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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78631 ***
+
+                       TIPPECANOE AND COUGARS TWO
+
+                              W. C. Tuttle
+
+     Author of “Sparing the Family Tree,” “Figures of Speech,” etc.
+
+
+In this here vale of tears where a person ain’t got but one way out and
+has to die to find that exit, I’ve met a lot of fools. Yea verily, they
+have come from the ends of the earth to do injury to my nervous system,
+but while I may never look the same, I have managed to keep my carcass
+out of the loco-lodge in spite of their having done unto me things which
+I could never have done unto them.
+
+Some of them have been of the common or hillside variety, which you
+may bust with a six-gun and not figure that you’ve ruined any of God’s
+beautiful works; while others has been of educated stock, peculiar to
+look upon and listen to. But to all ye fools, whether ye be shepherd
+or scientist, I say unto thee: there is a place at my table--come and
+get it! But, all ye of absent mind--vamoose!
+
+A fool is merely one who is destitute of reason; but an absent-minded
+man is anointed of the devil, and his days are few and far between if
+he gets in range of my wickiup. Tell yuh why I’m against everybody who
+forgets to remember.
+
+“Tippecanoe” Seeley was one of the reasons. When it came to forgetting
+he was seven thousand degrees in the shade. He never thought of anything
+with more than one syllable, and his back-trail was littered with things
+he’d forgotten to do.
+
+Everything he done was with a reverse English. If he wanted his dog to
+follow him he’d throw rocks at it instead of whistling. He’d cook mush
+for his supper, thinking it was breakfast, and then sit up all night
+kicking about the dark days we’re having in this Western country. He
+packed a .45 Colt and filled his belt with .45-70 rifle cartridges.
+
+He was a peculiar-looking _hombre_. Eating his own cooking had just
+about finished up what Nature was ashamed to do to him. Mostly always
+he’d have his pants on backwards or his shoes on the wrong feet. One
+nice thing about him was the fact that he never repeated what was told
+to him--he never remembered it.
+
+Me and “Magpie” Simpkins, my pardner, are doing a little work on our
+alleged gold-mine on Thunder Creek about five miles from Piperock.
+We cut out a road to our cabin and she’s some road, I’d tell a man.
+Beyond our cabin is the Thunder Creek trail, which hugs the side of
+an awful steep mountain for several miles.
+
+Our cabin was built on the only place where we could find room to
+hook it on to the side of the hill, and we’ve got about fifteen feet
+of ground for a front yard, and the rear of the cabin sets back into
+the hill.
+
+Beyond our front yard the landscape just falls for a mile. We’ve sure
+got a restricted building-site, a wonderful view and nothing to see.
+
+One morning I’m sitting in the cabin cooking a pot of beans, when all
+to once I hears a awful noise coming up the road. I pokes out my head
+and sees an automobile heaving and twisting towards the cabin. That
+road is barely out of the pack-trail age, which means she’s still
+within the Stone Age and noways appropriate for horseless carriages.
+Anyway, they got to the cabin and stopped.
+
+The feller who is doing the driving is one of them cadaverous-looking
+little persons, long on glasses and short on chin. Somebody has sold him
+a suit of clothes which must ’a’ been ordered for a African explorer,
+even to one of them front-and-back-porch hats. The other person in the
+seat is Tippecanoe Seeley.
+
+“Howdy,” says I, and the feller nods.
+
+“Is this ‘Hackamore’ Harper or Ike Harper?” asks Tip, peering at me.
+
+I’ve knowed Tip for ten years; so I don’t laugh.
+
+“I’m Ike,” says I.
+
+“By the whiskers on the waumpus, I knowed I was right!” he squeaks. “I
+knowed I’d get the right Harper. Can’t fool old Tippecanoe--y’betcha.”
+
+I congratulated Tip on his ability, which was all right and proper, even
+if Hackamore had been dead four years.
+
+“Hackamore,” says Tip, “meet Professor--uh----”
+
+“Doctor Aloysius Van Fleet,” says the lion-hunter. “At your service.”
+
+“I can’t use you,” says I. “I’m running things alone now.”
+
+“We comes out to see you about something,” says Tip, “didn’t we,
+reverend?”
+
+“Reverend,” snaps the other. “Ain’t I told you plenty of times that I’m
+the professor?”
+
+“I thought you said ‘Doctor’,” says I.
+
+The little fellow lifts his hat and feels of his bald head.
+
+“Well, maybe I did. Sure I did.”
+
+Then he turns to Tip. “You know as well as I do that I’m not a doctor. I
+am a-- What were we talking about anyway?”
+
+“My ----!” says I. “Two of a kind! What did you want of me?”
+
+Tip and Aloysius looks at each other for a moment and then they look at
+me.
+
+“What was it?” asks Aloysius. “You know, don’t you?”
+
+“----!” grunts Tip. “I didn’t hire out to keep track of your wants. I
+hired out to--to-- What in ---- did you hire me for anyway?”
+
+Aloysius turns and stares Tip in the face.
+
+“You mean to say you don’t know what I hired you for?”
+
+“Nope,” says Tip, puzzled-like. “Do you?”
+
+Aloysius puckers up his eyebrows and seems to try to remember, but
+finally shakes his head.
+
+“My gosh, that’s some gun you got!” says I. “What kind of a weapon do
+you call it?”
+
+“Oh that,” says Aloysius. “I forget, but I know it’s a five-passenger. I
+must have bent the steering-gear in the rocks.”
+
+“Well,” says I, “you better get out and rest your mind a while.”
+
+They climbs out. Tip picks a rope and walks around to the front of the
+machine and then stops and rubs his nose.
+
+“You don’t need to tie it, Tip,” says I, and he nods.
+
+“I forgot that I’d already took the team to the stable.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+They sets down on the steps of the cabin and admires the view. Pretty
+soon Tip sniffs and cranes his neck.
+
+“Whatcha cooking in-- That’s it! That’s it, judge! We wanted to hire him
+to cook!”
+
+“Ah,” grins Aloysius. “You surely can remember things. I congratulate
+you on a wonderful memory. Mister--er--what’s the name?”
+
+“Harper,” says I.
