Part 2

“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.]