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Show Youth. Rides West THE STORY SO FAR On tholr w;iy to tho now f'ot-tonw-M-cl K'jl'i (Ju-Kins In Colorado Colo-rado in tht; r-.irly S-y-r n 1 1 -s, Robert Rob-ert Uihion, -;t m t rn: r, and li i IKitlii'-r, j;u-:k Jlityili-n, a v:ter:m luln.-r, witm-H tin; hold-up of a ,sl;iv,.; cuuc.li, from which the ex-fir. ex-fir. mh box Is .st-il'-n before the bandits nr: H-ard off. Anions the hobl-up victiuiH are Mrs, Con-NlaiiCK Con-NlaiiCK Jj-un.', and .Mrs. Uarnahy, U'liu iiiti-ndn to ofii ii a restaurant in Cottonwood. CiLsoii meets Murcus Handy, editor, on hi.s way to Mart the Cottonwood Courier, Arriving In town, Cilsou and iiayden tnctht-r pur-liane a min-liiK min-liiK cl;iifM, A threatened lynching Ih averted by the bravery of ( 'hrln Aid ; rath, town marshal. Cil.son lircomca diHiusted with K"M diKr.ing, what with its un-endiriK' un-endiriK' labor and small rewards, arid so tiie sudil- ri appearance of Shorty Croly, old-time partner of li uck, is not altogether discon-et-rtin; to him. CHAPTER IV Continued 6 The look which P.uck (lashed back at Shorty was u humid of destiny. Had not Iiuek dropped that little, hesitant llutter of tlio eyelids, had I not caught It on the wing, the future might have run very differently for all three of us. It expressed was It regret of his bargain? On the one hand there stood I, an unseasoned tenderfoot of little use in gold washing; on the other, his old and tried partner. Yet he was bound to me by ties of law and lienor; and Iiuck was not the man to edge out of a bargain. He could not know how much, at (hat moment, I wanted to edge out of It myself. The sight of tlie camp, of human beings in aggregation, aggre-gation, had further sickened me with my hard lot on Placer Claim Number Num-ber iili. It Hashed on me that Buck and Shorty wanted to be alone; that if Ihey could talk it over they might come to closer agreement with the outcome out-come whicli I desired. And there in my hands was my excuse. "I met tlie editor of this paper coming com-ing across Ludlow's pass," I broke in. "And I promised to look him up." "All right, kid," replied Buck, with a readiness which piqued me, in spite of my deeper desires. "Cuess I'll be somewhere round camp until late." So forth I went, to search for Marcus Mar-cus Handy and the Cottonwood Courier. When I first saw it a week before, I had thought of Main street as crowded. Now it ran brimful. A blob of light above the roadway drew me up a side 'street. It illuminated, illum-inated, I saw presently, a board shack leaning against a log cabin. I looked again; and there stood tlie object of my search. An illumination, such as I had seen carried in political processions, proces-sions, proclaimed that this was tlie Morning Courier, Pioneer Newspaper of Cottonwood. Tlie main cabin, like nine-tenths of tlie buildings in Cottonwood, had not yet achieved tlie luxury of a regular wooden door. In its place hung like a portiere the conventional gunny sack. I pushed through tills ; to my nostrils came n scent pungent and pleasing, but strange primer's ink. Among tlie details of a cluttered interior, my eye caught first the central group. At a printer's stone just large enough to hold two forms stood Marcus Handy in overalls, splashed with ink and grease, hammering a block out of a galley. In one corner fumed a hot sheet-iron stove. Tlie shack beyond revealed the figure of a fourteen-year-old boy, tinkering with Marcus Han-dy's Han-dy's precious flat-bed press. Beneath it, their heads propped on a pile of white print paper, lay two other boys, even smaller, sound asleep. These! I was afterward to learn, served as substitute sub-stitute for the boiler which Marcus Handy hoped to get some day from Denver. When press time came, they would turn the great crank which revolved re-volved tlie flywheel. To one side of the room in which I stood, rows of printer's cases lay so close to the stone that two ancient printers, furiously furious-ly setting type, constantly humped tlie boss. On the other side was a pine, table, littered with newspapers, proofs, scattered sheets; all weighted down' by a double-barreled derringer. Marcus Hnjdy jerked up at me a nervous eye. "For God's sake, don't" he begun, and then : "Oh, the tenderfoot tender-foot :" He rested in position for an instant, his wooden mallet poised, and 1 saw that the lines of his face were drawn ami his eyes bloodshot. "Were you fooling when you said you had a colle ge education?'' "Tlie best and most