that he and Fortune
were really on the wrong trail, he crawled forward
along the wall to get his friend and carry investigations
elsewhere.</p>
<p>Fortune, however, had made a discovery which caused
Clancy to change his plans for leaving the premises.</p>
<p>“I’m next to somethin’, Red,” Jimmie whispered.</p>
<p>“What is it?”</p>
<p>“Open winder—right over my head. See for yourself.”</p>
<p>Clancy arose to his knees. Fortune was right. There
was a window, there, with the lower sash raised.</p>
<p>“By Jove!” murmured Clancy, in his companion’s ear.
“It’s a case of robbery, and both those fellows are
inside!”</p>
<p>“We’ll wait till they come out, pard,” said Fortune excitedly,
“and nab ’em one at a time, as they drap. They
won’t be able to shoot, if we’re quick.”</p>
<p>“But suppose they leave by a door and don’t come
through the window?”</p>
<p>“That’s me and my fool headwork, ag’in!” grunted Fortune.
“You boss this job, Red, and I’ll foller orders.
What’s the next move?”</p>
<p>“I’m going inside.”</p>
<p>“Don’t you! Mebby the winder’s only open fer air, and
you’ll be grabbed for a thief yourself. I wouldn’t go inside
that <i lang="es" xml:lang="es">estakazol</i> for a farm!”</p>
<p>“If the window was opened for air, Jimmie, the screen
wouldn’t have been taken off, would it?”</p>
<p>“I don’t reckon it would.”</p>
<p>“Hibbard and Long Tom are inside, and I’m going to
make sure they don’t get out through a door with any
boodle.”</p>
<p>“What’ll I do?”</p>
<p>“Stay here and wait for something to happen.”</p>
<p>“S’pose more happens than I can take care of? What
then?”</p>
<p>“Do the best you can, that’s all.”</p>
<p>“Gee-wollops! I’m so narvous I feel as though I wanted
to yell. But go on. I’ll stay here.”</p>
<p>Clancy had been pulling off his shoes. Fortune did not
have to tell him what disagreeable consequences would
follow if he crawled into Judge Pembroke’s house and
failed to find Hibbard and Long Tom there. Clancy’s
imagination was good enough to picture his plight in such
a condition of affairs. But, nevertheless, he was determined
to go in.</p>
<p>Carefully he placed his hands on the sill, drew himself
upward and wriggled through into the darkness of the
room beyond. Fortune had many tremors as he watched
his pard vanish.</p>
<p>“By glory,” said Jimmie to himself, as he crouched
downward and made himself as small as possible, “Red
has got a heap more nerve than me. I don’t allow I
could do a thing like that, noways.”</p>
<p>As for Owen, whenever he made up his mind that it
was necessary to do a thing, he banked on his judgment
and did it. He might be wrong. If he was, he could
explain to the judge.</p>
<p>Once inside the room with the open window, Clancy
found himself in surroundings totally unfamiliar. And
he dared not strike a light for fear of betraying himself—not
only to Hibbard and Long Tom, but also to the
judge’s household. Either might spell disaster for him.</p>
<p>As he stood in the gloom, he recalled as distinctly as
possible, the diagram which Hibbard had drawn for
Chantay Seeche Long. He wished, then, that he had paid
more attention to that rude drawing.</p>
<p>As near as he could remember, this room had two doors,
one in the front wall and another in the rear. If he was
right, through which of those doors had Hibbard and Long
Tom passed?</p>
<p>He reflected that they would not go toward the front
of the house, providing they could get what they were
after by keeping more to the rear of the building.</p>
<p>“I’ll chance the rear door,” thought Clancy, and groped
his way in that direction.</p>
<p>He went slowly, avoiding chairs, and passing around a
table. At the wall, he ran his hands carefully over the
blank surface until they came to a swinging curtain. He
pulled the curtain aside and reached out. His hand encountered
only space beyond, and his eyes stared into
pitchy darkness.</p>
<p>“I’m headed right,” he said to himself. “Those fellows
went this way and left the door open. Now I’ll——”</p>
<p>His thoughts suddenly left him. Out of the blank gloom
two arms stretched themselves, enfolded him in a viselike
embrace, and wrenched his feet out from under him. He
fell soddenly on a thick carpet, with a knee on his chest
and pinning him down.</p>
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<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI_CAUGHT_RED-HANDED" id="CHAPTER_XI_CAUGHT_RED-HANDED"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br />
<span class="cheaderfont">CAUGHT RED-HANDED.</span></h2>
<p>That sudden attack was a big surprise to Clancy. Sure
that Hibbard and Long Tom had turned the tables on
him, he tried to yell and arouse the house and convey a
warning to Fortune. A hand was clapped over his mouth,
however, and outcry was impossible.</p>
<p>“Stop your struggling!” a voice hissed in Clancy’s ear.
“And don’t try to call out. It will be the worse for you,
if you do. I am holding a revolver to your breast, and, if
I have to, I will use it.”</p>
<p>Here was another surprise for Clancy. A refined voice,
although with a crisp, businesslike ring, had done the
talking. Certainly it was not Hibbard’s voice, and it could
not possibly be Chantay Seeche Tom’s. Whose, then,
was it?</p>
<p>The hand was withdrawn from Clancy’s lips.</p>
<p>“Who are you?” he whispered.</p>
<p>“That’s none of your affair,” came the sharp answer.
“How many of your pals are in this house? I heard them,
a while ago, and came downstairs. What are you after,
anyhow?”</p>
<p>The man, whoever it was, evidently belonged in the
place.</p>
<p>“I’m not one of the thieves,” protested Clancy. “I——”</p>
<p>“That’s a likely story! What are you doing in here if
you don’t belong to the gang?”</p>
<p>“I came here to do what I could to prevent the villains
from robbing the judge. Judge Pembroke knows me. A<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
friend of mine and I blundered upon a tip that something
was going to happen here to-night. There wasn’t time to
call the police, and we came to see what we could do for
the judge.”</p>
<p>Clancy’s captor was a cool one. He gave a low, incredulous
laugh.</p>
<p>“You can’t expect me to believe any such stuff as that,”
he answered. “How many, besides yourself, are in this
house?”</p>
<p>“Two—Dirk Hibbard and a fellow called Tom Long,
Chantay Seeche Tom.”</p>
<p>“Hibbard! He knew about that Prescott money, and
he’s probably trying to get hands on it. We’ll give them
a jolt, I guess. Don’t move—stay right where you are!”</p>
<p>The man reached away from Clancy and half arose.
Snap! An electric switch was pressed and a glow of light
flooded the room.</p>
<p>For a second, Clancy was blinded, and could see little.
As his vision cleared, he discovered that the man who
had made a prisoner of him was a young fellow, who bore
a striking facial resemblance to the judge. He wore a
blanket robe and slippers, and held a small, automatic
pistol in his right hand.</p>
<p>“Jove!” murmured the chap with the gun. “You don’t
look much like a tough, and that’s a fact. But circumstances
are against you, my lad. See that door yonder?”</p>
<p>They were in what was evidently the dining room. As
the young man spoke, he nodded toward a door on the
other side of the apartment.</p>
<p>“I see it,” Clancy answered.</p>
<p>“That door leads into a hall, and the hall leads to the
governor’s study. There is a safe in the study, and the
Prescott money is in the safe. Your pals are there, I presume.
Walk ahead of me. I’m going to pay them a visit
and use you as a screen against any bullets they send in my
direction. Start!”</p>
<p>Clancy got up from the floor.</p>
<p>“Hibbard has no love for me,” said he, “and he’ll probably
be glad to shoot when he sees who I am. There are
two of them, and they must be armed. You don’t want
them to get away, do you?”</p>
<p>“I don’t want them to get away with the money. I
guess I’ll be able to save that. Stir yourself—we can’t lose
any more time.”</p>
<p>The curtain of the doorway through which Clancy had
just come was pushed back. The bright glow in the dining
room shone out through the doorway and into the
room with the open window.</p>
<p>Clancy, shifting his eyes toward the drawn curtain,
whirled like lightning. In a flash he had knocked aside the
pistol in his captor’s hand and had overthrown him. As
the young man dropped, fire streamed through the curtained
doorway. A revolver roared in the other room and
a bullet crashed into a piece of china on the sideboard
and then broke the heavy French mirror behind it into
a thousand fragments.</p>
<p>If Clancy had not been quick, that bullet would have
struck the young fellow with the gun, for it traversed a
line that crossed the exact point where he had been
standing.</p>
<p>The young fellow was quick-witted, and, while at first
he may have misunderstood Clancy’s action, the crash of
the bullet gave him knowledge of the true state of affairs.</p>
<p>“There they go!” cried Clancy.</p>
<p>“Keep back, if you’re not armed!” shouted the other,
bounding erect and dashing through the door.</p>
<p>Clancy was ahead of him, but, swift as they were, they
were too late. The prowlers had flung themselves through
the window, and wild yells were coming from the yard,
where Fortune, single-handed, was having all and more
than he could attend to.</p>
<p>There was excitement in other parts of the great house.
Voices were calling, doors were opening and closing, and
feet could be heard running down the stairs and over hardwood
floors.</p>
<p>The young fellow stood in the window with the automatic
revolver in his hand.</p>
<p>“I’ll give one of them his gruel, anyway,” he muttered.</p>
<p>Before he could shoot, Clancy grabbed his arm.</p>
<p>“Don’t fire!” he exclaimed. “A friend of mine is out
there—you might hit him. Are you the judge’s son?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” was the answer, “and I want to get this over with
before the governor presents himself. He might get hurt.
Are you game to follow those fellows?”</p>
<p>“Of course!”</p>
<p>“Come on, then!”</p>
<p>There was the flutter of a bath robe in the open window,
then the space cleared for Clancy. He landed on
the ground beside Pembroke.</p>
<p>“They’ve skipped,” said Pembroke. “Even your friend
isn’t here! Which way do you think the scoundrels
went?”</p>
<p>“I know—they’ve got a car waiting for them. This
way!”</p>
<p>Clancy darted for the fence and cleared the iron pickets
at a bound. Young Pembroke was tight at his heels.</p>
<p>“If they’ve got a car,” he panted, “they’re bound to get
away from us.”</p>
<p>“I’ve fixed the car so they can’t use it.”</p>
<p>Pembroke laughed choppily as he followed Clancy down
the street.</p>
<p>“You’re a wonder, old man!” he cried. “And I thought,
when I nailed you, that I had one of the thieves!”</p>
<p>Two dark figures could be seen rushing across the street
toward the dark bulk of the car.</p>
<p>“There they go!” exclaimed Clancy. “They’ve got a surprise
in store for themselves! Look, they’re trying to
crank the engine.”</p>
<p>One of the forms could be seen working at the front of
the car. He started up with a frantic oath.</p>
<p>“Take to your heels, Chantay! They’ve tampered with
the car! Run!”</p>
<p>A figure jumped from the tonneau of the machine and
flung off through the night. Hibbard, who had been pulling
the crank, ran back along the line of palm trees.</p>
<p>Clancy took after him, and, for a minute, there was an
exciting chase. Clancy, however, was far and away the
better sprinter. As he came close to Hibbard, the latter
turned and brandished a revolver.</p>
<p>“Keep off,” he yelled, “or I’ll drop you!”</p>
<p>Clancy ducked, lurched forward, and came up under
the extended arm whose hand gripped the revolver. There
was a bit of a struggle, and then Hibbard fell, the red-headed
chap on top of him.</p>
<p>“Have you got one of them?” asked Pembroke, coming
up.</p>
<p>“Yes—Hibbard,” said Clancy.</p>
<p>“Has he got a canvas bag?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
<p>“Then the other scoundrel has the money. I couldn’t
find it in the car. Dash it! We’ll have to call in the
police—and maybe it’s too late. We’ll take Hibbard to the
house, where we can use the telephone. Let him up, old
chap.”</p>
<p>Clancy drew away from Hibbard, while Pembroke
caught his arm and leveled the “automatic.”</p>
<p>“You’re a nice sort of a chap, aren’t you?” sneered Pembroke.
“Robbing the man for whom you used to work!
Get up!”</p>
<p>Hibbard got sulkily erect.</p>
<p>“Pick up that revolver,” said <a id="Ref_19"></a>Pembroke to Clancy.</p>
<p>The latter stooped and gathered in the weapon, which
had fallen from the chauffeur’s hand when he fell.</p>
<p>“Come on to the house, Hibbard,” said young Pembroke.
“We’ll let the governor talk with you.”</p>
<p>“I don’t want to talk with the judge,” growled Hibbard.
“Take me to jail, if that’s what you’re plannin’ to do.”</p>
<p>“Not much! You’ll face the governor. Step lively, and
don’t try to get away. If you make a move to run, the
bullets will chase you!”</p>
<p>Between Clancy and Pembroke the rascally chauffeur
was led back toward the house.</p>
<p>“You’re responsible for this, Clancy!” snarled Hibbard.</p>
<p>“I don’t know whether I am or not,” Clancy answered.
“I guess Mr. Pembroke was next to what you were doing
before we reached the house.”</p>
<p>“You’d better jug me,” said Hibbard to Clancy, through
his teeth, “or I’ll camp on your trail and settle for you.
