MATT TAKES TOWNSEND'S ADVICE.
Townsend was on the road to rapid recovery. He was feeling a hundred
per cent. better than he had been when Matt and his pards left him, two
days previously, and if it had been possible to use his lame foot he
would have been up and around.
He was not surprised to see Motor Matt and his friends, because he had
expected Matt to make the trip to Turtle Key and back in safety; but he
was surprised to see Cassidy enter his room with the young motorist.
"What's this?" cried Townsend, hoisting up on his elbow and staring at
Cassidy. "Is that you, Cassidy?"
"Big as life, cap'n," grinned Cassidy.
"Where'd you come from?"
"From the _Grampus_."
"And where's the _Grampus_?"
"Layin' off the town."
"Did you get her away from Jurgens?"
"Motor Matt was the one that got her away from Jurgens."
Townsend fell back on his pillow and centred his attention on Matt.
"There's a yarn back of all this, if I'm any prophet," said Townsend,
"and for two days I've been hungry to have some one talk to me. Here's
your chance, King."
Matt seated himself by the bedside and proceeded to relate the
experiences through which he and his friends had recently passed.
Townsend listened with rapt interest. Not a word escaped him, and
occasionally he asked a question to bring out some point which Matt had
not made quite clear.
When Matt had finished there followed an interval of silence. Townsend
did not seem to be greatly impressed, despite the intense interest he
had shown while the narrative was going forward.
"Nothing so very wonderful about all that," said Townsend, presently,
"when you consider who was playing the chief part in the game. It's
just about what I should expect of Motor Matt. I'm sorry for the
trouble you had with the air ship, Matt, and shall consider myself
under obligations to make up to you any extra expense you may incur in
getting the Hawk back into shape. When I hired you to take me to Turtle
Key I had no intention of allowing you to run the risk of losing the
Hawk.
"And the Man from Cape Town told the truth, after all! I hadn't the
least idea that there was a vestige of truth in that wild yarn of his.
The iron chest has been found, but what we discover in the chest is
liable to be another matter. I doubt if there is anything in it of any
value; nevertheless, I am bound by promise to take the chest to New
Orleans and open it in the presence of a certain lady there whose name
was given me by the Unknown. It looks like a lot of foolishness, to me,
but I've started the game and will have to go through with it. I'm very
sorry," and here a heavy frown crossed Townsend's face, "that Jurgens
got away from the island. The other men will be transferred from the
_Grampus_ to the jail, here, and they will be dealt with according to
law, but it is the ringleader we ought to have. How do you think he
managed to escape from that island, Matt?"
"He must have got away in a boat," replied Matt, "although where
Jurgens and Whistler got the boat is something of a puzzle."
"Well, the two scoundrels have gone, and justice will be cheated for a
while longer; but, mark me, sooner or later their time will come. And I
have an idea, Matt, that you and I will be concerned, in some manner,
with the final act of their vicious careers. What will you do now?"
"Repair the Hawk and go back to Atlantic City."
"Can you repair the Hawk here?"
"Easily."
"Then why go back to Atlantic City?"
Matt stared at Townsend.
"That's a good place to make money," said he, "and the Hawk has become
quite popular at the resort."
"It won't be so popular from now on, mark what I say."
"Why not, Mr. Townsend?"
"Why, because people will learn how the gas bag sprung a leak and
nearly caused you and your friends to lose your lives. That is what
will injure the Hawk's popularity. If you return to Atlantic City
people will be afraid to make any ascensions with you. Can't you see
how it will be?"
There seemed to be a good deal of logic in Townsend's remarks,
although Matt thought he was a little too comprehensive in saying that
_everybody_ would be afraid of the Hawk.
"We'll show the people," declared Matt, "that the Hawk is perfectly
safe."
"We can explain," put in Dick, "that we ran into a tree and made a hole
in the bag. That ought to show people that the accident wasn't the
Hawk's fault."
"It ought to," insisted Townsend, "but it won't. People don't stop
to make any fine discriminations in such matters, and if an accident
happened to the Hawk once, they will argue, it's liable to happen
again. Now, I want to give you some advice, Matt, and if you follow
it you will profit by it. Cassidy and I, together with Burke and
Harris, are going to leave here this afternoon in the _Grampus_ for
New Orleans. I can be carried down to the boat, and I will feel a heap
better in the _Grampus_ than I will in this hotel. In two or three days
we will be in New Orleans. While we are making the journey, you and
your friends, Matt, will be here, getting the air ship in shape. My
advice to you is this: Don't leave Palm Beach until you hear from me. I
have a scheme floating around in my brain and I am going to telegraph
you just as soon as it takes a little more form so I will know just
what I want to do, and to have you do.
"That's my advice. Stay here until you get word from me. That's all I'm
going to tell you, and you and your friends can take the advice, or
leave it, just as you think best. But if you don't take it, you will
live to regret it."
This was odd talk for Mr. Townsend. First he tried to discourage Matt
and his friends from returning to Atlantic City, and now he was seeking
to keep them in Palm Beach for an indefinite period.
But all the boys had confidence in Townsend. Each of them believed that
he was planning something for their benefit, and they were disposed to
do as he suggested.
Townsend took his departure from Palm Beach just as he said he would
do. Bearing the iron chest with him, he took the _Grampus_ and started
for New Orleans.
Meanwhile, Matt and Carl and Dick got busy with the Hawk. The craft was
put together again, the motor replaced, the envelope repaired, and in
two days everything was in readiness for a return to Atlantic City--if
the boys chose to go there.
"Vat do you subbose id iss dot Misder Downsent vants mit us?" asked
Carl.