+
+“Ah, yes--Harper. We--er--wish to hire you to act as our guide.”
+
+“That’s it!” yelps Tip, slapping himself on the knee. “That’s it,
+professor. I knew I was hired for something, and that’s it. I’m to
+guide you.”
+
+Aloysius stares at Tip for a moment and then nods:
+
+“I believe you are right. I wish I had your ability to remember little
+details. Yes, you’re the guide.”
+
+“Guide and a cook, eh?” says I. “Where you going?”
+
+“Exactly,” agrees Aloysius, turning to Tip. “Where are we going?”
+
+“Did you speak of any certain place?” asks Tip, foolish-like.
+
+“Why certainly, I did,” says Aloysius, peevish-like. “I certainly did.”
+
+“Oh,” says Tip. “I see how it happened. You was standing on my left when
+you said it, and I can’t hear very well in my left ear. Tell me again.”
+
+Aloysius considers it for a while and then clears his throat.
+
+“Ahem-m-m-m! Seems to me that I had some place in mind at the time, but
+I must have misplaced it. Now what places have you around here?”
+
+“You don’t happen to be hunting elephants, do you?” I asks, examining
+that double-barreled rifle, which had a bore like a twelve-gage shotgun.
+
+“Elephants?” asks Aloysius. “Hunting elephants?”
+
+“There ain’t none,” says Tip, wise-like. “There ain’t been none since
+the Custer massacre.”
+
+“The last herd I knowed about was up in the Flathead country.”
+
+“You mean buffalo, don’t you?” I asks.
+
+“Buffalo? Sure. What did you think I meant?”
+
+“Aloysius,” says I, “you’ll do well. You’ve got some guide.”
+
+“Yes,” says he. “I know I have. I saw a man in town and I asked him
+where I could find a guide, and he directed me to Mister Seeley. He
+said that Mister Seeley had forgotten more about the country than
+most anybody knew about it.”
+
+“He didn’t lie to you at that,” says I, and it pleased old Tip a heap.
+
+“By golly, I sure _sabe_ the country all right,” he squeaks. “There
+ain’t no place I can’t go.”
+
+“That’s right, Tip,” says I. “You don’t need to worry about finding
+places, but you sure can’t remember the way back.”
+
+Sudden-like Aloysius hops up and stares around.
+
+“What’s eatin’ yuh?” asks Tip.
+
+“You’re a fine guide!” whoops Aloysius. “Goodness gracious, where are
+the rest of us?”
+
+“Rest of us?” asks Tip. “Oh, you mean them folks what was with you?”
+
+“My wife! Where is she? Where is the rest of them?”
+
+“I dunno,” grunts Tip. “There was some folks got out of that blamed
+machine when you stopped at my place. Was they intending to stay with
+us?”
+
+“I think so. In fact I’m almost certain they intended coming with us.
+Why, we must go right back there at once.”
+
+“Not me,” says Tip, shaking his head. “Not in that thing. Go ahead if
+you wants to.”
+
+“You refuse to go? Very well then, I’ll go.”
+
+He hops into that machine, fusses with it a moment, and she begins to
+heave and grunt.
+
+“You can’t go out that way,” says I. “The road ends here.”
+
+“Turn around, can’t I?” he snaps.
+
+I looks at the road and stumps and shakes my head.
+
+“I can,” says he. “I’ll do anything for my wife.”
+
+“All right,” says I. “It’s your machine and your wife.”
+
+I don’t know how he done it, but he did. He went over rocks, stumps or
+anything in front of him. Half the time he wasn’t in the seat at all,
+’cause that machine pitched and bucked like a bronco, but he pulled
+leather and stayed with her.
+
+He made as complete a circle as anybody would want to see, and stopped
+right in front of the cabin again--pointed the same way he was before
+he circled.
+
+“Didn’t I do it?” he crows. “Told you I----”
+
+Then he looks ahead and behind.
+
+He looks at Tip’s grinning face, and right there Aloysius gets sore.
+
+“I hired you to guide me!” he wails. “The fellow in Silver Bend was
+right.”
+
+“What did he say about Tip?” I asks.
+
+“He told me to get a guide,” explains Aloysius. “He told me I’d get
+completely turned around in this country, and he’s right-- I did.”
+
+“Do it again,” says Tip. “By the whiskers on a waumpus, I ain’t never
+been so amused before in my life. Do it again. I’ll show you one stump
+you missed.”
+
+I walks over and peers into the body of that machine. There’s enough
+stuff in there to start a trading-store with.
+
+“What’s that rigging in there?” I asks, and Aloysius seems to get over
+his peeve.
+
+“That is my picture machine. Ain’t I told you about that yet? Well,
+well!”
+
+“He’s going to photygraft animiles,” shrills Tip, grinning. “Goin’ to
+get them on the move, too. Danged nigh impossible, I reckon, but the
+blame fool thinks he can. Says he’s going to photygraft grizzlies and
+mountain lions. Haw! Haw! Haw! Interests of eddication. Be of benefit
+to the people. Daw-gone! I reckon the undertaker will get his, and
+that’s about all.”
+
+“My dear sir,” says Aloysius, “you seem remarkably able to get facts
+twisted. I hired you as a cook--not to prophesy.”
+
+“You did like ----! I’m the guide.”
+
+“Well, guide me then! I want to go----”
+
+Aloysius wrinkles up his brow and scowls at Tip.
+
+“Where were we going?”
+
+“I refuses to advance a prophecy,” says Tip, expectorating at a lizard.
+“I’m your guide and that’s all. You tell where you want to go and I’ll
+take you there, y’betcha.”
+
+“I want you to take me to my family,” says Aloysius, deliberate-like.
+“If you are of any value as a guide you can do that!”
+
+“I ain’t--not thataway. I’m here to----”
+
+“You said you could guide me, didn’t you?”
+
+“Yeah, I said that--shore; but I ain’t no wife-restorer. Daw-gone it,
+why don’t you put hopples or a bell on her before you loses her for
+keeps?”
+
+“There’s Lord Washburn, too,” says Aloysius, as the threads of memory
+begins to tickle his brain, “and Bettina. Yes, there’s three of us
+missing. What do you suppose they think?”