You’re running up a pretty big score.”</p>
<p>“Your name Clancy?” queried Pembroke.</p>
<p>“Yes,” Owen answered.</p>
<p>“Then you’re the fellow who repaired the governor’s
car, out on the trail. He told us about you. Sorry I mistook
you for a burglar, Clancy!”</p>
<p>“I hardly see how you could help it,” Clancy returned.
“Wonder where the deuce Fortune is?” he added, as he
and Pembroke and Hibbard mounted the front steps of
the house.</p>
<p>“He was in this, too, eh?” growled Hibbard.</p>
<p>The front door of the house was open, and the judge, in
shirt, trousers, and slippers, stood in the entrance.</p>
<p>“What in the world is the matter, Larry?” the judge
queried, staring at his son. “Has there been a robbery?”</p>
<p>“That’s the size of it, dad,” answered young Pembroke.
“Your Prescott money has gone to Ballyhack, I reckon.
There were two of the scoundrels, and the other fellow
gave us the slip. He must have had the canvas bag.”</p>
<p>“Never mind the money,” said the judge, “if you’re not
hurt. Who’s that you have there?”</p>
<p>“One of them is young Clancy, the chap who repaired
your car out in the hills. He came here to prevent the
robbery, if he could. The other is Hibbard. He knew
about that Prescott money, and came here after it.”</p>
<p>The judge led the way into the drawing-room. A number
of the women members of the household were clustered
there, shivering with fright. The judge reassured
them, and sent them upstairs. After they were gone, he
turned to his son, Clancy, and the prisoner.</p>
<p>“I can’t understand this,” said he. “Hibbard, did you
come to this house to rob me?”</p>
<p>“I don’t look as though I was here of my own free
will, do I?” the chauffeur replied, with an ugly leer.</p>
<p>“I heard some one in the house,” explained Larry, “and
went down to the dining room. Some one was just coming
through the window, and I waited for him at the door
leading from the den into the dining room. When I
grabbed him, he proved to be Clancy, there.”</p>
<p>“Clancy!” exclaimed the judge. “Is it possible that——”</p>
<p>“No, dad, it isn’t possible that he’s one of the thieves.
He came to warn us about the robbery, but got to the
house a little too late. He saved me from getting nipped
by a bullet—upset me just as one of the robbers pulled a
trigger; after that, he joined in the chase and downed Hibbard
single-handed. Clancy has proved a good friend of
ours this night.”</p>
<p>“Who was the fellow that got away with the money?”
inquired the judge.</p>
<p>“Tom Long,” spoke up Clancy, “the fellow they call
Chantay Seeche Tom.”</p>
<p>“He’s equal to a thing like this! I can easily believe
that he had a hand in it. I’m out five thousand dollars,
but——”</p>
<p>“Jedge, you ain’t out a cent! I happened to grab the
bag in the yard, and I ran off with it like a streak o’
greased lightnin’. James Montague Fortune has done
somethin’, at last, that didn’t have a bobble in it!
Whoop!”</p>
<p>All eyes turned toward the broad doorway that led from
the drawing-room into the hall. Fortune stood there,
striking an attitude, and holding high a small canvas bag.
His face wore a broad and complacent grin.</p>
<p>“Well, here’s luck!” exclaimed Larry Pembroke.
“Clancy and his friend have saved the day for us, after
all!”</p>
<hr class="chap" />
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<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII_HIBBARD_WEAKENS" id="CHAPTER_XII_HIBBARD_WEAKENS"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br />
<span class="cheaderfont">HIBBARD WEAKENS.</span></h2>
<p>Clancy was mightily relieved to know that Fortune had
not only kept himself from being injured, but had also
covered himself with glory by saving the five thousand
dollars.</p>
<p>“Good for you, Jimmie!” Clancy exclaimed. “How did
you ever manage to get away with that bag of money?”</p>
<p>“Plumb easy!” returned Fortune, swaggering into the
room. “I was waitin’ under the open winder, where you
left me, Clancy, and I was all of a shake on account o’
hearin’ that revolver shot. While I was still in a quiver,
them cimiroons drapped the money out and started to
foller it. I jumped for the bag. While I was pickin’ it
up, one of the junipers fell on me. We had a mix, but
I tore loose and sloped for the iron fence. Say, I got
over that fence with about six feet in the clear. Then I
ran till I was clean winded. By then, I allowed it was
safe to turn around and come back. I was in sight when
some o’ you came in the front door—so I trailed along.
Jedge,” and he turned to Pembroke, “allow me to fork
over the missin’ dinero!” With that, he placed the bag
in the judge’s hand.</p>
<p>“Explain this to me,” said the judge. “With so many of
you concerned in what happened it is a little difficult to
follow the sequence of events. Clancy, how did you and
Fortune come to learn that my house was to be robbed?”</p>
<p>Clancy explained, and in that explanation he did his
friend full credit. Fortune, however, put in a few words
to the effect that Clancy’s brains in following up the clew,
helped out more than any work of his own.</p>
<p>“I stumble onto a heap o’ things,” observed Jimmie, grinning,
“but I ain’t got the sabe to figger ’em out. My red-headed
pard is the feller who does that.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p>
<p>During Clancy’s recital the fact had developed that Fortune
was occupying Clancy’s bed at the rear of the garage
when Hibbard and Tom Long came hunting for the note.
This was a revelation which Hibbard listened to with
wide eyes.</p>
<p>“Thunder!” he exclaimed disgustedly. “I deserve all
that’s comin’ to me for makin’ that bobble!”</p>
<p>“Hibbard,” said the judge, sternly facing the chauffeur,
“this is pretty bad business for you. I suppose you know
what this means to you?”</p>
<p>“I’m not doing any sobbing,” snarled Hibbard. “Put on
the screws—I reckon I can stand it.”</p>
<p>“Give him the limit, dad,” urged Larry. “He deserves it—treating
you like this after the way you’ve treated him
for the past six months.”</p>
<p>The judge frowned at his son.</p>
<p>“You knew, did you, Hibbard,” he went on to the chauffeur,
“that I was expecting to get this five thousand from
Prescott for the sale of a ranch there?”</p>
<p>“Sure, I knew it!”</p>
<p>“You thought I’d gone to Prescott after the money, but
you did not know that the purchaser of the ranch brought
it to Phoenix to me, and that I received it after banking
hours?”</p>
<p>“I didn’t know that, but I figgered that you couldn’t return
from Prescott till after the bank had closed, and
would have to keep the money in the study safe,” answered
Hibbard. “The only difference your not goin’ to Prescott
made, was that you caught me out with the car.”</p>
<p>“You slipped off to tell Chantay Seeche Tom about the
money and to get his help in robbing me?”</p>
<p>“I’m not goin’ to talk.”</p>
<p>“Hibbard,” said the judge, “I don’t want to be hard on
you. Make a clean breast of everything, and I’ll let you
go. You’ve got a father and mother in Mesa, and they’re
good friends of mine. I don’t want to do anything to
bring disgrace upon them. But,” and the judge’s face grew
stern, “I’ll put you through for this if you don’t tell me
everything about the affair.”</p>
<p>A gleam of hope flickered in the chauffeur’s eyes.</p>
<p>“Do you mean that, judge?” he asked.</p>
<p>“I’m not in the habit of saying things I don’t mean,” was
the quiet reply.</p>
<p>“Then ask your questions, and I’ll come across with
straight answers.”</p>
<p>“You sneaked out of town to get Chantay Seeche Tom
to help you rob me?”</p>
<p>“Yes. Tom was to come in to Phoenix and meet me at
the Palace. After that, we were to get the note from
Clancy and make a grab for your five thousand.”</p>
<p>“Why were you going to get the note from Clancy?”</p>
<p>“Because Rockwell offered me two hundred dollars for
it.”</p>
<p>“Rockwell?” burst from Clancy. “Do you mean to say
that Rockwell hired you to steal that note from me?”</p>
<p>“That’s what I mean to say,” said Hibbard.</p>
<p>“Why?” asked the judge. “What was his reason?”</p>
<p>“He don’t want to pay the note. If Clancy hasn’t got
it, how can he collect on it?”</p>
<p>“Oh, he’s a shark, Uncle Si is,” struck in Fortune.
“That’s what I told Red. Maybe he’ll believe me, now.”</p>
<p>The judge turned to Clancy.</p>
<p>“It was an unindorsed note?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Yes,” said Clancy, “it was a note for a thousand dollars,
given to my father. I came to Phoenix to collect it.
Rockwell said the note was all right, and that he would
get the money together, in a week or two, and take it up.
Meanwhile, I was to work in his garage at fifty dollars
a month.”</p>
<p>“That was just a scheme,” put in Hibbard, “to get Clancy
in a place where it would be easy to take the note away
from him.”</p>
<p>“And you and Chantay Seeche Tom,” said Larry, with a
laugh, “tied up the wrong fellow, and couldn’t find the
note!”</p>
<p>“That’s where they got fooled!” chuckled Fortune. “I
was all wrapped up in a blanket, and they didn’t know the
difference between me and my pard. Funniest thing that
ever happened; only it wasn’t so blame’ funny for me
while it was happenin’.”</p>
<p>“Clancy,” said the judge, “you had better let me take
that note and keep it for you. To-morrow I’ll see that
you get justice from this scoundrel, Rockwell. I owe you
that, and more.”</p>
<p>Clancy had made a powerful friend. He realized that,
and was quick to take the note from the wallet and put
it in the hands of Judge Pembroke.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” went on the judge, “that you agreed to
work for Rockwell and turned down my offer. I hired
a driver an hour after I left you——”</p>
<p>Jimmie gave a hollow groan.</p>
<p>“And here was me, bankin’ on gettin’ that job!” he
wailed. “Oh, jedge, this here is what I call blame’ tough!”</p>
<p>“Maybe I can do something for you,” said the judge,
smiling, “or do something for Clancy so he can help you.
I’ll come to the Red Star Garage to-morrow morning, at
ten. Meet me there, Clancy, and we’ll see what can be
done.”</p>
<p>“I’ll be there, judge,” answered Clancy, “and I’ll be
mighty grateful for anything you can do that will help
me.”</p>
<p>“I’ll wring that thousand dollars out of Rockwell, you
may be sure of that.” The judge once more turned to
Hibbard. “How did you and Long Tom get into the
safe? You didn’t blow it open.”</p>
<p>“Worked the combination. You had the combination
changed, a spell ago, and I stole the paper from your
pocketbook, one day, when I had you out in the car.
After I copied the number, I put the paper back in the
pocketbook, and got the leather into your pocket again
without your knowin’.”</p>
<p>“Hibbard,” observed the judge, more in sorrow than
in anger, “you’re a bad one! You’ve gone down grade
pretty fast since you went to work for me and had
dealings with Rockwell.”</p>
<p>“Any one will hit the toboggan that gets mixed up with
Rockwell,” declared Hibbard. “Anything else you want
to know, judge?”</p>
<p>“No, Hibbard; you can go. For the sake of your people,
I hope you will live a different life from now on.”</p>
<p>He pointed to the door, and Dirk Hibbard, with head
bowed, passed through it and out of the house.</p>
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<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII_THE_JUDGE_TAKES_A_HAND" id="CHAPTER_XIII_THE_JUDGE_TAKES_A_HAND"></a>CHAPTER XIII.<br />
<span class="cheaderfont">THE JUDGE TAKES A HAND.</span></h2>
<p>Clancy did not return to the Red Star Garage that night.
He went to a hotel with Jimmie Fortune, and the two of
them slept late the next morning, had breakfast at a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
restaurant at nine o’clock, and, when ten strokes boomed
from the courthouse clock, made their way to the garage.</p>
<p>The judge and Rockwell were alone in the office when
the two youths entered the place.</p>
<p>“Get out of here, both of you!” shouted Rockwell. “I
know that young scalawag, Fortune, and I don’t want
him around, on general principles. As for you, Clancy,
I have no use for a fellow who can’t be trusted. You
didn’t stay in the back room last night, and you didn’t
show up here in time for work this morning. That’s what
lets you out.”</p>
<p>“Just a minute,” interposed the judge, taking a long
wallet from his pocket. “Before Clancy leaves this place,
Rockwell, you’d better settle your account with him.” He
took the note from the wallet and laid it down on the
desk in front of the garage owner. “Give him a check
for a thousand dollars,” finished the judge, “and no words
about it.”</p>
<p>Rockwell appeared astounded. His startled eyes traveled
to the judge and then returned to the note.</p>
<p>“I—I told Clancy I’d take this up in a week or two,” he
muttered shiftily.</p>
<p>“You’re going to take it up now,” said Judge Pembroke.
“I know you have the money in the bank, and that
note is long past due. Be sure and add the interest when
you make out the check.”</p>
<p>“You don’t know about this note, judge,” continued
Rockwell. “I don’t reckon I owe the money or——”</p>
<p>“Why did you just say you had told Clancy you’d pay
it in a week or two, if you questioned the validity of the
note?”</p>
<p>“Well, I—I——”</p>
<p>“Don’t hem and haw and side-step with me,” said the
judge sternly. “You have been trying to beat young
Clancy out of the money. Do you want me to tell your
customers how you hired Hibbard to steal that note from
Clancy so you could get out of paying it? Would that
sound well?”</p>
<p>Rockwell fell back in his chair, limp and dumfounded.