complete educates educa-tes that Harvard university dispenses or affords," I said, taking up, where we hud left it off on Ludlow's pass our Western game of chaff and rhetoric; "polished, refined but Handv broke that off with a gesture, as though the situation were too serious for humor. "Hod Almighty must have sent you lo reward me for the one good deed I ever did, which I don't know what it is." said he. "A printer's got drunk and run out on me, and tlie paper ain't half written. Don't say you're doing anything tonight. Just grab a pencil and a handful of that copy paper over there, and bring it here!" Even as he spoke, he had hammered out the block; and when I had obeyed, fascinated, fasci-nated, and turned back to him, lie was lifting with careful fingers a stick of type. "Take notes on this, and when you've tali mi them, sit down there and put them iir.o (lie English language," he added, never looking up from ti is work. "And don't stop to get any of your By Will Invin ' Copyrlf-ht by Will Irwin W.VU Service college grammar Into it, either. There was a lire tills morning up in White Mule gulch. Cot two cabins on a claim. Name of claim, Jennie June. Name of owners, John Ferguson ami Ad Woolwich. Wool-wich. Cot that down?" Marcus had now filled out his column and set in Ihe rules. "All right. Two hundred words. Work in something about needing need-ing a cily government to afford tire protection. Hush 'em both they're needed to (ill out this page and then I'll give you the big story!" As I sat down to the table and shoved papers and derringer away to give myself writing room, I had a spurt of amusement at the unconventionality of the proceeding. I glanced up at Marcus again, and amusement yielded to sympathy sym-pathy ami understanding. The early appearance of the Cottonwood Courier had been no miracle, unless a miracle of hard work. In less than a week, Marcus had got ills plant set up and his newspaper out ; and I conjectured that he was as yet its whole editorial and business stalT. Which accounted for his odd, almost drunken appearance. appear-ance. He was working by the light of ills own blazing nerves. "Bush it !" he called twice, as I set down my plain tale. Having finished, I handed over the sheets to him, somewhat some-what thrilled at tlie prospect of seeing myself for (he first time in print. He did not even glance at my copy, but yelled to a printer: "Get this out as soon as tlie Lord'll let you ! Now " he was lifting and arranging type again "this reading item goes on the front page for a lead. Start it about this way: 'Mysterious holdups for large sums have grown entirely too common in- camp of late. We do not refer to picayune affairs where a tenderfoot ten-derfoot parts with his roll. The boys must have their fun. But hard upon two robberies of the stages came the affair at Black canyon, and yesterday the gang, for the same gang it must he. attempted the boldest crime yet perpetrated.' Do you think you can get that down about the way I said it?" "I think so," I faltered. "Well, take a note or two, can't you?" When I looked up, Marcus was locking his completed page. "All ready?" he proceeded. "Write the rest of it your own way. Here's tlie facts. Stonewall Jackson mine up on Liverpool sends down a messenger lo Cottonwood in a buckboard for the payroll. Probably about five thousand dollars. He don't take any chances of being seen at the bank. Gets a business busi-ness man on Main street- don't know who to draw the money for him. Then, at the last minute, something makes him ringy. Just an instinct, I guess. He ends up by sending the money in the saddle-bags of the boss; and he rides alone, with a sawed-off shotgun on the seat for a blind. Sure enough, he's held up. Four men, masked. They go through him and see they've been fooled. One of 'em's for torturing him, Indian fashion, to make him tell what's become of the payroll, but the rest lose their sand. So they kick him once or twice for luck and vamoose. Broad daylight proposition, lie comes down to notify the police and lets go o the facts to me at the Black Jack this afternoon. Make the story of the holdup an interview with him. And get it dramatic. Go strong on the minute when he's facing the prospect of hellish torment. His name's Henry there, I'll be d d if I remember remem-ber what the rest of it is. Call it Smith for the present. Finish up by drawing strong attention to the fact that someone some-one in camp must be systematically peaching " "Beaching?" I interposed ; for that verb, now