+
+“Same kind of folks as you?” I asks. “Same kind? Why, they’re my
+people.”
+
+“Don’t worry then,” says I. “They likely ain’t missed you yet.”
+
+“But I absolutely need them,” says he. “Lord Washburn is----”
+
+“Here comes a wagon,” says Tip. “Maybe somebody is bringing ’em up
+here.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Around a turn in the road comes our wagon. Magpie Simpkins is perched
+up on the seat, herding our two pinto broncs, and beside him sets a
+female who only needs four more pounds of lard and an ambition to get
+into a sideshow.
+
+Setting on a pile of plunder in the back is what I’d designate as
+Bettina and Lord Washburn. Bettina might ’a’ been good-looking--it’s
+all a matter of opinion, but Lord Washburn--oh, man!
+
+He’s got one of them walrus mustaches, a one-eyed spectacle and knee
+panties. From his collar in the back to the crown of his head he is
+one succession of rolls, the same of which makes a fellow wishful to
+puncture one with a pin and let the air out.
+
+Magpie skids them shy pintos up alongside of that machine and slams on
+the brake.
+
+He looks at me, winks one eye and sighs--
+
+“Well, folks, here we are.”
+
+“Haw!” says Lord Washburn. “Haw! Joke. Heard it before. Where had we
+ought to be?”
+
+“---- only knows,” says Magpie, sad-like. “Any old place except in the
+hills, I reckon.”
+
+“Aloysius Van Fleet,” says the old lady, glaring at the lion-hunter,
+“what do you mean by leaving us down there? If this gentleman hadn’t
+come along--well, I shudder to think what might have happened. Can’t
+you never remember anything?”
+
+“Shucks,” says Tip. “You’d ’a’ been all right.”
+
+“Who asked your opinion?” asks the old lady. “Who are you anyway?”
+
+“I’m the--the--what am I?” Tip looks at Aloysius, who shakes his head.
+
+“Well,” says Washburn, “I’d say we might as well dismount. After this I
+shall keep my eye on the car. The roads in this vicinity are beastly,
+don’t you know?”
+
+The lord and Bettina climbs down and we all sets around. Magpie looks at
+me and shakes his head.
+
+“How’d you happen to come along?” I asks Lord Washburn.
+
+“Really.” He screws his glass into his eye and stares at me. “I have
+proffered my services to Doctor Van Fleet as nimrod extraordinary.
+We are here, as I understand it, in the interest of natural history,
+to photograph the wild beast in its own environment, and I am acting
+as a sort of body-guard to the doctor in case any of the animals
+should--er--annoy him.”
+
+“Ever done much shooting?” asks Magpie.
+
+“I’ve shot with kings.”
+
+“What did the other fellow have?” asks Tip. “Aces?”
+
+Then I hears Aloysius’ voice raised in a high key:
+
+“My dear, I was so interested in our new guide that I never noticed you
+getting out of the car. He’s a jewel. Wonderful memory.”
+
+“Well,” says his wife, “I’m glad you had sense enough to hire a good
+one. Bettina, my love, are you standing the trip?”
+
+“I think so, mamma,” squeaks Bettina, and then she says to Tip, “I beg
+your pardon, but can you tell me how long we will be here?”
+
+“Ma’am,” says Tip, “I am a guide, not a prophet. I was hired to find
+animals, not to make time-tables.”
+
+“Oh,” says Bettina. “Why are we stopping here?”
+
+“Ask your pa,” advised Tip. “He put on the brakes.”
+
+“Papa, did you put on the brakes?” she asks.
+
+Aloysius scratches his head and looks around.
+
+“I really can’t remember, my dear. Where did we have them last?”
+
+“----’s delight!” grunts Magpie. “Reckon I’ll unhitch that team so as to
+keep my mind off the painful things of life. Better take them two boxes
+of dynamite and put ’em where that bunch can’t fall over ’em, Ike.”
+
+I unloads two fifty-pound boxes of powder and the bunch of grub Magpie
+had been to Piperock after, while Aloysius, Lord Washburn and Tip seems
+to hold a conference. Then they comes over to me.
+
+“Can we go any farther with the car?” asks Aloysius.
+
+“Well,” says I, “after seeing you hop the rocks and stumps out there,
+I’d hate to say.”
+
+“Mister Seeley tells me that your two spotted horses are suitable to
+carry luggage,” says Washburn. “We would like to rent them, if we
+may--in the event that we can go no farther with the car.”
+
+“I’ve got four saddle-hosses at my ranch,” says Tip. “Women can ride
+’em.”
+
+“Women can ride ’em, Tip?” I asks.
+
+“Women can ride as well as men, can’t they?”
+
+Just then Magpie comes back, and I puts it up to him about the pintos.
+
+“To pack?” says he. “Sure you can have the horses. Won’t guarantee ’em
+though.”
+
+“Oh, that’s perfectly all right,” says Aloysius. “I assure you we will
+take a chance on them wearing out.”
+
+Magpie looks at me and I look at Magpie, but we don’t say a word.
+Neither of them broncs has ever had anything on their backs, except a
+harness.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, that whole danged bunch sets right down and makes themselves to
+home. Lord Washburn is an English setter and the rest is blooded stock
+in which the setter instinct predominates. Magpie goes over to Tip, and
+says--
+
+“Well, why don’t you pitch camp, Tip?”
+
+“I ain’t running the show. Ask the lord. He, he, he! Sounds like a
+prayer.”
+
+“A prayer might be in order,” nods Magpie. “After looking the bunch
+over, I reckon we better ask for divine protection.”
+
+Then cometh mamma. Mamma sizes me up, like she was looking at a dogy,
+and says:
+
+“Will you prepare a dinner menu so I may consider it?”
+
+“Will I prepare a dinner me and you?” I asks. “That’s a ---- of a way to
+use United States language, ma’am. Why don’t you say, ‘Will you prepare
+a dinner for me and you, so we may eat?’ Up here we don’t consider
+nothing but our stummicks, ma’am.”
+
+Mamma rears up and almost falls over backwards. She adjusts her glasses
+and glares at me.
+
+“Of all things!” she snaps, which covers everything a mule-skinner could
+say in five minutes’ straight cussing.