His lips moved, but no sound came from them.</p>
<p>“You see,” pursued the judge relentlessly, “that I know
what I am talking about. I’ll publish your contemptible
methods far and wide if you don’t instantly settle this
debt. I’m not here to waste words on you. Write that
check!”</p>
<p>With his face ashen and his hands trembling, Rockwell,
thoroughly cowed, bent over his desk. Fishing a check
book out of a pigeonhole, he opened it, picked up a pen,
and did a little figuring on a scratch block. When he
wrote the check, it was for one thousand one hundred and
twenty dollars.</p>
<p>“There, Clancy,” said the judge, handing the check to
Owen. “Now you are square with Rockwell, and need
have nothing more to do with him. There is a young
fellow in this town who has recently opened a garage.
He is square as a die, and I happen to know that you can
buy a half interest in his place for that money. Of
course,” and the judge smiled, “it isn’t a big place like
this, but the business is growing. I’d advise you to buy
in with Lafe Wynn.”</p>
<p>“Wynn?” murmured Rockwell. “He’s one of my competitors.
I didn’t think, judge, that you’d do anything to
help Lafe Wynn.”</p>
<p>“I’ll do everything to help Lafe Wynn,” said Judge
Pembroke, getting up from his chair. “Clancy will buy
a half interest, give a job to his friend, Jimmie Fortune,
and it won’t be many months, Rockwell, until Clancy &
Wynn run you out of business. They’ll treat their patrons
on the square—and that’s a principle that will help
them to grow. Don’t think for a minute,” he added,
“that I don’t know how I have been robbed here. I’ve
suspected what was going on, and now I’m no longer in
doubt. My two cars are going over to the Square-deal
Garage—and I guess I know a few more cars that will
follow them.”</p>
<p>“You might be easy with me,” whimpered Rockwell,
“now that I’ve given Clancy that money.”</p>
<p>“Easy with you for paying an honest debt?” returned
the judge contemptuously. “Why, man, if you had your
deserts you would be in jail.” He moved toward the
door. “Come on, Clancy,” said he, “you and Fortune.
We’re through here.”</p>
<p>The judge left the place, Clancy and Fortune trailing
along behind him. The two pards were smiling happily,
and Fortune was hanging to Clancy’s hand and working
his arm up and down like a pump handle.</p>
<p>Rockwell watched them through the dingy window of
his office.</p>
<p>“We’ll see about this,” he muttered, between his teeth,
shaking his fist. “I’ll break that new firm of Clancy &
Wynn. You’re a keen one, Pembroke, but you’ll find that
I can go you one better. I—I reckon I shouldn’t have
trusted that fellow, Hibbard, after all,” he added, as he
turned heavily away from the window.</p>
<p class="center smallfont">THE END.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>Continuing to follow the fortunes of Owen Clancy, Burt
L. Standish has written a cracking good story, which you
will find in the next issue of this weekly. It is entitled
“Owen Clancy’s Square Deal; or, The Motor Wizard and
the Black Thunderbolt.” Owen buys a half interest in
Lafe Wynn’s garage and settles down to make good. The
<em>Black Thunderbolt</em> is an automobile, and it is “some car.”
There are some mighty exciting doings in it, too. The
issue in which this story will be found will be out next
week, on January 24th. It is No. 78.</p>
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<h2><a name="HALL_OF_SHELLS" id="HALL_OF_SHELLS"></a>HALL OF SHELLS.</h2>
<p>An English traveler who has recently returned from
Berlin gives an interesting account in one of the local
papers of his visit to the new palace of the kaiser, at
Potsdam.</p>
<p>There are many things which make the palace interesting
to the privileged visitor, not the least among which is
the kitchen, which stands in a separate building. Frederick
the Great hated the smells of the kitchen and he had that
most necessary adjunct to every house moved away from
the palace. The eatables were conveyed to the royal dining
hall by an underground passage. Emperor William still
keeps up the custom of his predecessor.</p>
<p>The dining hall of the palace is small, as palace dining
rooms go, and contains some very valuable paintings, but
for formal events and even for family affairs, now that
the kaiser’s family is getting to be so large, the great
marble hall upstairs is used. Three hundred can dine at
one time in this hall. Here have gathered nearly all the
sovereigns of Europe, and on those occasions huge candles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
are used for lighting instead of the more modern electric
light.</p>
<p>Other rooms of interest are the kaiser’s smoking room,
to which some wonderful vases have recently been added,
the gift of a visiting Chinese prince. The private palace of
the theater holds about 350 persons and the stage is arranged
to produce all the latest scenic effects. The kaiser
prefers light comedy, and this is the kind of entertainment
he gives his guests.</p>
<p>The most interesting apartment in the entire palace, however,
is undoubtedly the hall of shells. The room is most
beautiful, its walls adorned with thousands of shells of
all kinds. They have been arranged deftly in charming
patterns, while other shells in grottoes give a wonderful
effect when lighted by electricity. It was in this room that
Colonel Roosevelt, when ex-president, was entertained by
the kaiser. The famous Imperial Christmas tree is set
up in this room.</p>
<p>The kaiser has his own railway station at Wildpark,
which is only a short distance from the palace.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
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<h2><a name="The_Wonderful_Adventures_of_Capn_Wiley" id="The_Wonderful_Adventures_of_Capn_Wiley"></a>The Wonderful Adventures of Cap’n Wiley.</h2>
<p class="center boldfont" style="margin-top:-1em">Written by Himself. Edited by Burt L. Standish.</p>
<h3>INTRODUCTORY.</h3>
<p>I was sitting in my den desperately seeking the germ
thought for a story when Cap’n Wiley blew in and appropriated
the easy-chair.</p>
<p>“Ah, there, old top,” said he. “So I’ve caught you red-handed
in your little sanctum sanctotum. What meaneth
the distraught look which corregateth thy dome of
thought?”</p>
<p>“Cap’n,” said I, “you jar me. I’m thinking.”</p>
<p>“Don’t do it,” he entreated. “You’re taking a frightful
chance when you put such a strain on your impoverished
gray matter. You don’t have to think to write the sort
of souperific stuff you slosh out.”</p>
<p>“Don’t I!” I cried, exasperated. “Well, now, perhaps
you think you could write it yourself?”</p>
<p>“No,” he answered cheerfully, “nothing quite as distressing.
Now, if I was going to write, I’d hand the yearning
public some real littery litterchewer, just for a change.
I say, Burt, old sport, I think I’ll try one of your Havana
imperfectos, if you have one inconvenient at hand.”</p>
<p>I brought out a box of cigars, and he helped himself
to a handful. Then he “borrowed” a match, fired up, and
settled back, with a sigh of satisfaction, on the easy-chair.</p>
<p>“Yes,” he murmured, “I think I could do it. I come
from an immoderately cultured family. Why, my sister
was educated in a female cemetery.”</p>
<p>“You mean a female seminary?”</p>
<p>“No, I don’t; I mean a female cemetery. Why, where
else would a young lady learn the dead languages?”</p>
<p>I had no reply to make.</p>
<p>“But,” pursued the marine marvel, “it really wouldn’t
be necessary for me to consort to fiction; if I were to
write a truthful verbatem history of my own career from
the cradle to the Hall of Fame, it would prove so fascinating
that the reading public would gobble it up with
humidity.”</p>
<p>I slipped him the skeptical smile, which seemed to
arouse him to a point of high resentment.</p>
<p>“Say, you give me a cramp!” he exclaimed resentfully.
“You think I can’t deliver the goods, hey? Well, I’ll
show you, some. You’ve been grafting off me for some
time by plaguerizing such little mementos of my chilling
adventures as I have chanced to let drop in casual conversation
with you, and I’m highly distended over it.</p>
<p>“Now, take it from me, Burt, from this mementous hour
you cease to yearn your bread and butter by parisiting on
little Walter. I’m going to write my own naughty biography,
and I’ll do a job at it that will put your style of
bunkoing the reading public strictly on the blink. I have
only one fear: what if, on publication of my personal
reminoosances, some one should be unfeeling and thoughtless
enough to doubt my absolute voracity? That would
break my tender heart.</p>
<p>“Nevertheless, I’ll take a chance, remembering, as the
poet puts it, that truth must rise triumphant, even though
it may seem to be getting walloped groggy. Farewell,
Burt. Bide a wee. You’ll gaze on my beaming counterpane
no more until I have completed the colossal task I
have vowed to undertake. I observe by the beautiful
hand-painted culendar above your rosewood desk that it
is now the conclusive day of the month of March. I shall
begin my labors upon the morrow.”</p>
<p>He was at the door when I laughingly called:</p>
<p>“Don’t forget that to-morrow is the first day of April,
cap’n.”</p>
<p>He seared me with a look of scorn, and vanished.</p>
<p>I did not set eyes upon him again for more than two
months, but, as he frequently absented himself for more
or less protracted periods, I thought nothing of it. When
he did turn up again I had quite forgotten about his
threat to write his autobiography, and I don’t think I ever
mentioned it to him. Some months later he met with
that sad and terrible accident which brought his really
adventurous life to a tragic termination.</p>
<p>Recently, in looking through a trunk in which were
stowed some of the cap’n’s effects, a relative discovered
a huge bundle of foolscap paper carefully tied up with
ribbons made of cigar bands taken from my own cigars on
various visits of Walter to my den. The paper was covered
with writing, almost undecipherable in its hasty
scrawl, which told that the penman had dashed off every
line at fever heat. It proved to be the autobiography, and
was given into my hands.</p>
<p>I have edited it with some pains, being at times compelled
to use the blue pencil freely, and to tone down in
many places the cap’n’s flamboyant style.</p>
<p class="marginrightindent"><span class="smcap">Burt L. Standish.</span></p>
<h3>CHAPTER I.<br />
<span class="clheaderfont">ITCHING FOR ADVENTURE.</span></h3>
<p>I was a beautiful baby, even though, like most babies, I
was born without any hair or teeth to speak of; and if I
had had them I probably wouldn’t have spoken of them
at the time, which I offer as absolute proof of my natural
modesty. I was also a most precocious baby, absolutely
remarkable, in evidence of which I will state that at the
age of six months I was distinctly heard to say “boo” and
“oog.”</p>
<p>On hearing these pearls of intelligence and wisdom fall
from my rosebud lips my mother became quite convinced
that I was doomed to a wonderful career as a statesman,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
a diplomap, or a street-car conductor. Chauffeurs were
not in vogue at the time.</p>
<p>It may be well to skim over the days of my childhood
and early youth, and plunge at once into the seething vortext
of adventures which befell me when, at the tender
age of sweet sixteen, I fared forth with an eager heart,
and a father’s good riddance, to face the world and grapple
with fortune. Perhaps it is not strictly accurate to say
that I fared forth, as, not having the necessary wampum
with which to pay my fare by rail, I locomoted per
Shank’s mare.</p>
<p>It was at the witching hour of midnight that I bade the
ancestral rooftree so long, sincerely hoping that it would
be so long before I beheld it again that I might forget
to remember what it looked like. The discerning reader
will divine by this naïve confession of my feelings at the
time, that my life up to that date had not exactly been
one grand, sweet song.</p>
<p>When I crept down the back stairs and let myself out
of the Wiley tepee by the kitchen door, I took with me a
more or less elaborate cuisine of extra clothing tied up in
a bandanna handkerchief. I was followed by little Fido,
my faithful dog. Little Fido was a cross between a Skioodle
and an Angostora goat, and he weighed about
three pounds and seven ounces, when trained down to
fighting condition. I’ve seen him chaw up a forty-pound
bulldog quicker than a woodchuck could whip a bear.</p>
<p>Between little Fido and myself there existed an affection
that was deep and tender and touching. He was an
animal of high intelligence, and I was perfectly convinced
by the stealthy and syruptitious manner in which he slunk
from the house at my heels that he was fully aware of the
fact that I was running away, and he was determined to
flee with me.</p>
<p>You understand, it is not difficult for a dog to flea with
any one, and we had slept together many a night. Is it
any wonder that I had an itching for adventure? When
the time came to set forth in quest of that for which I
itched I certainly came up to the scratch.</p>
<p>And so, behold me, gentle reader, on that dark and
gloomy midnight, making my get-away with faithful little
Fido gamboling at my heels. Dark it was, indeed—so
dark that a load of coal that had been dumped outside
the back door of the Wiley domicile looked like a snowdrift.