almost forgotten in the progress prog-ress of our American language, was then new slang. ."Informing watching shipments of money for tlie gang. It's plain to me as the nose on your face. Some of the gambling element, maybe. And make an appeal for a strong, pure, municipal munici-pal government. That's all no, wait a minute " Marcus lifted his form with a weary grunt, set it down on Hie door, leaned it carefully against tlie wall, and rested his hands on the stone as he meditated. "No, drop that,"' Don't even hint about confederates in camp. No politics, either. I waat to know more before I cut loose. Now get it written !" Looking up occasionally from the frantic haste of my labors, I noted absently ab-sently that men were constantly passing pass-ing and repassing through the canvas door and talking with Marcus as lie worked. One, evidently, had brought in an advertisement. Just us evidently, Marcus had told him to write it himself; him-self; for lie seated himself at the table ta-ble opposite me and, with a protruding tongue-tip following tlie course of his pencil, set himself to the labor of literary lit-erary creation. Another must have borne news, for presently Marcus called to me: "You, kid ! Name of the messenger's Henry Seward. They took seven dollars dol-lars off him. He left Ills gold watch in camp when he started his bluff. Put that in contrast between what they expected and what they got." I finished, hesitatingly set the copy on the case before Marcus. He ran rapidly, professionally, through the sheets. "Nine hundred words or thereabouts," there-abouts," he said. "Couldn't have guessed better at space myself. Now I'll show my gratitude and appreciation apprecia-tion practically, just for a change. I can use you. I've been wanting a re- t porter. If you like the job, sit down and go on with it at twenty a week. What say?" My breath taken away by the dramatic dra-matic suddenness oS his proposal, I realized that here lay my way out. The smell of printer's Ink was already perfume to my nostrils. 1 had enjoyed tills little whirl at Intellectual work the tiling I was trained to do as much as I had loathed digging on the claim. If Shorty would only buy me out With a promptness which equaled that of Marcus, I answered: "Give me an hour, and I'll let you know." "Well, come back anyhow need you tonight!" exclaimed Marcus as I darted dart-ed through the door to search for Buck and Shorty. CHAPTER V I pushed and jostled my way from Siegel's beer hail to the Black Jack, iiom me jiiacK juck to .iyers varieiy theater, where at last I found my two adventurers lolling expansively on a back seat, Buck's arm hooked over Shorty's shoulder. They, in common with the rest of the audience, were listening with heads sentimentally askew to "The Blue Alsatian Mountains," Moun-tains," as rendered, to the accompaniment accompani-ment of a guitar, a violin and the only piano in camp, by a hawk-faced woman wom-an in short and ruflly skirts. I iiad to wait until she rendered two encores before I could announce to Buck and Shorty that I wanted to see them on important business and drag -them to the recess between the Variety and Cheap Jack Eckstein's Dry Goods Emporium. Em-porium. And there I wasted no time with preliminaries, but plunged straight into business. "Shorty," I said I had never heard any other name for him, "do you want to buy out my share of our claim?" It was Buck -who answered. He looked upon me with a startled eye, A A 7l I Sat Down to the Table and Shoved Paper and Derringer Away to Give Myself Writing Room. . which grew a little suspicious as he asked : "What's the game? Got anything In sight?" "Nothing in mining," said I. "But I've been offered a job on tlie newspaper. news-paper. And I want to take it." Shorty spoke; a slight difficulty in pronunciation proved that since I left him he had taken many drinks. "Throwin' down your good old pard-ner, pard-ner, huh !" he exclaimed, truculently. "Double-cross him " "Shut up, Shorty !" commanded Buck. "This is a square kid. Only I want to see if he ain't a d n fool. Don't you know you're lettin' go of a mighty promising prospect?" "I know you think so," I replied. "Course," said Buck, with the flash of an understanding for which I had not given him credit, "you're plumb disgusted with diggin' just now. It's hard for a young fellow to get down to real work. But tlie first week's always al-ways tlie toughest. You'll " "Aw, come to the p'int !" exclaimed Shorty, waving slightly toward me as (hough to begin