+
+“Such insolence!” Then she whirls and yelps, “Aloysius!”
+
+Aloysius’ backbone settles about seven inches when he hears that yelp,
+but he toddles over beside her. She grabs him by the arm and points at
+me.
+
+“You selected him,” she snaps. “Him!”
+
+“Did I?” squeaks Aloysius. “All right, dearie.”
+
+“Now discharge him!” she whoops.
+
+“But--but, my dear,” pleads Aloysius, “I--I must have a guide.”
+
+“Guide? Didn’t you hire him as a chef?”
+
+“Chef? Perhaps I did, dearie.”
+
+“I demand his discharge--at once!”
+
+“Well,” says Aloysius, sad-like, and mamma shakes him, “well--get
+out--out of the kitchen. Now, my dear, I have discharged him--who will
+get dinner?”
+
+Mamma sets her jaw and looks all around. Her eyes light on Magpie and
+she decides quick.
+
+“I employ that man in the late chef’s place. Prepare a menu--at once!”
+
+Magpie’s mouth forms a real smart reply, beginning with profanity, but
+he manages to choke it back. Then he stares at me and then at her.
+
+“Yes’m. I got all my education at night the same of which spoils me for
+writing in the day-time, but I’ll orate a bill of fare.”
+
+“Very well!” she snaps. “I am listening.”
+
+Magpie smooths his mustache and chants:
+
+    “Bean soup, hot enough to burn a burro’s belly,
+    Fried bronc’s ears and Gila-monster jelly.
+    Horse-hoof salad and some jerked rawhide,
+    Baked turkey buzzard with some loco fried,
+    Sidewinder gravy and a sunburned spud,
+    Saddle-blanket pie and a cup of mud.”
+
+“And,” says Magpie, looking up at the awed face of mamma, “that is a
+---- of a good feed for a he-man, if anybody should ask yuh.”
+
+Mamma swallers hard and flops her arms like she was going to fly, but
+her voice won’t seem to work. She sort of puffs up full of words and
+all at once she explodes:
+
+“Of all things!”
+
+“Yes’m,” agrees Magpie. “Such as they are.”
+
+Mamma takes two deep breaths and walks away stiff-legged like a peeved
+bear. Aloysius cocks one eye at mamma, and then squints at Magpie.
+
+“Pup-paw,” says Bettina, “I’m ashamed that you would let a man say such
+things to mummaw.”
+
+Aloysius looks at Magpie and then back at Bettina.
+
+“My dear, one must use diplomacy. I find that cooks are very scarce,
+and--and besides, your mother is too--er--cocky. Isn’t that the right
+word to use, Lord Washburn?”
+
+“I--er--” Lord Washburn screws the one-eyed spectacle into his eye and
+squints hard--“I would--er--rawther say--er--speaking in the feminine
+gender regarding fowl, I would say she was--er--a bit henny. Haw! Haw!
+Haw!”
+
+_Bung!_
+
+Anyway I think it “bunged.” I didn’t hear it, ’cause I was the one it
+bunged upon. I know I woke up and found them all grouped around me, and
+old Tip says--
+
+“Aw, you can’t kill him that easy, but I’ll bet that pot-cover will
+never fit again.”
+
+I got up and declared myself like this--
+
+“I can lick the ---- fool who hit me!”
+
+“There he goes again, pup-paw,” wails Bettina. “He’s meaning mum-maw.”
+
+“Is she the ---- fool?” I asks.
+
+“She is my wife,” says Aloysius.
+
+“That’s a sensible answer,” says I. “Why did she hit me?”
+
+“Women,” says Tip, “never need no reason. Them female contraptions is
+a heap like dynamite, because they bust without provocation at times.
+I reckon she was aiming to land a court-card and drew a deuce. Lord
+What-yuh-call’m haw-hawed at the wrong time.”
+
+“Then Lord What-yuh-call’m better lay off on that haw-haw stuff,” says
+I. “I ain’t going to have no ---- females banging me on the head just
+because some snake-hunter of a lord opines to haw-haw at the wrong time.
+What you haw-hawing about anyway?”
+
+“Joke,” says he. “Good joke. Aloysius says, ‘She’s getting too cocky,
+don’t you know?’ and I replied, ‘I’d say she was--er--rather henny.’
+Haw, Haw, Haw!”
+
+It was five minutes before the lord woke up. I whanged him on the head
+with a lid off the Dutch oven, and he just sets right down and stares
+into space.
+
+“That was a dastardly deed,” says Bettina, trying to take the lord’s
+head in her lap; but he acts like one of them toy things what you
+can’t make lay down. Every time she tips him over he flops right up
+again.
+
+“You plumb knocked his gyroscope out of kilter,” says Magpie. “Want me
+to set on his neck, ma’am?”
+
+The lord begins whistling through his teeth and pretty soon he gets red
+in the face and looks around.
+
+“What happened to me, I’d awsk?” says he.
+
+“You got in the road of that pot-cover,” says Magpie.
+
+“Pot-cover?” he asks. “I beg your pardon.”
+
+“You’re welcome,” says Magpie. “The old lady hit Ike with it ’cause
+you haw-hawed at the wrong time, and then Ike tried to hit the old
+lady ’cause you haw-hawed at the wrong time again.”
+
+“Did you try to hit mum-maw?” asks Bettina. “Did you actually
+contemplate that? Why?”
+
+“You can draw your own conclusions,” says I.
+
+“She can’t draw anything,” declares Aloysius. “She spent a year in Paris
+and ten thousand dollars tryin’ to learn how to draw, and--and----”
+
+“Pup-paw, that is very unkind of you to air our family affairs before
+strangers.”
+
+“Don’t mind me,” squeaks Tip. “Fight if yuh feel like it--I’m
+hard-boiled.”
+
+“I’d venture to say that I am misunderstood,” states the lord, rubbing
+his head. “What had art to do with the present situation, I’d awsk?
+There has been altogether too much coarse badinage and exchanging
+of--er----”
+
+“Pot-covers?” asks Magpie.
+
+“Exactly. I hope we will succeed in our mission, but I am of the
+opinion it will require unprecedented good fortune to repay us for the
+discomforts of the environment in which we are placed.”