Nevertheless, also, and likewise, I knew the lay
of the land, and the points of the compass, and, having
reached the highway, I hastened to hie away.</p>
<p>It must not be thought for a single fleeting zodiac of
time that I was taking this nocturnal departure from home
without feeling as much as a transient emotion of regret,
for I have a naturally tender and touching nature, in
proof of which I might call upon hundreds of persons
whom I have touched on various occasions.</p>
<p>I shed tears at the thought of all I was leaving behind
me—tears of sincere regret; for there were about ten
or a dozen persons in that town whom I had sworn to
thrash within an inch of their lives, and I was saddened
by the thought that I was leaving the work unaccomplished.</p>
<p>Blinded by these tears, as well as the intense darkness,
I came near meeting with a frightful disaster while taking
a short cut across a back yard; for I fell about twenty-five
feet into an old well, and landed in water that was
at least umsteen feet deep. Perhaps it is not precisely
accurate to say that I <em>landed</em> in that water; suffice it to
say that I dropped into it casually up to my pompadore,
and found it extremely wet.</p>
<p>“Ah-ha!” I exclaimed, coughing up about a gallon of
<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">aqua pura</i> which I had thoughtlessly swallowed. “I’m in a
hole now.”</p>
<p>I began to feel of the wet and slippery rocks around
me, and I must assert that, in spite of my unpleasant
predicament, I was feeling well. In vain I tried to fasten
my flippers on those slippery rocks; they were smoother
than a con man. I couldn’t obtain a sustaining hold anywhere,
and I was compelled to tread water to keep my
head above the surface.</p>
<p>Now, treading water in a well about twenty-five feet
below the level of <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">terra firma</i> is an occupation that becomes
monotonous in the course of time. If you don’t
believe me, just try it once. It will make you tired. It
did me. I sought to brace my hands and feet against
opposite sides of the well, and to crawl upward in that
manner, but every time I attempted it I slipped down.
If I could only have slipped up I should have been very
happy indeed.</p>
<p>I could hear little Fido howling dolefully and despairingly
above me. The intelligent beast knew, beyond doubt,
the full extent of my frightful peril.</p>
<p>Gradually I was growing benumbed by the icy chill of
the water and exhausted by my efforts, and I realized that
unless I could soon find some method of extricating myself
from that well my bath was going to disagree with
me very extensively. So, while still treading water, I put
my colossal intellect at work upon the problem.</p>
<p>It seemed a terrible thing to have the career of adventure
upon which I had set forth cut short at such an early
date. The prospect was far from pleasing.</p>
<p>“Water death to die!” I groaned, in anguish.</p>
<p>Luckily for me, no one heard the remark, for if any
one had he might have been tempted to drop a brick upon
my head.</p>
<p>No one heard me except little Fido, and he howled worse
than ever.</p>
<p>At last I was struck by a bright idea—an idea that
made me chortle with glee and wonder why it had not
occurred to me before. It was so simple!</p>
<p>I will explain for the edification of the unsuspecting
reader that I have always been a great athlete, and the
possessor of scandalous strength. I once lifted a horse
and buggy. I had quite a time over it, I acknowledge; the
judge gave me three months.</p>
<p>When the happy thought came over me I was almost
overcome. As soon as I could find my breath I proceeded
to put it into execution. More than one person has lost
his breath by putting it into execution, but what’s the use
of being hanged if you can help it? While treading water
I reached down with both hands, secured a good, firm
grip on the later portion of my trowserloons, took a long
breath, and lifted with all my enormous strength.</p>
<p>The result justified my agreeable expectations. I felt
myself rising! I kept on rising faster and faster, straining
every nerve in the tremendous effort. In this manner
I lifted myself clean out of that twenty-five-foot well, and
fell, panting and exhausted, upon the solid earth, my
strength failing me just as I was fully and fairly above
ground.</p>
<p>If the skeptical reader doesn’t believe this I can show
him the well.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>
<h3>CHAPTER II.<br />
<span class="clheaderfont">FIDO TO THE RESCUE.</span></h3>
<p>Despite my narrow escape from a watery grave, my
larder for adventure was not dampened in the least, and
so, with my little dog percolating at my heels, I tramped
onward throughout the remainder of that night, with my
face set toward Boston.</p>
<p>Morning came at last. I was far from home when
dawn broke across the wold. (I use the word “wold” instead
of world because it sounds more poetic, and I am
naturally of a highly poetic extinction.) Little birds began
to carol in the wayside thickets, crickets cricked in the
grass, in a near-by marsh frogs were celebrating morning
mass in a masterly manner, and eventually the sun rose
into a sky as blue as a poker player who has bet his last
blooming chip on four kings and found that some other
crook at the table holds four aces.</p>
<p>It was a beautiful morning, but, having been born with
a decided <em>penchant</em> for food, without which I have unfortunately,
up to the present date, found it quite difficult
to subsist, I had no eye for the beauties of the universe
scattered around me. My stomach was hollow.</p>
<p>I knew that little Fido must also be hungry, although he
had bravely refrained from saying so.</p>
<p>I knocked at the door of a house, and a kind lady
came out and asked me what I wanted. I told her I was
that flemished that I knew I could find nutriment even in
the hole of a doughnut, which I would demonstrate to
her satisfaction if she had a few doughnut holes to
spare.</p>
<p>At first the lady was somewhat suspicious. She asked
me for my name and pedigree. I told her my name was
Johnny Jones, but that I had carelessly mislaid my pedigree,
and lost the blame thing. In order to allay her
suspicions, I related a pathetic tale about a great-grandmother
who was dying in Boston, and whose bedside I
hoped to reach before the doctors could finish her.</p>
<p>She was touched. She told me she was a widow, and
I congratulated her on the spur of the moment. She
promised refreshments for me and my dog if I would
perform some slight manual labor by sawing a cord of
wood or so for her. The wood was in the woodshed. I
inspected it with a sad and regretful eye. It never did
agree with me to saw wood, and I offered to shovel the
sunshine off the widow’s front walk.</p>
<p>But she was impervious to my argument, and so, peeling
off my coat, I seized the bucksaw and went at it.
The saw needed honing, and I must admit that I was
greatly discouraged by the time I had amputated the first
stick or two. I knew I’d never last to finish the job on
an empty stomach, and this led me to set my colossal
intellect at work on the problem.</p>
<p>The widow had gone into the house to get breakfast.
I paused and pondered. A scheme came to me. I made
an effort and found that by zizzing my breath through my
teeth and lips I could produce an excellent imitation of
a dull bucksaw cutting through a stick of wood. For
the next half hour or more I sat on the chopping block
zizzing with consummate industry, lifting and dropping
a stick of wood at regular intervals, so that it would fall
with a thud loud enough to be heard in the kitchen.</p>
<p>As soon as I dared, I put on my coat and strolled into
the kitchen, pretending to wipe beads of perspiration from
my alabaster brow, and betraying every skymptom of
excessive exhaustion.</p>
<p>“Goodness!” exclaimed the widow, in surprise. “Did
you saw the whole of that wood as soon as this?”</p>
<p>“Yes, madam,” I answered, “I saw the whole of that
wood.”</p>
<p>Then she regaled me with a sumptuous breakfast of
ham and beans and corn bread and coffee, and by the
time little Fido and I were eternally satiated the table
looked as if it had been keeping a date with a Kansas
cyclone.</p>
<p>“You were indeed hungry,” said the kind widow. “You
are very young to be walking all the way to Boston to
reach the bedside of a dying great-grandmother. Now,
your parents——”</p>
<p>“Are both dead,” I sighed.</p>
<p>“Oh,” said she, “you’re an orphan. Have you been
so——”</p>
<p>“Not often,” I answered. “I believe I may truthfully
say this is my first offense.”</p>
<p>“Your great-grandmother—is she very old?”</p>
<p>“That is the sad part of it,” I moaned, bursting into
tears. “It is terrible for one to die so young. She is only
thirty-five.”</p>
<p>The widow seemed surprised.</p>
<p>“Only thirty-five!” she exclaimed; “and your great-grandmother?
You are at least sixteen or seventeen. It
is impossible for you to have a great-grandmother who is
only thirty-five!”</p>
<p>I perceived the necessity of side-stepping at once.</p>
<p>“Pardon me, madam,” I said. “The lady is my grandmother,
but she weighs at least two hundred and ninety
pounds, so I call her my <em>great</em> grandmother.”</p>
<p>And I got away with it. She was so relieved to find me
strictly truthful that she did not question the possibility
of my having a grandmother of that age. Had she done
so, I should have explained that doubtless in my haste I
got the figures reversed, and that my grandmother was
fifty-three instead of thirty-five. Not being particularly
strong in mathematics, I sometimes make these little <em>fox
paws</em> with figures.</p>
<p>“Your poor father and mother,” murmured the widow;
“were they people of a spiritual turn?”</p>
<p>“My father was,” I replied; “decidedly so. I have known
him to go out with the parson for spiritual stimulation.
They would go into a back room somewhere and sit
down at an ordinary round table, and it would not be
long before spirits appeared before them. When those
spirits departed my father used to rap on the table, and
more spirits would come. After a prolonged séance of
this kind my father usually saw things.”</p>
<p>“Dear me!” said the widow. “How unfortunate to lose
such a father. How old was he when he passed away?”</p>
<p>“He was only fifty-nine,” I answered, with criminal
carelessness.</p>
<p>Immediately, if not sooner than that, I perceived that
it was time for me to be wending my way onward, and
I proceeded to wend, overloading her with such a burden
of gratitude that she didn’t have time to get her breath
before I was half a mile down the road.</p>
<p>Near noon I approached the hoop skirts of a large city.
As I approached, I perceived posted on fences and the
sides of old barns many carnivorous posters advertising
a circus which was to appear in that town on that very
date.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>
<p>Entering the town, I lemonaded slowly down the principal
street. Ere long my ears were saluted by a sound
resembling a base libel on music, and soon the circus band
at the head of a long procession made its appearance.</p>
<p>Both sides of the street were lined with gaping multitudes.
It seemed that everybody in town and for miles
around had assembled to witness that parade. Lawyers,
doctors, storekeepers, clerks, stenographers, street laborers,
everybody, in fact, had gathered upon the sidewalks
to see the procession pass, and for the time being business
in that town was placed <em>horse de tomcat</em>.</p>
<p>The music assassinators of the band were dressed in
bright-red suits, and rode in a gilded chariot. Next in
line, a short distance behind the band chariot, came the
biggest elephant I have ever seen; certainly the creature
must have weighed twelve or fourteen tons, more or less.</p>
<p>In the center of the city there was a wooden bridge
spanning a deep, dark river. Unfortunately, this bridge
was not of sufficient strength to sustain the weight of
that huge elephant. Just as the monster reached the middle
span of the structure there was a sudden cracking of
timbers, and the bridge gave way, precipitating the immense
creature into the water.</p>
<p>The excitement immediately became intense. Women
shrieked, men shouted, and, to the relief of everybody,
the circus band stopped firing. The splash of the elephant
striking the surface of the river resembled a clap
of thunder, and water was flung over the top of a five-story
building near at hand.</p>
<p>Crowding to the nearest bank of the river, I perceived
the poor beast floundering distressingly in the middle of
the stream. Almost immediately I became aware that the
creature could not swim, and was, therefore, doomed to
be drowned unless some one could devise a means of its
rescue. Right before the eyes of those helpless and horrified
spectators the beast sank and rose and sank again.</p>
<p>The manager of the circus, who was likewise the owner,
came tearing through the crowd, frothing at the mouth,
and shrieking that he would pay a reward of five hundred
dollars to any one who would rescue the elephant.</p>
<p>I saw my opportunity, and grappled with it.</p>
<p>“Clam yourself, sir,” said I. “I will relieve you of
that five hundred. Your priceless treasure shall not
perish.”</p>
<p>Then I called my faithful dog.</p>
<p>“Fido,” I cried, pointing toward the drowning mammal,
“it’s up to you to get busy. We need the mazuma. Go
fetch, Fido.”</p>
<p>Instantly my noble dog plunged into the river and swam
swiftly toward the elephant. Just as the great beast was
sinking for the third time, Fido seized it by one ear,
and, holding the elephant’s head above the surface, turned
and struck out for the nearest shore.</p>
<p>It was a fearful struggle. For a time the issue hung
in the balance, or words to that effect. Once Fido, elephant,
and all disappeared from view, and the crowd
shouted in a high key. That is, most of the crowd; but,
judging by the smell of the man’s breath next to me, the
key he shouted in was whisky. I touched him gently on
the shoulder, and admonished him to keep up his spirits.
Hiccuping slightly, he assured me that it was frequently
far more difficult for him to keep them down.</p>
<p>With folded arms, I serenely waited until little Fido
reached the bank and dragged the elephant, limp and nearly
drowned, but still alive, out upon dry ground.</p>
<p>The spectators cheered wildly, and the proprietor of the
circus made a dastardly attempt to fall on my neck and
kiss me, but I held him off.</p>
<p>“My dear boy,” he cried, “I owe you a thousand
thanks.”</p>
<p>“No,” I answered; “you owe me five hundred dollars,
and I’ll take it in frigid cash. Even a certified check will
be scrutinized with suspicion.”</p>
<h3>CHAPTER III.<br />
<span class="clheaderfont">THE CAPTAIN MEETS A RASCAL.</span></h3>
<p>The proprietor of the circus was most profuse in his
gratitude. He was a gent who, without exaggeration,
could be called effulgent. He certainly had a rush of
words to the mouth, but I declined to let the flow of gas
overcome me, rigidly insisting on my rights, and demanding
that he should make good and cough up. Seeing that
I could not be bluffed, he finally extended an invitation
for me to accompany him to his headquarters at the circus
grounds, where he could renumerate me according to his
promise.</p>
<p>“I want you to understand,” he said, “that I am a man
of my word. I am Samuel P. Slick, proprietor and
owner of Slick’s Mammoth Circus and Colossal Aggregation
of Wild Beasts.”</p>
<p>“Glad to know you, Mr. Slick,” said I. “I am highly
flavored. Lead on, and I will stick to you closer than
a porous plaster to a rheumatic shoulder blade.”</p>
<p>Visions of that five hundred percolated through my
cerebellum. In fancy I was already fingering various long,
green certificates with pictures of presidents upon them.