hostilities. "How much do you want to skin me for?" "I don't want to skin you at all," said I. a liltle touched in sniie nf Shorty's condilion. "Just what I put into it." "Don't know's I can let you cheat yourself that way," said Buck, utterly ignoring, then and afterward, the interpositions in-terpositions of liis muddled friend. "Why don't you grub-stake Shorty? Then you'll have your share comin' " "Grub-stake, h I !" broke in Shorty. "No grub-stake in mine " "When we strike a pocket," concluded con-cluded Buck. "And how's Shorty goin' to pay?" "I'd rather not grub-stake anyone," said I, "and Shorty can pay me on the installment plan, can't he?" I was growing eager; for our discussion bad brought up in my mind tlie sickening memory of that last week in the ooze of the stream-bed; and the blisters on my hands stiil burned. I perceived, however, that my affair was going well. P.uck had not denied that he wanted to combine with Shorty. Only, honest man that he was, he had tried to guard my interests. "I've got a better chance with the Courier," I added. "Of course, I don't like " and here I stopped, too shy by virtue of my youth and my origin to ' brin out the rest. I wanted to tell Buck that my only regret at se hug Claim No. 32 was the thought of leav S him. Toward Buck I felt at that sta-e of my western wanderings as a voung soldier must feel toward a stern but benevolent and efficient superior officer. But Buck, it seemed, understood, under-stood, for he replied in an unwontcdly low voice: "I'll he sorry to lose you, kid. And it was done; all excepting the process of getting logic into the muddled head of Shorty. Alternating force with tact Buck accomplished that. Shorty had admitted ownership of a hundred dollars dol-lars He even drew it from its hiding place in back of his watch. I should have that to bind the bargain. I was to keep my horse and the personal articles ar-ticles of our- equipment, and to take Shortv's note at three months for the remainder of (lie money we had put into our outfit which had now been transmuted into our claim. That note Shortv was to pay off on the installment install-ment plan from current yield. Having arranged the details of this simple transaction, having got momentarily, at least, the consent of tlie party of tlie second part, Buck and I hurried him to the Comstock Lode saloon. We managed to jam our way to the bar, gave Shorty a drink to keep him quiet, paid tlie harassed bartender four bits for a pen, ink and two sheets of paper. Buck Wrote Tn his scrawly hand at my dictation, which seemed entirely to satisfy Shorty. But he drew back at tlie last moment, glaring at me with a suspicious eye. Then his shoulders began be-gan to heave with suppressed laughter; laugh-ter; he suddenly took the pen and appended ap-pended the signature of Edward D. Croly to agreement and note. And, having handed back the paper, he let his laughter go. "All right?" he Inquired. "Look'z all right, don't it? Ain't worth paper'z written on. Note signed by drunken man ain't no good." Shorty's laughter became Homeric. "It's good in this case," remarked Buck dryly ; and then he added in an aside to me : "Better move on expect you up for your stuft in the mornin'. I'll have vour half of our output ready for yon share and share alike." I had actually actu-ally forgotten the small detail of reward re-ward for my week's work. Not in the least disturbed by Shorty's drunken remark about the note, I jostled back to the Courier. Marcus was still sticking type with jerky, maniacal speed. "AH right," I said, "I'll stay." "All right," echoed Marcus. "Now move ! I'm a hard boss, I am. Local news is awful slack. Hasn't been a single shooting, and it's Saturday night at that. Want three columns of telegraph tele-graph stuff " 'Telegraph?" "Sure news of the world. You'll find the Denver Friday morning papers pa-pers and the Wednesday K. C. evening sheets there in the heap. Bun through 'em and rewrite me a set of good-looking dispatches. If there's a hanging anywhere, play that up big for the main story. If anything happened in congress, make three or four inches out of that, unless it's got to do with mining. And remember, we're Republican, Repub-lican, lock, stock and barrel. Treat the Democrats nasty." I gatnered the Denver papers to myself, my-self, and settled down to my job. However, How-ever, ten minutes later Marcus, look ing up as he transferred a stick of type to tlie stone, found me loafing and called: "Hustle! "What I want ain't literature, litera-ture, but