+
+“My gosh!” snorts Tip. “You don’t need a guide--you need a e-metic.
+I wish I had a almanac so I could see if he was chidin’ us, or just
+runnin’ over with wisdom.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some folks will naturally say that we’re all wrong in talking and acting
+like we’ve been doing. They’ll orate that Western chivalry is extinct
+like the dodo or Free Silver, but such is not a fact. Western chivalry
+is all there like it is in the East.
+
+This bunch of misfits comes on a forlorn mission. They picks us out to
+be servants unto their wishes, whangs us with pot-covers et cettery,
+and nobody, unless they’re of the same kind, color, and complexion, can
+expect us to kiss, humor, and coddle said conglomeration of misguided
+humanity.
+
+Magpie is just through being sheriff of Yaller Rock County, and I’m
+willing to help Aloysius all I can, being as he’s a cripple--mentally;
+but the rest of the scientific herd--nothin’ doing in sympathy or
+helpfulness. I’m plumb neutral and non-committal.
+
+The old lady gets to fussing around and pretty soon she says:
+
+“Aloysius, I really must have food. It will soon be dinner-time and no
+preparations are under way. Attend to this please.”
+
+“Yes’m,” says Aloysius, foolish-like. “Yes’m. Where do we dine?”
+
+“Where?” asks mum-maw, looking down at poor little Aloysius. “Where?”
+
+“Oh,” says Aloysius, and then goes to writing in his little book.
+
+Mum-maw gets sore as a boil and sort of appeals to Lord Washburn. He
+shakes his head and says:
+
+“My dear Mrs. Van Fleet, I know nothing whatever of the culinary art. I
+was under the impression that Mr. Van Fleet had engaged a chef.”
+
+“He did,” says Tip, “and the old lady had him throwed out of the
+kitchen. Women raiseth ---- with everything--seems to me. I comes
+danged near getting married oncet, I----”
+
+“Forgot to go to the church,” says I.
+
+Tip nods and grins.
+
+“Did I? Maybe I did--I forget. Anyway, I ain’t got no wife, for which I
+raises my voice in a prayer each day.”
+
+“Your domestic difficulties have no bearing on my dinner,” says mum-maw,
+mean-like. “I want to eat!”
+
+“Shucks, if that’s all you want, I can cook,” says Tip. “There’s two
+things I sure can do, and one of them is cook.”
+
+“What’s the other?” asks Magpie.
+
+Tip scratches his head and thinks hard.
+
+“Danged if I know right now, Magpie, but she’s a accomplishment, as I
+remember it.”
+
+Let me pass over that meal. I tried it and found it guilty of
+everything. I ain’t no hand to fuss over the way my stuff is cooked;
+but I’ll be danged if my stummick can stand for parboiled tea and a
+mulligan thickened with baking-powder.
+
+I reckon everybody except Aloysius and Tip felt the same about it.
+Aloysius puffed up a little, but I can’t see much change in Tip.
+
+“Mighty” Jones rides in and looks over the aggregation. He asks me and
+Magpie about them, and we tells him all we know.
+
+“Goin’ to photygraft animiles?” he asks. “On the run? Geemighty!”
+
+“Oh, absolutely,” says Aloysius. “Interests of science. I want
+pictures of wild animals in their native haunts. Would it be
+possible for--er--us to get pictures of panthers, grizzly bear
+and--er--wildcats--uh--er--going about their daily--er--pastimes, as
+it were?”
+
+“As it were,” nods Mighty. “Not as it is.”
+
+“It can be done,” says Tip. “There ain’t nothin’ impossible, is there?
+Just because a grizzly never did let anybody photygraft it as it is----”
+
+“Exactly,” says Aloysius. “I am glad to find a man who does not insist
+on precedent. We will secure the pictures we desire without any effort,
+I assure you all.”
+
+“Why does the grizzly object to being photographed?” asks Bettina.
+
+“Superstition,” says Magpie. “A grizzly is superstitious about
+photography. They figure that it’s unlucky to let a photographer cross
+their trail.”
+
+“We will--er--commence on the--er--inoffensive--er-- What is it, Mr.
+Seeley?” asks Aloysius.
+
+“Inoffensive?” asks Tip. “What you talkin’ about, senator?”
+
+“The--er-- Now, I adjure you, I am not a senator. We spoke of some
+animal, which we might try the machine on. Was it the--er--tom-cat?”
+
+“Bob-cat,” says Tip. “We’ll find one at once. We ought to have some
+dogs.”
+
+“Domestic animals I do not wish for,” states Aloysius.
+
+“You don’t have to wish,” says Tip. “Wishin’ never got nobody some
+dogs.”
+
+“I’ll rent my pack,” offers Mighty.
+
+“There yuh are,” says Tip. “Mighty’s dogs will find animals if there is
+any.”
+
+“I hired you as my guide,” reminds Aloysius. “As long as I’ve got you I
+have no use for a pack of dogs.”
+
+“Ah-oo-o-oo-o-o!” howls one of Mighty’s dogs, and away went the whole
+pack down the side of the mountain.
+
+“What do yuh reckon they’re after?” asks Mighty.
+
+“After?” grins Magpie. “Oh, nothing. They’re insulted, that’s all.”
+
+One thing I can say for Mighty’s pack of dogs, they’re numerous. I
+reckon that he figured that the more the merrier, and he sure picked
+up everything of the dog kind which had four legs, a tail, and a
+voice. They starts going just like a whip. For instance, the seven
+greyhounds leave first, then four or five fox-hounds, then comes all
+breeds and mixtures, the order of their going depending a heap on
+their powers of smell.
+
+The last to leave is old “Whiskers,” a cross between everything doggish
+from a St. Bernard to a pink poodle. Whiskers sniffles all the time and
+smells nothing. He’s the popper on the whip, that’s the way they leaves.
+That conglomeration of animiles is enough to put the fear of the devil
+into anything wilder than a fool-hen.
+
+We watches ’em go and then listens to their voices fade out.
+
+“In Europe,” says Lord Washburn, screwing his one-eyed spectacle into
+his eye, “I would say they were on a warm scent. Perhaps it is a fox.”