Why, I had that money spent before we even hove in sight
of the circus grounds.</p>
<p>Mr. Slick led me to a small tent abaft the main tent.
Little Fido followed us cheerfully. As soon as we were
inside the small tent, and thus shielded from prying eyes,
Mr. Slick sunk his grappling hooks into his trowsers pocket
and dragged up a solitary greasy five-dollar bill, which
he beamingly offered me.</p>
<p>“Take it, son—take it!” he urged magnanimously. “You
deserve it, for that dog of yours is really a wonder.”</p>
<p>“I beg your hasty pudding,” said I, refraining from
cleaving unto the fiver; “but haven’t you made a slight
mistake?”</p>
<p>“Eh?” said he quickly. “Why, I thought I said five.
Is it possible that I said one? Oh, well, never mind;
we’ll call it five, just the same, for it certainly was worth
it. It’s yours!”</p>
<p>“What under the canister of heaven do you take me
for?” I cried warmly. “You said five hundred. Get
busy, Mr. Slick, and add about ninety-nine duplicates to
that lonesome William.”</p>
<p>Immediately Mr. Slick blew up. He turned purple in
the face, and looked like a toad with the colic.</p>
<p>“Why, you young scoundrel,” he roared, “are you trying
to bluff me out of a lot of real money? I said I’d give
any one five dollars to save my elephant, and I meant it.
Under the circumstances, I’m not obliged to pay you a
cent, for you didn’t pull the elephant out; it was that there
dog that did it. But I can’t give money to a dog, and
so——”</p>
<p>He started to put the bill back into his pocket.</p>
<p>I reached right out and secured it.</p>
<p>“I can take money from one,” I remarked, “and that’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
just about what you are—and then a few. Unfortunately
the United States slanguage does not furnish adjectives
suitable to fit your particular case, and, as it happens that
I can’t speak French a great deal better than I can speak
it, I’ll refrain from attempting the impossible task of telling
you just what I think of you. It chances that I’m
busted; otherwise I would spurn your filthy lucifer with
ignominy.”</p>
<p>I left him in high dudgeon, and went right away from
there. I’ll admit that I was extensively sore; but five
bones would purchase a beefsteak and trimmings, and I
was again languishing with hunger.</p>
<p>We dined, Fido and I, and we went the limit, from <em>beef
a la mud</em> to <em>demi tassles</em>. When I had tipped the waiter
munificently I found that only twenty cents of the late-lamented
fiver remained in the exchequer. With that I
purchased a flagrant Havana cigar, and again set forth
upon my weary tramp toward my predestination.</p>
<p>I think I had left the city about a mile astern, and was
slowly oozing along, buried in deep thought, when the
sudden consummate blast of an automobubble horn gave
me such a start that I jumped about ten feet straight up
into the ambient atmosphere.</p>
<p>Now, it happened that the gasoline jaunting car was
approaching from behind with considerable acceleration.
I am sure the buzz wagon could not have been more
than ten rods behind me when the cheffonier blew that
blast on his horn, and the blasted thing made me jump.</p>
<p>And the machine was moving with such expedience that
when I came down I alighted fairly on the cushioned seat
in the tonneau.</p>
<p>By the time I got my breath and quieted the spasmatic
beatings of my heart, I realized that I was comfortably
languishing in a strictly first-class, up-to-date naughty-mobile
that was taking me toward Boston a great deal
faster than I could walk.</p>
<p>Besides yours truly, the only other person in the car
was the driver, who was so preoccupied with his job of
taking the road turns at about seventy miles an hour, that
he had not even seemed casually to notice the unceremonious
manner in which I had dropped in on him.</p>
<p>The old gocart was a good one. On looking it over
with the eye of a cricket, I perceived at once that in the
way of such machines it might be called the <em>ne plus ulster</em>.</p>
<p>I congratulated myself with impunity. What could be
more satisfactory than to make a portion of my journey
in this manner? With a sigh of contentment, I settled
back, murmuring in dulcet tones:</p>
<p>“Let her rip, old boy! As long as you don’t try to
hurdle a stone wall or climb a tree, you can’t feaze little
Walter.”</p>
<p>Then came a sudden horrifying thought: My dog—my
poor little dog Fido! What had become of him?</p>
<p>I turned to cast my eyes backward, but, fearing I might
not recover them if I did so, I refrained, and simply looked.</p>
<p>That is, I tried to look, but the course astern was simply
blotted out by a cloud of dust. There was so much dust
in the air that it seemed to crowd itself for room. I felt
sure we were tearing up the solid earth at such a rate
that where the road had been there would remain nothing
but a long, deep ditch after we had passed over it.</p>
<p>Poor little Fido! Would I ever again behold my
faithful little quinine companion? I feared not.</p>
<p>In a short time, however, we struck a long strip of
macadamized bullyvard, and, again looking round, I pereevered
that we were no longer distributing the highway
over the adjacent country.</p>
<p>Imagine my unbounded amazement and joy on discovering
my little dog a few rods abeam, coming like the
wind, his eyes protruding like glass doorknobs, and something
like a yard and a half of his tongue hanging from
his mouth. He was simply making tremendous endeavors
to keep up with that car, which now seemed to be only
occasionally connecting slightly with the extremely remote
elevations—and he was practically doing it.</p>
<p>But I realized that this could not last long. Speedy as
he surely was, Fido could not continue to hit it up at
something better than a mile a minute for more than forty
or fifty miles without eventually becoming weary and discouraged.</p>
<p>On the spur of the momentum I decided that something
must be done.</p>
<p>Then I called to little Fido, making at the same time
an encouraging genuflexion with my lily-white hand. He
responded at once with a tremendous burst of speed and
a flying leap that brought him sailing over the back of
the machine into the tonneau beside me.</p>
<p class="center smallfont">TO BE CONTINUED.</p>
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<h2><a name="A_DIVERS_GREATEST_DANGER" id="A_DIVERS_GREATEST_DANGER"></a>A DIVER’S GREATEST DANGER.</h2>
<p>The greatest enemy of the diver is paralysis, and this,
strangely enough, is not caused by sending him into the
sea, but in carelessly taking him out of it. In bringing
a diver to the surface from any great depth, as much as
half an hour is spent in what is known as “staging” him.
He is brought up to a certain depth from the surface and
there held, while he fights vigorously with arms and legs
to quicken the circulation temporarily, and so to assist in
sweeping the excess of nitrogen out of the tissues of the
body. This excess of nitrogen, forced into the blood under
pressure of air and water, is the cause of diver’s paralysis.
At various depths before reaching the surface, the
good diver, who understands what causes paralysis, will
“stage” and prepare himself to leave the water. Once on
the deck of the lugger, he will rest and recover himself
for another descent, and so throughout the day.</p>
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<h2><a name="PRESENCE_OF_MIND" id="PRESENCE_OF_MIND"></a>PRESENCE OF MIND.</h2>
<p>A passenger on a transatlantic liner had been sick for
five days in succession. One evening he felt somewhat
better, and promenaded the saloon for some time. About
ten o’clock he thought of retiring to his stateroom, which
was on the upper deck. Before leaving the saloon he
sought the steward and said:</p>
<p>“I want you to send me some hot water for shaving
at half past six in the morning. Will you remember it?”</p>
<p>The steward promised, and the passenger started up the
saloon companionway. The steps were brass-covered and
very slippery. He reached the first landing all right, but
slipped on the first step of the second and came rattling
all the way down again. He was picked up rather battered,
but not a bit disconcerted.</p>
<p>“Steward,” he said gravely, “I just came back to tell
you not to forget that hot water at half past six in the
morning.”</p>
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<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="NEWS_ITEMS_OF_INTEREST" id="NEWS_ITEMS_OF_INTEREST"></a>NEWS ITEMS OF INTEREST.</h2>
<h3>Declares He Fasted for Fifty-one Days.</h3>
<p>Charles B. Champion, grain man, of Fort Worth, Texas,
is boasting about a fasting feat which he believes surpasses
all long-distance records in the abstinence line. But
he did not go out to win any “noneats” record primarily.</p>
<p>His health was poor. He had read that the stomach was
frequently abused by the callous and indifferent manner in
which it is burdened with more or less indigestible substances,
and decided to give it a rest.</p>
<p>He concluded a little trip “back to nature” would produce
desirable results. He took his family with him to the
mountains of Pennsylvania and there emulated the mendicant
who has “had nothing to eat for three days.” But
he went the average street-corner solicitor of alms one
better. Also, he vied with a certain brand of medical
wizards who had gone without food longer than the ordinary
man cares to.</p>
<p>For fifty-one days he took no food, and drank only
water. At the end of his fasting period, although he had
lost thirty-nine pounds in weight, he was declared physically
sound by physicians. During his fast he experienced no
discomfort, and spent enjoyable days whipping the streams
near his camp for trout, and in long tramps over the
country.</p>
<h3>Governor Doused When Gun Kicks.</h3>
<p>While on a shooting expedition along the St. Francis
River, in Missouri, with Governor Hays, of Arkansas,
Governor Major, of Missouri, got a cold bath. The two
governors were crossing a bayou in a canoe. Governor
Hays fired at a duck and missed. Governor Major dropped
his paddle, and, standing half erect, blazed away. The
kick of the gun knocked him into the water. The Arkansas
governor managed to reach him and draw him back
in the canoe. Each killed a deer before leaving the canebrakes.</p>
<h3>Beachey Loops the Loop.</h3>
<p>Lincoln Beachey, the aviator, looped the loop twice in
the air above North Island, California, recently. Starting
at a height of 2,500 feet, he dropped straight downward
into the first loop and immediately turned over again into
the second, landing afterward. At no time, seemingly, was
there any loss of control. Beachey said he would repeat
the performance.</p>
<p>Beachey’s feat of looping the loop with a biplane fitted
with an upright motor upset the theory of experts, who had
asserted that nothing but a revolving motor, such as the
Frenchman Pegoud used, could carry an aëroplane over the
top of the loop. Beachey said the loop was much easier
of achievement than flying upside down. He made several
upside-down flights at North Island.</p>
<h3>Little Pig by Parcel Post.</h3>
<p>Under the protecting wing of Uncle Sam and in care of
the employees of the mail department, a little white Chester
pig, four weeks old, celebrated his birthday recently by
visiting Montpelier, Vt., for the first time, arriving on the
afternoon mail train by parcel post, in what was probably
one of the “softest” journeys ever taken by a “piggie,” at
least in that part of the country, at any rate it was the
first of the “pig nationality” to ever arrive in that city in
this manner.</p>
<p>A very much surprised man was Frank Muzzy, janitor
at the C. V. station, who carries the mail to the post office,
when a small crate was passed out of the car, containing a
little white “grunter,” and as long as a precedent has been
established on animals, Frank is wondering whether or
not he may get a box of snakes by the same route some
day.</p>
<p>Passengers and people waiting at the station flocked
around the crate, which was piled high upon the mail bags,
showing great interest in the strange parcel, which was at
once taken to the post office, and within an hour or so,
a government employee had delivered the strange shipment
to William I. Brown. The little animal was shipped
from Robinson, Vt., by Joseph King.</p>
<p>The postage on the little traveler amounted to 43 cents.</p>
<h3>Polonium as Medicine.</h3>
<p>Sir William Ramsay, of England, discussing the properties
of radium at a meeting of the British Radium Corporation
recently, said there were other substances in the
radium ores which had not so far been exploited from a
therapeutic point of view. He hoped that polonium, which
was perhaps the most easily produced, might prove to
possess therapeutic qualities for the treatment of diseases
which had hitherto not been treated.</p>
<p>Polonium, said Sir William, was somewhat analogous to
selenium and tellurium, and also to bismuth, the therapeutic
qualities of which had been tested. Those three elements
remained in the system for some length of time,
and then were excreted, but had practically no therapeutical
qualities. Polonium differed from them entirely in
that it gave off alpha rays, just the same as radium did,
and he could not help believing that the potency of radium
for therapeutic purposes depended upon the alpha rays.</p>
<p>Radium could not be administered as medicine to human
beings, as it was too expensive, and probably too dangerous,
but the three substances he had mentioned were
eliminated in about three months, and his impression was
that polonium might produce its effects for about that time
and then be eliminated.</p>
<h3>Bill Dahlen Out.</h3>
<p>Bill Dahlen, manager of the Brooklyn National Baseball
Club, has been given his unconditional release. Dahlen
had held the place for four years. He was famous as a
shortstop.</p>
<h3>Lost Hand in Experiment.</h3>
<p>With a book on “Experimental Science” at his call,
Godfrey Meier, junior, fifteen years old, tried an experiment
in the back yard of his home in New York, after
school one day recently. Just what his experiment consisted
of the police could not learn, but the result was an
explosion, which blew off the fingers of the boy’s right
hand and so lacerated the hand that it was amputated in
Flower Hospital.</p>
<p>When his mother asked him what caused the accident<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
he said he was playing with a magneto. The police think,
however, that he had got hold of a fulminating cap
or something of the kind. At the time of the accident a
four-year-old nephew of Godfrey was standing only a
few feet away. The child was knocked down, but was not
injured.</p>
<h3>Wireless News to Train.</h3>
<p>For the first time on record, news bulletins taken by wireless
were displayed on a moving train recently. Passengers
on No. 3 on the Lackawanna Railroad were astonished
to see the latest foreign and home dispatches spread
before their eyes as they were being whirled along at
sixty miles an hour between Scranton and Binghamton, Pa.</p>
<p>The Scranton <cite>Times</cite> sent 250 words from the Lackawanna
wireless station to the moving train. One was on
the battle in Mexico, another regarding the strike in
Schenectady, another relating to the dilemma in Washington
with respect to landing marines in Mexico.</p>
<p>When the train left Hoboken the wireless apparatus was
somewhat disabled, as a generator had burned out. The
operator, however, was able to take dispatches and give
the passengers a news service unique in history.</p>
<p>“To think we didn’t have it for the world’s series!”
