“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.]