+
+“Fox ----!” grunts Mighty. “Them pups won’t even look at a fox.”
+
+“Ah-oo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!” comes the chorus, and we listens freely.
+
+“Ah-oo-o-o-o-o-o-o!” she comes again, and this time she’s a lot closer.
+
+Me and Magpie looks at each other. It appears to us that the chase is
+coming down the trail, and knowing that trail like we does, it’s almost
+a cinch that the procession is due to come past the cabin.
+
+The trail swings around the side of the cañon, and the hill drops
+straight off for a danged long ways, and the upper side is almost
+unclimbable.
+
+Lord Washburn walks past the automobile and appears to squint up the
+trail, and Aloysius walks behind him. I steps over beside the cabin
+and Magpie joins me. Bettina and mum-maw joins the lord and pup-paw.
+
+All to once the dogs’ voices swells to a joyful chorus as they make the
+curve above the cabin.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then things begin to happen. I seen Lord Washburn seem to lift right
+off the ground and come backwards towards us at an enormous rate of
+speed. Aloysius gets hit, and goes past me and Magpie, spinning like
+a pin-wheel. Something hits me a side-swipe and I goes down only to
+come up amid a whooping, howling, snapping bunch of dogs which swamp
+me, and I goes down again.
+
+When I awoke, I feels some one kissing me, and I looks up into the face
+of Whiskers. I shoves him away and sets up.
+
+There is Magpie, with his back braced against the cabin door, digging
+his heels into the dirt to keep upright. Mum-maw is sitting with her
+back against a wheel of the automobile, while Bettina is sitting
+straddle of the engine-end of the machine, clapping her hands like
+she was encoring that bunch of dogs, et cettery, to make another
+appearance.
+
+From the body of the machine appears the head of Aloysius. He looks all
+around, down at his better half and then at his daughter.
+
+“Stop applauding, Bettina!” he says, hoarse-like, and she looks
+foolish-like at him.
+
+Then he looks all around again.
+
+“I ask every one to cease cheering.”
+
+From on top of the cabin comes a voice, and we looks up to see Tip,
+with one arm hooked around the ridge-pole and both feet up on top of
+the cabin. He’s hanging on tight.
+
+“Animiles!” he squeaks. “Said you’d see ’em, didn’t I? Didn’t I say you
+would?”
+
+Aloysius squints at Tip and nods.
+
+“I did--a fleeting glimpse.”
+
+“Well, dang it, I didn’t agree to stop ’em, did I?”
+
+“Heaven is my home!” gasps mum-maw. “What happened?”
+
+“Nothing,” says Aloysius. “Nothing to get excited about.”
+
+“Wh-where is Lord Washburn?” gasps Bettina, all out of breath.
+
+“Ma’am,” says Magpie, “I ain’t making no definite statements; but if
+he stuck on that silver-tip’s back, and if the silver-tip can keep up
+his speed for ten minutes longer, Lord Washburn will be somewhere in
+Canada.”
+
+“Well,” says I, watching Magpie digging his heels into the dirt, “that
+cabin won’t fall down if you leave go of it, Magpie.”
+
+“No, but the door will come open, Ike.”
+
+“Oh!” says I. “It likely will, but that won’t hurt nothing.”
+
+“Like ---- it won’t.”
+
+“Meaning what?”
+
+“Both of them danged cougars went inside.”
+
+“Both ---- cougars?” I gasps, and Magpie nods.
+
+“Uh-huh. I reckon them dogs got after them two cougars, swung ’em on
+to the trail where the silver-tip was pesticating along, and the whole
+caboodle came to our party.”
+
+“I--have--shot--with--kings,” states a voice, and we turns to look at
+Lord Washburn.
+
+He’s a mess. I reckon that silver-tip took him for a sightseeing trip
+through a thorn thicket, and he sure got shucked. He’s got a half a
+shirt left, and that ain’t connected with his pants, said pants
+consisting of a waistband and a lot of streamers. His stockings are
+pulled down over his shoes and drag out behind as he walks.
+
+But he’s still hanging on to that one eyeglass. He weaves there in the
+trail and repeats his statement--
+
+“I--have--shot--with--kings.”
+
+“He, he, he, he!” squeaks Tip. “’Pears to me that the king used a cross
+between a shotgun and a rake.”
+
+“Where is the bear?” asks Aloysius.
+
+Washburn screws his eyeglass tighter and licks his lips.
+
+“Bear?” he asks, dignified-like. “Really--er--I did not awsk it for an
+address.”
+
+“They’re hard to ride,” nods Tip. “Danged hard.”
+
+“It enhances the difficulty if one is riding backwards,” agrees Lord
+Washburn. “The--er--dogs----”
+
+“Say, where is Mighty Jones?” I asks.
+
+Magpie jerks his thumb behind him at the door.
+
+“You don’t mean that he’s inside?” I gasps.
+
+“He went in,” says Magpie, foolish-like, “and he ain’t never come
+out--yet.”
+
+“Wait a moment,” says Tip. “Lemme get this right. Two cougars went
+inside and Mighty Jones went in after them? Mighty’s brave.”
+
+“No-o-o-o,” drawls Magpie. “Mighty went in first; the cougars are
+brave!”
+
+“What might a cougar be?” asks mum-maw.
+
+“A cougar?” parrots Tip. “A cougar is--a--a--naturalized African lion.”
+
+“In the cabin?” asks Aloysius. “My chance has come! I will picturize
+it. Lord Washburn, we will start our first film. This is a very good
+opportunity.”
+
+“Told yuh I’d find animiles for yuh,” grins Tip. “I sure can do guidin’,
+can’t I?”
+
+“Yes, I find you satisfactory,” grunts Aloysius, wrestling with his
+photygraft apparatus.
+
+He gets it out of the machine and sets it up. It’s a three-legged
+dingus, and on top of it he fastens a box-like arrangement with a crank
+on the side.
+
+“Hey!” yells Mighty’s voice from the inside. “Hey, out there!”
+
+“No hay,” yells Tip. “Whatcha want?”
+
+“Magpie!” yelps Mighty. “You going to let me out?”
+
+“Unattended,” admits Magpie.