mourned an excited Chicago man.</p>
<h3>He Prefers the Family Nag.</h3>
<p>Wabash County, Indiana, has at least one resident who
has never ridden on a railroad train, street car, or automobile,
and whose fastest rate of travel is limited to the
speed of his horse. This man is Jonathan Beal, who has
lived in New Holland, a village in the eastern part of the
county, for the last sixty years, having moved there with
his parents when about fifteen years old. Mr. Beal is of
the opinion that his family nag can go fast enough for
all practical purposes.</p>
<p>Mr. Beal travels little, and his journeys during the last
threescore years have been confined almost wholly to trips
to Wabash, the county seat, eleven miles from his home.
In making the trip he always uses his horse, and has refused
many invitations to ride in a machine.</p>
<p>Though motor cars hourly pass his home, he never sees
a train, only when in Wabash, as no railroad touches New
Holland.</p>
<h3>Operate on Human Heart.</h3>
<p>Probably the most daring chapter in modern surgery is
that which treats of operations on the heart, says the
<cite>World’s Work</cite>. “The road to the heart is only two or
three inches long, but it has taken surgery nearly 2,600
years to traverse it,” is one writer’s striking remark. How
recent this work is, is made plain from the fact that a book
published by Stephen Paget, in 1895, contained a chapter
on “Surgery of the Heart,” the words being contemptuously
inclosed in quotation marks.</p>
<p>The scientist, as well as the layman, looked upon the
heart with an almost superstitious awe. Any injury necessarily
implied death; any interference with such an injury
could only hasten the end. Yet many shrewd observers in
the course of the ages had noted that all heart wounds
did not result in instantaneous death.</p>
<p>It was not until ten or fifteen years ago that surgeons
began to act upon this knowledge. In exceptional cases
death did not result immediately from a heart wound; there
were intervals of a few days or a few weeks. Why not
utilize the interval in an attempt to sew up the wound?
Medical history now reports many successful operations of
this kind.</p>
<p>An especially noteworthy one, performed upon an Alabama
negro boy in 1902, illustrates the resources of modern
heart surgery. This boy had been the victim of an especially
nasty stab wound. The knife had penetrated the
apex of the heart and passed into the left ventricle, making
a wound nearly half an inch long. When the boy was
placed upon the operating table, in the little negro cabin,
the signs of death had already appeared. His feet were
cold and his face showed signs of the utmost distress. The
surgeon made a little, windowlike opening just above the
heart. Through this they could readily see the injured
organ, the blood spurting from the wound at each pulsation.
One surgeon put in his hand, pulled the heart upward,
and held it while another sewed the wound with
catgut.</p>
<p>The operation—performed without an anæsthetic—lasted
fifty-five minutes; on the sixteenth day the boy was sitting
up; in a short time his heart was as good as ever.</p>
<h3>Fear Rube Waddell is Dying.</h3>
<p>In spite of his belief that he was suffering only from
a slight attack of bronchitis, “Rube” Waddell, once a
great baseball pitcher, has left Minneapolis to begin a
battle with tuberculosis, at his sister’s home in San Antonio,
Texas.</p>
<p>A short time ago a story was current that he had fallen
a victim to the white plague, but he scoffed at the idea,
and said he was suffering from a severe cold.</p>
<p>Since then he has been growing steadily weaker, and
has been in bed for several days. His physicians fear that
Waddell’s chances for recovery are slight.</p>
<h3>Ruse of Girl Who Desired to Marry.</h3>
<p>When Martha J. Mayers, sixteen, applied for a marriage
license at Fort Collins, Colo., she told the clerk that
she was over eighteen. She insisted in court the next day
that she was telling the truth.</p>
<p>She explained to County Judge Fred W. Stover that
before going for the license she had placed a piece of
paper with the figures eighteen written on it in her shoe
so that she could truthfully say she was over eighteen.</p>
<p>The girl declared that her grandmother had told her of
the scheme.</p>
<p>Bert B. Cain, who was arrested for perjury following
the marriage to the sixteen-year-old girl, was held under
bond.</p>
<h3>Man Wanders Fifty Hours.</h3>
<p>Fifty hours without food or sleep, Harry L. Sommerville,
manager of the Savoy Hotel, at North Yakima,
Wash., wandered into the store in the Nile, in the headwaters
of the Tieton basin, and later arrived in North
Yakima. With W. W. Stratton, Roy Gilbert, and a man
named Mulligan, Sommerville went hunting near Bumping
Lake. He started from the camp to meet another of the
party. He crossed a ridge and missed the other man.
When the hour of the appointment passed Sommerville
found that his worn tennis shoes with rubber soles were
so slippery that he could not mount the side of the ridge
again over the wet logs and pine needles.</p>
<p>“I had no feeling of fear at any time. I did not dare
to go to sleep at night because of the cold in the mountains,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
but kept pushing on slowly. It seemed to me that
I traveled a thousand miles, but it appears on the map
to be only about thirty.”</p>
<h3>Indian Wins Cotton Prize.</h3>
<p>Jack Postoak, a full-blooded Mississippi Choctaw Indian,
living in Carter County, Okla., won the sweepstake
prize for cotton over competition of all the world at the
International Dry Farming Congress, at Tulsa. He also
won over all competitors at the New State Fair, at Muskogee.
The contest required a showing in six different stages
of cotton growing—seed, seed cotton, hulls, stalks, bolls,
and lint cotton.</p>
<p>Three years ago Postoak had sold or leased the four
allotments in his family, and was preparing to go back to
Mississippi because he could not make a living on 1,400
acres of land in Oklahoma. A government agricultural
agent induced Postoak to try once more under government
supervision. He did, on a little fifty-acre tract of land
near Ardmore. In three years Postoak developed from
the starving Indian class to a great cotton grower.</p>
<h3>Gives Rules for Good Health.</h3>
<p>Walk six miles a day.</p>
<p>Live in the fresh air.</p>
<p>Get out in the open in the winter.</p>
<p>Eat proper food.</p>
<p>Keep your body clean.</p>
<p>Sleep well.</p>
<p>If a person follows these rules he will always be healthy,
according to Governor W. N. Ferris, who addressed the
delegates attending the annual convention of the Michigan
Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis.</p>
<h3>Bees Acquire Opium Habit.</h3>
<p>The honey bees near Fostoria, Ohio, have contracted
the opium habit. Like the Chinese, they get theirs from
the poppy. Many residents of Fostoria grow Oriental
poppies. The bees have found this out, and of late they
are leaving acres of clover blossoms to hunt out the
poppy beds.</p>
<p>They work vigorously for an hour or so, and then
fall to the ground, apparently as stupefied as are Chinese
opium smokers after “hitting the pipe.”</p>
<p>It is said if the bees could only be kept sober, there
would doubtless be a great demand for the honey.</p>
<h3>The Kaiser Held Up?</h3>
<p>A report in circulation at Berlin, Germany, apparently
originating in Vienna, is to the effect that the kaiser is
about to sell the old Monbijou Palace, now the Hohenzollern
Museum. It is asserted that the sale is due to
the fact that the recent increase of the emperor’s civil list
is insufficient.</p>
<p>There was a similar report some weeks ago regarding
the alleged projected sale of a castle in the Rhineland.</p>
<p>Confirmation of the report is not obtainable.</p>
<h3>A Family of White Squirrels.</h3>
<p>A family of white squirrels, pure white from tip to
tip, is making its home in a locust tree near the gate of
Captain Wyman X. Folsom’s place, opposite Interstate
Park, Taylor’s Falls, Minn.</p>
<p>How they came to be white, Nature, wise old friend of
the woodland folk, only knows. But probably they are
albino members of the red squirrel race. The freaks were
discovered six weeks ago, and now are so tame it is
possible to approach within three or four feet of them
before there’s a gleam of white dashing up the nearest
tree.</p>
<p>George Hazzard, park commissioner, and members of
the Folsom household, have been taking particularly good
care that nothing happens to them, and perhaps Interstate
Park eventually will have a whole race of white squirrels.
Anyway, that’s the idea behind the careful care which surrounds
the curiosities.</p>
<p>Already, however, unkind fate in the form of a mean
old cat has evaded the guardians, and one young squirrel’s
life has been forfeited.</p>
<p>“He was one of the nicest of the five,” declared Martin
Tangen, druggist and friend of Nature’s children. Now
the two old squirrels are doing their best to keep their
two remaining children from other harm.</p>
<p>Houses have been built for the white denizens, and they
are to have an easy time this winter, according to the
plans of Commissioner Hazzard, for proper food will be
available, no matter how hard the earth freezes at the base
of their locust tree.</p>
<h3>Back-pension Pay Good as Fortune.</h3>
<p>Frank Ferris, seventy-nine, of Atchison, Kan., who served
during the Civil War in the Third Regiment of Missouri
Infantry, applied for a pension in 1890, but because he
could not produce his discharge he was denied one. He
kept on in his efforts to prove that he was a soldier, and
some time ago secured the help of United States Senator
Thompson.</p>
<p>Recently the adjutant general of Missouri, in going
through the records that were kept in that office during
the war days, discovered the dates of both the mustering
in and discharge of Ferris, and on the strength of this the
pension will be allowed.</p>
<p>He will receive $30 a month and back pay for twenty-three
years at the rate of $12 a month, or more than
$3,000 in all.</p>
<p>Ferris is a carpenter, and a poor man. His wife is
nearly eighty years old. There is general rejoicing.</p>
<h3>Reception Room for Warship Crew.</h3>
<p>Secretary Daniels, of the navy, approved plans for a
reception and reading room for enlisted men on the new
battleship <em>New York</em>. Mr. Daniels said the provision
was a new departure, and has been inaugurated to increase
the comfort of the crew and add to the attractiveness of
the ship for enlisted men and their visitors when in port.
Similar changes probably will be inaugurated on other vessels.</p>
<h3>Calf Has no Tail.</h3>
<p>A valuable Holstein cow, belonging to F. L. Sweet, of
North Adams, Mass., has given birth to a handsome calf
which, strange to say, has no tail. Sweet prizes the calf
very highly, and jokingly remarked that he might have it
“retailed.”</p>
<h3>Fewer Free Seeds? Statesmen Angry.</h3>
<p>Secretary Houston, of the department of agriculture, is
“in bad” with numerous members of Congress because he
has recommended that the distribution of ordinary vegetable
and flower seeds be discontinued. Carloads and carloads<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
of these seeds have been distributed free under postal
franks of congressmen and senators, the cost being about
$300,000 a year. Secretary Houston wants to devote part
of the money to the distribution of new and valuable seeds
and plants, on a smaller scale.</p>
<h3>Walking Hencoop Arrested.</h3>
<p>A policeman in the outskirts of St. Louis, Mo., saw a
man whose form was anything but a perfect thirty-six.