speed !" Struggling with the creative problem prob-lem of imagining how a man might deport de-port himself on the scaffold, I had looked up to meditate. And my eye had caught on a sheet of proofs hooked to a leg of the stone. At its head was an advertisement for Mrs. Barnaby's boarding house and restaurant, California Cali-fornia and Aspen streets; special attention at-tention to transients. At Marcus' rebuke re-buke I started unnecessarily ; and as I bent to my work, I felt my cheeks burning. Marcus, on bidding me good night added that Sunday was a day off for the whole staff excepting maybe him ; and he didn't know but that even he was "oing to get tlie big sleep. I had found in the meantime that my duties on the Courier, like his, were not to be wholly literary. When the last news filler had passed into type, I helped wash the forms, carry them Into the pressroom, fasten them onto the platens As soon as tiie somewhat jerky old press, at the furious impulsion of the two boys, began to knock off passably pass-ably fair Impressions, all spare hands set to folding Marcus on the stone, I on our editorial table, the little printer's print-er's devil on the floor. But not before I had retired into a corner with one of the early, dim copies and read myself my-self for the first time in print. It was Marcus who recalled that I had no lodgings. "Sorry I can't bed you down," he added, "but I'm sleeping sleep-ing three in a room as it is. My cabin's just behind Siegel's beer hall. If you're doing nothing today, come around about noon and rout me out. There's a lot of things I've had to leave at loose ends. You'd better go to the St. Louis lodging house. Tell them I said they were to give you a bed." By now very tired, what with a night of .mental work piled onto a clay of physical, I trudged down Main street. It Was three o'clock in the morning. Tlie clerk of the St. Louis lodging house lay wrapped in a blanket just inside the flap of his tent, a dim lantern lan-tern illuminating a drawn and unshaven un-shaven face. He woke when I shook him, muttered that lie was full up, fell asleep, had again to be shaken awake before I could make him understand that I came from Marcus Handy and must have a bed. Then without a word he shed his covers, rose, stretched, yawned, took the lantern in one hand and a roll of blankets in the other, and led me to a tiny compartment compart-ment with canvas walls. On the floor lay three men, snoring; between them and the wall a pile of hay afforded just space for one more. My nostrils, fresh from the pure air of a mountain night, bridled at a vile mixed scent of human effluvia, stale tobacco, staler whisky. The clerk, unrolled my blankets, blan-kets, collected my two dollars, and turned flwnv. Next morning stirrings on all sides woke me and I shook out my clothes, dressed and emerged to the outer air. I made my toilet with such poor and soiled facilities as the St. Louis lodging lodg-ing house afforded a tin washbasin, encrusted round the edge, a roller towel whereof only one hand's breadth was gray instead of black, a hairbrush from which the bristles were coming out in bunches, a stained whiskboom, a piece of broken mirror. Some premonition pre-monition of need had caused me, when Buck and I left the claim, to slip a clean collar into my overcoat pocket. I put this on and started for breakfast at Mrs. Barnaby's boarding house in a condition of Sabbath respectability. Never had I entertained the slightest doubt of where I intended to board in Cottonwood. I pushed through the canvas flap of Mrs. Barnaby's, half expecting to find Mrs. Deane at the long table, wholly disappointed when I did not. Three nondescripts of the mines, their eyes on their tin plates, were wolfing ham and eggs and sucking down hot coffee. These, I learned later, were accidental acci-dental transients. Just then Mrs. Barnaby herself waddled in with a platter of steaming cakes in one hand and three tin cups, emitting breakfast odors, hooked fauwise into tlie other. She wore a long gingham apron, not any too recently laundered, but her gray frizzes seemed just out of curlpapers; curl-papers; above her flushed, tanned and ruddy face they gave the effect of a silver crown. "Hello!" she said, slapping the hot cakes before the three miners, who all reached for them simultaneously with their forks. "Didn't I see you at the holdup?" "Yes," I replied. "I wasn't held up, but I was there." Are you watching Mrs. Deane? Follow the next Installment closely, (TO BE CONTINX'ED.) |