+
+Just then a cougar cut loose a yowl you could hear a mile. Aloysius
+stops fussing with his camera.
+
+“Got ’em both!” whoops Mighty. “Buck, dang yuh, buck!”
+
+“Both what?” squeaks Tip.
+
+“Got ’em roped!” whoops Mighty, and our ears gets assailed by a lot of
+cat-talk which shows that them cats are sore.
+
+“Where are you located, Mighty?” asks Magpie.
+
+“On the bal-co-nee!” whoops Mighty.
+
+We’ve got a little loft arrangement built at the rear of the cabin,
+where we keep our extra supplies; but it sure wasn’t built for no
+_Romeo and Juliet_ balcony scene.
+
+“Got ’em roped on the same rope, too,” brags Mighty. “Come in and have a
+look.”
+
+Magpie opens the door slow-like and peers inside. Then he turns to
+Aloysius.
+
+“There’s your picture, mister.”
+
+We all crowds into the doorway. Mighty is setting on the edge of the
+loft. He’s got the rope snubbed to the cross-pole of the loft, and on
+each end is a cougar, and if anybody asks me, I’ll orate aloud that
+them cats are peeved.
+
+“How did you get up there, Mighty?” asks Magpie.
+
+“Up here? Say, this ain’t high to go--under them circumstances.”
+
+“By Jove, that’s wonderful!” gasps Lord Washburn. “Cawn’t we get them as
+they are, professor? It will be instructive in a way, don’t you think?”
+
+“Um-m-m-m,” says Aloysius, and then he nods. “A still!” he exclaims.
+“Wait until I set up the other camera.”
+
+He comes back with a different outfit, and sets it up inside the
+doorway. Them two cats just set there and spit. After Aloysius gets
+through looking through the rigging, he gets awful excited.
+
+“Wonderful opportunity,” he announces. “I will make several exposures. I
+will have Bettina, Lord Washburn, Mrs. Van Fleet, the guide and the chef
+in the picture with the lions. Immense!”
+
+Then he turns to me and says--
+
+“You will be my assistant.”
+
+“Yeah?” says I. “What do I do?”
+
+He places Magpie and Lord Washburn on one side and on the other he puts
+Bettina, mum-maw and Tip. In the middle is them two spitting cougars,
+and setting on the edge of the loft is Mighty Jones.
+
+Aloysius peeks at them through the camera and then loads the thing. He
+takes the dingus and pours it full of some kind of powder and hands it
+to me.
+
+“Hold that over your head,” says he. “Put your finger into that ring and
+when I requests it of you, pull down on it.”
+
+I follers directions. Aloysius tells everybody to stand perfectly still,
+and then says--
+
+“Pull!”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+I pulled. Yeah, I pulled. Ike Harper seems to have been created to
+foller directions. Looking back at it, I comes to the conclusion that
+if I’d ’a’ killed the professor when I first seen him, this world would
+have been sweeter.
+
+As I said before, I pulled. Comes a blinding flash of light, the yowl of
+a scared cougar, the splintering crash of overweighted timbers, and, as
+“Hip-Shot” Squires used to say, “---- took a recess.”
+
+It appeared that one of them cougars came unto my bosom, and I sure
+took it in. I went high, wide and handsome, and got clawed from heels
+to dandruff. Something got me by the feet and something got me by the
+head, and they pulled opposite directions. The feet end of me was
+pointed towards the door, and whatever the power was on that end--it
+won.
+
+I remembers skidding on the seat of my pants off our door-step and down
+that danged hill. I hooked my feet against a rock, and then the power on
+my neck raises me upright and yanks me upside down again, and all this
+time I’m locked in deadly combat with that danged cougar.
+
+Suddenly we stops in a blaze of glory. I dodges a flock of stars and
+tries to set up. Then the cougar in which I have my teeth, fingers
+and spurs seems to set a precedent of natural history when it says in
+a faint voice--
+
+“Well, by ----, I hope we stay stopped!”
+
+I unhooks from said cougar and looks into the peaceful face of Magpie
+Simpkins.
+
+“I thought you was a cougar,” says I.
+
+He looks at me painful-like and says--
+
+“Since when did you start eating raw cougars, Ike?”
+
+I didn’t answer him because I didn’t care to answer such fool questions.
+We both got up and started back for the cabin.
+
+There was a sight for sore eyes. Them two cougars busted loose when
+the balcony went down, and they must ’a’ swept the cabin clean with
+that rope.
+
+Mum-maw has got the rope around her body, and is half under the machine.
+Lord Washburn has got both feet twisted in the rope and is standing on
+the back of his neck with his feet cinched up to the seat where one of
+the cougars is reared back, trying to get loose.
+
+The other cougar is still fastened to the other end of the rope and is
+about six feet away from the machine, all twisted up in that camera.
+Every time the cougar moves the camera moves, and then the cat wallops
+it with both paws while it searches the depths of its soul to try and
+find cat-talk enough to describe its opinion of photography.
+
+Setting on the door-step is Tip with his hands on his knees and a
+beautiful expression on his homely face. He is looking at the scene
+before him; but he don’t see it, ’cause his thoughts are of spiritual,
+not material things. Suddenly his expression changes, and he grunts
+soft-like--
+
+“Still ----!”
+
+Aloysius has got an egg-sized bump over his right eye, and one of them
+cougars has opened his clothes all the way down his back; but Aloysius
+don’t mind. He’s trying to set that moving-picture camera and all the
+while he’s singing, soft and low:
+
+    “Daha-a-a-a-ling, I am gro-o-o-o-wing o-o-o-o-old,
+    Sweet Alice with ha-air so-o-o-o brown,
+    Through the sycamo-o-o-o-res the candle-lights are gleaming,
+    The moss-covered bu-u-u-u-u-cket that hung in the well----”
+
+“My ----!” grunts Magpie. “He’s even absent-minded in his songs.”
+
+“He, he, he, he!” squeaks Tip, hammering his hands on his knees. “Can’t
+that fellow jist make a banjo talk? Whoo-e-e-e-e-e!”
+
+“Cawn’t some one do something?” complains Lord Washburn. “This is
+insufferable.”