His coat looked as if some tailor had settled an old
grudge in the general fit, and he fidgeted along like a
person who is harboring a bee.</p>
<p>Suspicious, the officer pursued the man and lifted his
coat. Three fowls cackled gratefully to the ground. The
officer asked for an explanation, and the portable hencoop
informed him that the chickens flew into his coat to
get warm.</p>
<p>The police regulations prohibit the belief of anything
as rough as that, and the man was arrested.</p>
<h3>Shot Found in Her Appendix.</h3>
<p>Surgeons of the Harrisburg, Pa., Hospital removed from
the appendix of Mrs. Reuben Ulrich, of Seline Grove, Pa.,
two grains of the shot with which her husband killed a
rabbit last week. Mrs. Ulrich ate a part of the rabbit.</p>
<h3>Passes Dog Off as Baby to Take it on a Train.</h3>
<p>Because it would cost $1 fare for her dog, while babies
could ride free, a Mrs. Welchel, of near Lead Hill, Ark.,
recently “put one over on the railroad company” by dressing
her pet dog in baby clothes.</p>
<p>When Mrs. Welchel, with the “baby,” climbed aboard the
hack to Lead Hill, Fido let loose a series of barks. “Her
hand exposed,” Mrs. Welchel turned back a veil, and from
the bundle of supposed humanity there appeared the head
of a fice.</p>
<p>Conductor Clyde Miller, when told of the success of the
ruse, merely remarked: “It takes a woman to beat the
road.”</p>
<h3>Leg Buried With His Body.</h3>
<p>Valentine Weisenberger’s right leg, which was amputated
twelve years ago, was brought from the undertaker’s dead
room and placed in Weisenberger’s coffin to be buried
with the rest of the body at Fort Wayne, Ind., recently.</p>
<p>When Weisenberger’s leg was amputated he ordered it
delivered to an undertaker with instructions for the latter
to embalm it and keep it for the complete burial. His
orders were followed.</p>
<h3>Smallest High-school Boy.</h3>
<p>George Fielding, a freshman in the Brazil, Ind., High
School, is the smallest pupil who ever entered the school.
He is 2 feet 10 inches high. He stands well in his studies.
His home is at Carbon.</p>
<h3>“Some Punkins.”</h3>
<p>There are 500 pumpkins on one vine which covers an
eighth of an acre on Doctor R. G. Sloan’s farm, at Little
River, S. C. One of the pumpkins weighs 100 pounds.</p>
<h3>No Reason for Egg Famine.</h3>
<p>Although the country faces something like an egg famine
to-day, the number of eggs produced in this country has
increased more rapidly than the population, according to
the census bureau. Between 1899 and 1909 the population
increased 11 per cent, but the egg production grew
23 per cent.</p>
<p>This estimate does not include the large number of eggs
produced by amateur poultrymen in the suburbs of cities.
It shows merely the farm product.</p>
<p>The price of eggs paid to the farmers in that period
advanced an average of about 11 cents to an average of
19 cents.</p>
<p>Illinois enjoyed the cheapest egg supply. The price there
in 1912 varied from 22 to 28 cents a dozen. In New York
it was 29 cents to 41 cents.</p>
<p>The estimated production of eggs for 1913 is 1,734,529,000
dozen, an average of 17.7 dozen per capita. In 1909
the production was only 1,591,311,000 dozen.</p>
<h3>Curley, the Crow, Still Living.</h3>
<p>“Curley, the Crow,” the only survivor of the Custer massacre,
a half-blood Sioux scout, is in his seventy-second
year. He declares that the famous painting, “Custer’s
Last Stand,” does not truly represent the scene, since it
shows scalped and mutilated American soldiers on the field
of battle at Little Horn, where, on June 24, 1876, Custer
and practically all of his command perished. “There was
no scalping and no mutilation,” says Curley. “Four hundred
and seventy-three soldiers were killed, and not a
mark was found on them that was not made by bullets.
I was General Custer’s scout, and he had sent me for re-enforcements
the night before the battle. I was returning
with Captain Bentline and his command. While I was
still a long way off my horse was shot from under me,
and I got down and ran until I came into the thick of
the fighting. As I got there, I saw the soldiers were lying
dead right and left. Those four hundred and seventy-three
had been surrounded by six thousand Sioux. I saw Custer
fighting with his saber, and I thought he was the last
man alive there, but I soon saw that his brother, Lieutenant
Tom Custer, was fighting beside him. He fell, and General
Custer then stood alone. The Indians could easily
have killed him before that, but the purpose was to take
him alive. Fourteen Indians whom he had slashed and
gashed with his saber lay near him, most of them dead
or dying. I called to General Custer, meaning to tell him
of General Reno’s refusal to come, and he said, ‘You here,
Curley? We’ll fight to the end.’ Those were his last
words. A big Sioux seized his arm, and Custer turned on
him and dealt a terrible saber stroke that half cut his head
off. As he did this, the son of the Sioux fired his rifle
at Custer, and the bullet went through his heart. I
pushed through toward Custer as he fell. I held his head
as he sank back dead.”</p>
<h3>Changes in Water-polo and Swimming-race Rules.</h3>
<p>Radical changes in the rules that came up for consideration
were passed upon favorably at the annual meeting
of the Intercollegiate Swimming Association held at the
New York Athletic Club a few days ago. Most of them
affected water polo, and all were proposed by the graduate
advisory board, a committee created last winter, when the
managers and captains of the various college teams, after
encountering all sorts of trouble with the rules in vogue,
decided the matter ought to be placed in the hands of
competent and experienced veterans of the sport.</p>
<p>The work of this committee, judging from the report,
was thorough. Water polo came in for most of their attention,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
they asserted, because it was that division that had
created most dissatisfaction. With an eye toward making
the contests less one-sided than heretofore, the board ruled
that in future the ball be given to the team scored against
after each goal.</p>
<p>A second change was the substitution of three periods
for two in every game, to alleviate the tax on the strength
and stamina of the players, and another was an amendment
permitting a player to return to the game after he
had once been withdrawn. The object of the latter ruling
is to decrease the size of the visiting squad and thereby
reduce their traveling expenses. The value of this change
cannot be overestimated, for the matter of expenses has
been the bugbear that has retarded the development of
the sport among the colleges.</p>
<p>The elimination of the one and a half Flying Dutchman
from the list of legal dives was another important amendment.
The dive was considered too dangerous for collegians,
several serious accidents having resulted at dual
meets within the last few years.</p>
<p>There was one subject, however, over which the advisory
board and the college representatives failed to
agree, and that was the question of eliminating the plunge
from the list of events to make room for the back stroke.
The board favored the change on the ground that the
plunge was not an interesting event from a spectator’s
standpoint, that it did not develop swimmers, and that it
had been stricken off national and Olympic programs. The
back stroke was one style of swimming at which Americans
had been beaten easily at the last Olympic meet. The
delegates, however, voted to refuse the change principally
because most of the colleges had first-class plungers on
their squads—men capable of winning points.</p>
<p>No other colleges having requested admission into the
association, the championship tournament will again be limited
to Yale, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Columbia, and the
College of the City of New York. To interest other universities
in the sport it was agreed to add a special fifty-yard
event for all colleges outside of the association in the
championship meet.</p>
<h3>From Force of Habit.</h3>
<p>T. R. Staley, of Brighton, Mich., has a horse of a religious
turn of mind. Mr. Staley has many horses, in fact,
but each one is assigned to a different duty. The one in
question has always been used to convey the family to
church, and when not busy on Wednesday or Sunday evenings,
is turned into pasture. Saturday, however, Mr.
Staley smashed a precedent by hitching the animal up for
a drive to the Farmers’ Club. The farm helper drove the
animal to the front door and there allowed it to stand,
untied. An unusual delay within the Staley abode kept
Dobbin standing past the appointed time for departure, and
after a few anxious glances, he ambled off in the direction
of the Presbyterian Church, where members of the family
found him waiting at the regular hour to take them home.</p>
<h3>Weakling Dies at 102.</h3>
<p>Believed to have such a slender hold on life that
he was christened when two days old, Philip Carlyon lived
to be the oldest clergyman in the kingdom. He died at
Pennance House, Falmouth, England, within six weeks
of his 102d birthday. He was ordained in 1836 and retired
at the age of 70.</p>
<p>Mr. Carlyon possessed remarkable vitality until within
a short period of his death, taking long walks and attending
church regularly. He remembered his father lighting
a bonfire on receipt of the news of the battle of Waterloo,
and was terribly frightened when an effigy of Bonaparte
was thrown into the flames, thinking it was a real man.</p>
<p>Mr. Carylon’s youngest brother died at the age of 92.</p>
<h3>Cow in Chinese Restaurant.</h3>
<p>Consternation was created among patrons of a Chinese
restaurant, at Ogden, Utah, when a cow which had been
nibbling the grass growing between the cobblestones of
the street-car tracks, spied in the window of the restaurant
a quantity of green vegetables, and started in after
them. Frantic efforts to frighten away the cow proved
futile, and Wong Ching, the proprietor, telephoned the
police. Patrolman John Russell arrived later and drove
the cow to the city pound.</p>
<h3>Pays for Stolen Tobacco.</h3>
<p>A. A. Bouch, who, twenty-four years ago, conducted a
grocery store in Manorville, Ford City, Pa., received the
following letter from Edward Cunningham, whose boyhood
was passed in Manorville, and who now resides in
Pittsburgh:</p>
<p>“All is well with my soul. I have found salvation, and
am born again. When I found Jesus He told me to do
His will, and to do right by any man I have wronged.
I asked Him to forgive me for stealing tobacco. I inclose
ten cents for two packages of tobacco which I
took from your store twenty-five years ago.”</p>
<h3>Facts You May Not Know.</h3>
<p>The great mass of steel in the buildings of lower New
York is said to affect the compasses of the ships approaching
the city.</p>
<p>There are sixteen cables across the north Atlantic
Ocean.</p>
<p>It is probable that the Nile contains a greater variety
of fish than any other river in the world. An expedition
sent by the British Museum brought back 8,000 specimens.</p>
<p>The target on the ground to test the accuracy of aëroplane
bomb throwers is sixty feet in diameter. The fifteen-pound
bombs are dropped at an elevation of 656
feet.</p>
<p>There are 20,000 kinds of butterflies in the world.</p>
<p>The custom of throwing rice at weddings originated in
China.</p>
<p>A patient Englishman has carved the king’s monogram
and similar devices on an eggshell.</p>
<p>By the end of 1916 the Chinese army expects to have
1,000 aëroplanes, this year’s budget calling for the purchase
of 250.</p>
<p>Boys in a fresh-air school in Buffalo, N. Y., prune the
orchard trees on the school grounds, grow catalpa trees
for future transplanting, study bird whistles and notes
as they hear them in the orchard, and incidentally acquire
a valuable insight into the main principles of forestry.</p>
<h3>A Clever Football Play.</h3>
<p>“I would have given one thousand dollars if that play
had gone for a touchdown!” exclaimed Coach F. H.
(“Hurry-Up”) Yost, after Quarter Back Tommy Hughitt
crossed the Penn’s goal on a fake-kick formation.</p>
<p>Hughitt was called back by Referee Eckersall, and Michigan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
was penalized for holding in the line—a Michigan man
slipped in the mud and grabbed a Penn forward to save
himself, and the referee called it holding.</p>
<p>The play was Yost’s masterpiece—the crowning achievement
of a career unequaled in football. Never has the
Wolverine Wizard conceived a cleverer coup, and never
had he taught his men to execute one with more deadly
precision.</p>
<p>Football men at the game united in declaring that the
fake was the cleverest thing they ever saw on a gridiron.
It takes a higher place than Yost’s marvelous triple forward
pass, which dazed Penn a year ago.</p>
<p>The play came in the third quarter of the Michigan-Pennsylvania
game November 15. Michigan worked the
ball to Penn’s thirty-yard line and Captain Paterson was
called back for a place kick.</p>
<p>In the Cornell game, a week previous, Paterson kicked
goal under identical conditions, and the Penn scouts had
reported it.</p>
<p>Quarter Back Hughitt dropped upon one knee, with
hands outstretched to receive the ball and place it for
Paterson’s educated toe.</p>
<p>Hughitt called the signal and the oval sailed through
the air. But the hearts of twenty thousand fluttered when
it was seen that Hughitt couldn’t place the ball properly.