+
+I see mum-maw twitch her feet, and then she lets out a screech that
+skinned the yowl of a cougar four ways from the jack.
+
+“All ready! Camera!” snaps Aloysius, and he starts grinding on that
+machine.
+
+Then out of the door comes Bettina. She’s got her hat down over her
+eyes, but that don’t matter, ’cause she wouldn’t have seen Tip anyway.
+She just walked right over him and lit sitting down in front of the
+cougar, and right behind her comes Mighty Jones.
+
+He’s got a section of that balcony around his neck and Lord Washburn’s
+two-barreled rifle in his hands. Before we can stop him he raises the
+gun and pulls both triggers. I jumped in to stop him, but all too late.
+I reckon that both of them big bullets hit the rope within a foot of
+Lord Washburn’s legs and cut it plumb in two.
+
+The cat on the ground went right between my legs, and that camera stand
+caught me in the shins and I turned upside down. I seen mum-maw roll
+loose and turn over on her stummick. I hears Aloysius saying, “Just a
+moment, Lord Washburn,” and I glances up there. Lord Washburn is trying
+to throw himself backwards, and the cat is objecting at the top of its
+voice.
+
+“Hold it!” pleads Aloysius, grinding as fast as he can.
+“Orrr-r-r-r-r-oooooooowwwww!”
+
+It was too much for the cat. I seen it go in the air, straight for the
+doorway, while Lord Washburn turned over, kicking his feet loose from
+the rope.
+
+The cat hit Tip dead center, knocked him half-way into the cabin door,
+and the cat almost popped its own tail off going inside.
+
+“My ----!” gasps Magpie. “Didja ever see such ----”
+
+“Hold it!” gasps Aloysius. “Easy now.”
+
+He picks up that heavy camera and trots to the doorway where he peers
+inside.
+
+Yeo-o-o-o-o-oww! Crash!
+
+You can’t fool a cougar more than once, and that one recognized that
+interior. It came right out again. I reckon it meant to jump plumb over
+everything in sight, but it was fuddled a little and hit the camera dead
+center, and cat, camera and Aloysius all went down together.
+
+The cat hopped right off the ground, and went between Tip’s legs; but
+Tip was falling at the time, falling away from the crash, and him and
+the cat went to the dirt together.
+
+Comes a whirl of a man, cat, and dust, and here is the cat under the
+machine with its tail under one of the tires and Tip hanging on with his
+feet braced to the wheel. The cat is throwing dust like a fanning-mill,
+trying to get loose.
+
+“Huh-hurry up!” squeaks Tip, spitting dust. “You wanted animiles, dang
+yuh--here they are!”
+
+“Hold it!” pleads Aloysius, and here he is with what is left of his
+machine, trying to get it to grinding again.
+
+“Hold it, I demand of you!”
+
+“Well, I--I--I’m huh-holding, ain’t I?” squeaks Tip.
+
+“I can’t see it,” complains Aloysius, peering into dust.
+
+“Go around the other side!” grunts Tip. “Aintcha got no sense?”
+
+Aloysius staggers around to the other side, and in a few moments he
+says:
+
+“Absolutely wonderful! I see him now.”
+
+“Good!” squeaks Tip, and lets loose of the tail.
+
+Yeow-w-w-w-w-w-w!
+
+Me and Magpie steps around on the other side, and there sits Aloysius,
+holding to one ear, and about ten feet away is his camera.
+
+“Is the cougar gone?” I asks. Aloysius looks up at me, wide-eyed, and
+says--
+
+“Well--I--have--hopes.”
+
+“Dang yuh,” squeaks Tip. “You wanted movin’ pitchers, and I reckon
+that’n moved fast enough for the most fastidious, eh? By the grab! I’m
+some guide, ain’t I? Contracted to show you animiles, and I reckon you
+seen ’em, didn’t yuh?”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Aloysius Van Fleet, get up!” There is mum-maw with her arm around
+Bettina, glaring down at poor Aloysius.
+
+“Ye-yes?” says Aloysius.
+
+“Crank up the machine!”
+
+“The animals are all gone,” says he, sad-like.
+
+“I was speaking of the automobile!” snaps mum-maw. “We’re going home. We
+have had all of this that we can stand. Bettina is a nervous wreck and I
+am no better. Right now we go home.”
+
+“Yes, my dear. I am willing. It is no place for the gentle sex, I have
+found that out.”
+
+“Pup-paw,” says Bettina weakly, “please face the audience as much as
+possible. You are--uh--open in the rear.”
+
+“Really,” says Lord Washburn, “it was trying, I assure you. I shall
+welcome my bawth. Did we--er--get some films, professor?”
+
+“We did,” smiles Aloysius. “I got at least five hundred feet. Perhaps it
+is not exactly what I wished for; but it was well worth taking.”
+
+Aloysius winds the danged automobile up, they all gets aboard, and he
+makes that turn once more and stops at the door again; but this time
+he’s pointed the right way. Tip is standing there scratching his head
+like he was trying to remember something.
+
+“Say, judge,” says he, “you told me to remember something that I was to
+be sure and not let you forget, and I can’t seem to think what it was?”
+
+“I am not a judge,” says Aloysius, severe-like. “I am--a--a--a--huh----”
+
+“Drive on, Aloysius Van Fleet, before somebody thinks of something
+more,” says mum-maw, and Aloysius obeyed.
+
+We watched them make the turn in the road and then sets down on the
+porch.
+
+Tip is still thinking hard. Mighty rubs a skinned place on his face and
+says--
+
+“Funny how they just turn a crank and----”
+
+“That’s it!” whoops Tip.
+
+He jumps up and starts to run down the road, but stops.
+
+Then he comes back.
+
+“Gol dang it, I plumb forgot it!” he wails, waving his arms. “Ain’t that
+the darndest thing to forget? Shucks!”
+
+“What did you forget to tell him?” asks Magpie.
+
+“He told me to be sure and not forget to tell him to do it!” wails Tip.
+
+“What?” snaps Magpie.
+
+“To load his danged movin’-pitcher machine,” says Tip.
+
+
+[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the Mid-May, 1921 issue of
+Adventure magazine.]
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78631 ***