Paterson stepped forward to kick.</p>
<p>The Pennsylvania forwards were oozing through the
line; the secondary defense was closing in; there wasn’t
a second to lose as Paterson’s foot swung forward, missing
the ball!</p>
<p>But as he missed Hughitt hugged the oval to his jersey,
and, jumping to his feet, swept around the Quaker line
like a jack rabbit, to plant the ball between the Quaker
goal posts, while the Pennsylvania forwards fought desperately
to get back through the line they had been purposely
permitted to penetrate.</p>
<p>Such was the perfection of plan and execution that thousands
did not realize until the next day that it was a Yost
coup, and not an accident.</p>
<h3>Knife Gives Girl Sight.</h3>
<p>Vera Critchfield, five years old, of Barberton, Ohio,
blind from birth, to-day is able to see. Her case is only
one example of what the State blind commission is doing
for the blind children of Ohio. The commission has
proved that all children blind from birth are not helplessly
blind. One surgical operation removed the film from
Vera’s eyes. One or two others will fully restore her
sight.</p>
<h3>Dream Saves Her Farm.</h3>
<p>A dream in which Miss Helen Lochlin, of Bennett, Ill.,
had a vision of her dead brother directing her where to
find a will he executed in 1897 saved her home to her
when she was preparing to leave it because of an administrator’s
sale.</p>
<p>The will was found by Miss Lochlin, who is more than
fifty years old, where the vision told her it was hidden.</p>
<p>Miss Lochlin and her brother Frank lived on the small
farm for many years. Frank died in the spring of 1910,
and shortly after a partition suit was instituted by another
sister, who lives in Denver. With no funds to buy
in the share of the estate awarded to the sister by the
court, Miss Lochlin was preparing to leave the home.</p>
<p>This will was proved authentic by the witnesses, and,
as Miss Lochlin was named executrix by her brother, the
estate will not go under the hammer, and she will remain
on the farm.</p>
<h3>Man Lives Long in Kitchen.</h3>
<p>When C. B. Wright, an old soldier and bachelor, sold
his home at Argyle, Wis., the other day, to move to Florida,
it was discovered that since the death of his mother,
fifteen years ago, he had spent his life in the little kitchen
of the cottage. Wright said that, in memory of his
mother, he had avoided disturbing the other part of the
house, not even a pin having been moved. Everything in
the rooms had been preserved just as she left it.</p>
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<div class="center">
<p class="displayinline center u" style="line-height:1.3">SOME OF THE<br />
BACK<br />
NUMBERS OF </p>
<p class="displayinline center xxlargefont" style="margin-left:0.75em; margin-right:0.75em"><b>NEW TIP TOP<br />
WEEKLY</b></p>
<p class="displayinline center u" style="line-height:1.3">THAT CAN<br />
BE<br />
SUPPLIED</p>
</div>
<div class="boxitlist center">
<p class="numberitem3">700—Frank Merriwell’s Lively Lads.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">701—Frank Merriwell as Instructor.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">702—Dick Merriwell’s Cayuse.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">703—Dick Merriwell’s Quirt.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">704—Dick Merriwell’s Freshman Friend.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">705—Dick Merriwell’s Best Form.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">706—Dick Merriwell’s Prank.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">707—Dick Merriwell’s Gambol.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">708—Dick Merriwell’s Gun.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">709—Dick Merriwell at His Best.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">710—Dick Merriwell’s Master Mind.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">711—Dick Merriwell’s Dander.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">712—Dick Merriwell’s Hope.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">713—Dick Merriwell’s Standard.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">714—Dick Merriwell’s Sympathy.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">715—Dick Merriwell in Lumber Land.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">716—Frank Merriwell’s Fairness.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">717—Frank Merriwell’s Pledge.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">718—Frank Merriwell, the Man of Grit.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">719—Frank Merriwell’s Return Blow.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">720—Frank Merriwell’s Quest.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">721—Frank Merriwell’s Ingots.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">722—Frank Merriwell’s Assistance.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">723—Frank Merriwell at the Throttle.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">724—Frank Merriwell, the Always Ready.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">725—Frank Merriwell in Diamond Land.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">726—Frank Merriwell’s Desperate Chance.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">727—Frank Merriwell’s Black Terror.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">728—Frank Merriwell Again on the Slab.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">729—Frank Merriwell’s Hard Game.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">730—Frank Merriwell’s Six-in-hand.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">731—Frank Merriwell’s Duplicate.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">732—Frank Merriwell on Rattlesnake Ranch.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">733—Frank Merriwell’s Sure Hand.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">734—Frank Merriwell’s Treasure Map.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">735—Frank Merriwell, Prince of the Rope.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">736—Dick Merriwell, Captain of the Varsity.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">737—Dick Merriwell’s Control.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">738—Dick Merriwell’s Back Stop.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">739—Dick Merriwell’s Masked Enemy.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">740—Dick Merriwell’s Motor Car.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">741—Dick Merriwell’s Hot Pursuit.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">742—Dick Merriwell at Forest Lake.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">743—Dick Merriwell in Court.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">744—Dick Merriwell’s Silence.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">745—Dick Merriwell’s Dog.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">746—Dick Merriwell’s Subterfuge.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">747—Dick Merriwell’s Enigma.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">748—Dick Merriwell Defeated.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">749—Dick Merriwell’s “Wing.”</p>
<p class="numberitem3">750—Dick Merriwell’s Sky Chase.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">751—Dick Merriwell’s Pick-ups.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">752—Dick Merriwell on the Rocking R.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">753—Dick Merriwell’s Penetration.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">754—Dick Merriwell’s Intuition.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">755—Dick Merriwell’s Vantage.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">756—Dick Merriwell’s Advice.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">757—Dick Merriwell’s Rescue.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">758—Dick Merriwell, American.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">759—Dick Merriwell’s Understanding.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">760—Dick Merriwell, Tutor.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">761—Dick Merriwell’s Quandary.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">762—Dick Merriwell on the Boards.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">763—Dick Merriwell, Peacemaker.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">764—Frank Merriwell’s Sway.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">765—Frank Merriwell’s Comprehension.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">766—Frank Merriwell’s Young Acrobat.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">767—Frank Merriwell’s Tact.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">768—Frank Merriwell’s Unknown.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">769—Frank Merriwell’s Acuteness.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">770—Frank Merriwell’s Young Canadian.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">771—Frank Merriwell’s Coward.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">772—Frank Merriwell’s Perplexity.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">773—Frank Merriwell’s Intervention.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">774—Frank Merriwell’s Daring Deed.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">775—Frank Merriwell’s Succor.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">776—Frank Merriwell’s Wit.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">777—Frank Merriwell’s Loyalty.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">778—Frank Merriwell’s Bold Play.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">779—Frank Merriwell’s Insight.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">780—Frank Merriwell’s Guile.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">781—Frank Merriwell’s Campaign.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">782—Frank Merriwell in the National Forest.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">783—Frank Merriwell’s Tenacity.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">784—Dick Merriwell’s Self-sacrifice.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">785—Dick Merriwell’s Close Shave.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">786—Dick Merriwell’s Perception.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">787—Dick Merriwell’s Mysterious Disappearance.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">788—Dick Merriwell’s Detective Work.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">789—Dick Merriwell’s Proof.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">790—Dick Merriwell’s Brain Work.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">791—Dick Merriwell’s Queer Case.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">792—Dick Merriwell, Navigator.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">793—Dick Merriwell’s Good Fellowship.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">794—Dick Merriwell’s Fun.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">795—Dick Merriwell’s Commencement.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">796—Dick Merriwell at Montauk Point.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">797—Dick Merriwell, Mediator.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">798—Dick Merriwell’s Decision.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">799—Dick Merriwell on the Great Lakes.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">800—Dick Merriwell Caught Napping.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">801—Dick Merriwell in the Copper Country.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">802—Dick Merriwell Strapped.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">803—Dick Merriwell’s Coolness.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">804—Dick Merriwell’s Reliance.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">805—Dick Merriwell’s College Mate.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">806—Dick Merriwell’s Young Pitcher.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">807—Dick Merriwell’s Prodding.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">808—Frank Merriwell’s Boy.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">809—Frank Merriwell’s Interference.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">810—Frank Merriwell’s Young Warriors.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">811—Frank Merriwell’s Appraisal.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">812—Frank Merriwell’s Forgiveness.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">813—Frank Merriwell’s Lads.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">814—Frank Merriwell’s Young Aviators.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">815—Frank Merriwell’s Hot-head.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">816—Dick Merriwell, Diplomat.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">817—Dick Merriwell in Panama.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">818—Dick Merriwell’s Perseverance.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">819—Dick Merriwell Triumphant.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">820—Dick Merriwell’s Betrayal.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">821—Dick Merriwell, Revolutionist.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">822—Dick Merriwell’s Fortitude.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">823—Dick Merriwell’s Undoing.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">824—Dick Merriwell, Universal Coach.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">825—Dick Merriwell’s Snare.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">826—Dick Merriwell’s Star Pupil.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">827—Dick Merriwell’s Astuteness.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">828—Dick Merriwell’s Responsibility.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">829—Dick Merriwell’s Plan.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">830—Dick Merriwell’s Warning.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">831—Dick Merriwell’s Counsel.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">832—Dick Merriwell’s Champions.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">833—Dick Merriwell’s Marksmen.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">834—Dick Merriwell’s Enthusiasm.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">835—Dick Merriwell’s Solution.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">836—Dick Merriwell’s Foreign Foe.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">837—Dick Merriwell and the Carlisle Warriors.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">838—Dick Merriwell’s Battle for the Blue.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">839—Dick Merriwell’s Evidence.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">840—Dick Merriwell’s Device.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">841—Dick Merriwell’s Princeton Opponents.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">842—Dick Merriwell’s Sixth Sense.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">843—Dick Merriwell’s Strange Clew.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">844—Dick Merriwell Comes Back.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">845—Dick Merriwell’s Heroic Crew.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">846—Dick Merriwell Looks Ahead.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">847—Dick Merriwell at the Olympics.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">848—Dick Merriwell in Stockholm.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">849—Dick Merriwell in the Swedish Stadium.</p>
<p class="numberitem3">850—Dick Merriwell’s Marathon.</p>
</div>
<p class="center" style="margin-top:1.5em">NEW SERIES.</p>
<p class="center boldfont">New Tip Top Weekly</p>
<div class="boxitlist center">
<p class="numberitem1">1—Frank Merriwell, Jr.</p>
<p class="numberitem1">2—Frank Merriwell, Jr., in the Box.</p>
<p class="numberitem1">3—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Struggle.</p>
<p class="numberitem1">4—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Skill.</p>
<p class="numberitem1">5—Frank Merriwell, Jr., in Idaho.</p>
<p class="numberitem1">6—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Close Shave.</p>
<p class="numberitem1">7—Frank Merriwell, Jr., on Waiting Orders.</p>
<p class="numberitem1">8—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Danger.</p>
<p class="numberitem1">9—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Relay Marathon.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">10—Frank Merriwell, Jr., at the Bar Z Ranch.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">11—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Golden Trail.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">12—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Competitor.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">13—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Guidance.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">14—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Scrimmage.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">15—Frank Merriwell, Jr., Misjudged.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">16—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Star Play.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">17—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Blind Chase.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">18—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Discretion.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">19—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Substitute.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">20—Frank Merriwell, Jr., Justified.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">21—Frank Merriwell, Jr., Incog.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">22—Frank Merriwell, Jr., Meets the Issue.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">23—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Xmas Eve.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">24—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Fearless Risk.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">25—Frank Merriwell, Jr., on Skis.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">26—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Ice-boat Chase.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">27—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Ambushed Foes.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">28—Frank Merriwell, Jr., and the Totem.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">29—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Hockey Game.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">30—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Clew.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">31—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Adversary.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">32—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Timely Aid.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">33—Frank Merriwell, Jr., in the Desert.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">34—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Grueling Test.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">35—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Special Mission.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">36—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Red Bowman.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">37—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Task.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">38—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Cross-Country Race.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">39—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Four Miles.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">40—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Umpire.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">41—Frank Merriwell, Jr., Sidetracked.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">42—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Teamwork.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">43—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Step-Over.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">44—Frank Merriwell, Jr., in Monterey.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">45—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Athletes.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">46—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Outfielder.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">47—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, “Hundred.”</p>
<p class="numberitem2">48—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Hobo Twirler.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">49—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Canceled Game.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">50—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Weird Adventure.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">51—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Double Header.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">52—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Peck of Trouble.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">53—Frank Merriwell, Jr., and the Spook Doctor.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">54—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Sportsmanship.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">55—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Ten-Innings.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">56—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Ordeal.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">57—Frank Merriwell, Jr., on the Wing.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">58—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Cross-Fire.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">59—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Lost Team-mate.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">60—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Daring Flight.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">61—Frank Merriwell, Jr., at Fardale.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">62—Frank Merriwell, Jr., Plebe.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">63—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Quarter-Back.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">64—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Touchdown.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">65—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Night Off.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">66—Frank Merriwell, Jr., and the Little Black Box.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">67—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Classmates.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">68—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Repentant Enemy.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">69—Frank Merriwell, Jr., and the “Spell.”</p>
<p class="numberitem2">70—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Gridiron Honors.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">71—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Winning Run.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">72—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Jujutsu.</p>
<p class="numberitem2" style="text-indent:1em; margin-top:0.5em">Dated December 20th.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">73—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Christmas Vacation.</p>
<p class="numberitem2" style="text-indent:1em; margin-top:0.5em">Dated December 27th.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">74—Frank Merriwell, Jr., and the Nine Wolves.</p>
<p class="numberitem2" style="text-indent:1em; margin-top:0.5em">Dated January 3d 1914.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">75—Frank Merriwell, Jr., on the Border.</p>
<p class="numberitem2" style="text-indent:1em; margin-top:0.5em">Dated January 10th, 1914.</p>
<p class="numberitem2">76—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Desert Race.</p>
</div>
<p class="center"><b>PRICE, FIVE CENTS PER COPY.</b> If you want any back numbers of our weeklies and cannot procure them from your
news dealer, they can be obtained direct from this office. Postage stamps taken the same as money.</p>
<p class="center xlargefont boldfont">Street & Smith, Publishers, 79-89 Seventh Ave., New York City</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<div class="chapter"></div><!--Page break for ePub-->
<div class="transnote">
<h2 id="TN_end" style="margin-top: 0em">Transcriber’s Notes:</h2>
<p>Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks near where they are
mentioned.</p>
<p>Punctuation has been made consistent.</p>
<p>Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors
have been corrected.</p>
<p>The following changes were made:</p>
<p><a href="#Ref_9">p. 9</a>: “My added (”My advice to)</p>
<p><a href="#Ref_19">p. 19</a>: Hibbard changed to Pembroke (said Pembroke to)</p>
</div>
<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 55463 ***</div>
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