"Give it up, matey," answered Ferral. "I can't smoke his weather roll,
but, all the same, I give him credit for meaning well."
"Shall we wait here any longer," inquired Matt, "or start back to
Atlantic City? Time means money to us, you know, and the longer we
wait, the more we lose--that is, if we don't intend to follow Mr.
Townsend's advice."
"It's one too many for me, matey," said Ferral. "You're the
longest-headed chap in the bunch, and suppose Carl and I leave the
decision entirely with you?"
"If that's the way you feel," laughed Matt, "we'll stay right here and
give Townsend all the chance he wants to communicate with us."
Two days after this conference, a telegram came from New Orleans. It
was addressed to Matt, signed by Townsend, and read as follows:
"Come to New Orleans at once, and come in the Hawk. I need your aid,
and am willing and able to pay for it."
"Dot's righdt to der point, und no misdake!" chuckled Carl. "'I vant
your aid und am villing to pay for it.' Dere's no gedding aroundt dot,
eh?"
"Hardly," laughed Ferral. "What are we going to do, Matt?"
"Do as the telegram says and start for New Orleans immediately,"
returned Matt.
"Iss dere any vay ve can go dere mitoudt trafeling ofer der ocean?"
asked Carl, with signs of trepidation.
"Sure there is, Carl," said Ferral. "I wouldn't go myself if we had to
travel across the Gulf of Mexico. But we don't have to. We can follow
the land around."
The start was made that afternoon, and, although this following of
Townsend's advice led Motor Matt and his friends into experiences as
novel as they were dangerous, yet none of them ever regretted taking
the trip around the Gulf coast to the Crescent City.
THE END.
THE NEXT NUMBER (13) WILL CONTAIN
Motor Matt's Queer Find;
OR,
THE SECRET OF THE IRON CHEST.
The Hut by the Bayou--Yamousa--The Attack On the
Car--Smoke-pictures--A Queer Find--Foul Play--Dried Frogs, and
Luck--The Plotters--The Head of Obboney--On the Trail--A Black
Mystery--At Close Quarters--Three in a Trap--An Astounding
Situation--The Treasure--Diamonds Galore.
MOTOR STORIES
THRILLING ADVENTURE MOTOR FICTION
NEW YORK, May 15, 1909.
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NIGHT WATCHES FOR BIG GAME.
From Sebenane to Thamasetse, both of which are pools of water situated
on the old Hunter's road from Francistown to the Zambesi, is, roughly
speaking, seventy-five miles. Since the railway has been opened up
between Francistown and Buluwayo this road is never used, and is
practically deserted. We had started very early in the morning. Just
about sunrise I heard a rustle in a bush close to the road, writes
Arnold W. Hodson in the _Field_. Thinking it was only a steinbuck or a
duiker, I paid no attention till I heard the animal bound away, when
it struck me as making rather a loud noise for so small an antelope. I
then caught sight of a yellow object moving parallel to the road and
saw it was a lioness.
She bounded into the road and stood looking at me. I had my thick
gloves on, as it was very cold, and in consequence rather fumbled
pulling off my night protector, which, to save time, I dropped on the
road instead of putting into my pocket. My pony, however, began to
pirouette round in circles, and before I could get him in hand the
lioness bounded away. I galloped after her down the road, but she soon
got into the thick bush, where we lost her.
We got to Thamasetse the next day and found old lion spoor, but none
fresh. Some days afterward one of the bushmen appeared and reported
that the lions were at Thamasetse. I got ready as soon as possible and
left that evening with one native. We rode all through the night and
arrived at our destination the next afternoon. The lions did not come
down to drink till the third night, when in the morning we found their
spoor still fresh and damp. We followed it up carefully, going through
thorn bush.
We got so close to them once or twice that we could hear them growling
(there were five altogether), but the wind changing, they smelled us
and made off and although we followed them up for some distance we did
not catch sight of them again. Eventually we had to give it up.
The following day we found the spoor of one male and one female, and
followed them up for about twelve to fourteen miles. We would come to
a place where they had been sleeping, and then, evidently smelling us,
we would see how they had become uneasy and gone on a short distance,
where they had slept again. This went on till we had gone too far and
had to go back.
After this experience I decided to try different tactics, so we dug a
hole fifteen yards from the water, in which I intended to watch that
night. We made the hole as inconspicuous and secure as possible, and
then went around to the outside pools and filled them all up, so that
the lions, if they wanted to drink, would have to come down to our
water. At sundown I took up my position in the kadiri (the native name
for "game hole"). A few hours afterward some sable and roan antelopes
came down to drink, and it was a very pretty sight to watch them.
They approach the water carefully and when quite close suddenly bound
away. My opinion is that they do this to see if by chance there is a
lion in the water hole, because the latter lie up close to the edge of
the pool in the shadow of the bank and then spring on the game when it
drinks. The mere fact of their bounding away would probably entice the
lion forth. The sable antelope seemed to me to be always more cautious
than the roan antelope. One of the former, a female, came twelve times
to the water and dashed away each time. Of course she may have just
smelled me, which would have accounted for it; but I do not think she
did, for she eventually drank.
I kept watch night after night, and although I saw plenty of game, no
lions came. It was very lonely by oneself in these holes, and the cries
of the wolves and jackals are at times very uncanny. One evening at
dinner time just as Ranchubu, my servant, was bringing in the soup,
one of my little bushmen, a splendid little chap of about 14 and very
plucky, who was going down to the water to fill his billy, suddenly
commenced yelling with all his might "Newe! Newe!" (leopard, leopard),
and then, still shouting, commenced running after it across the veld. I
snatched up my rifle and calling to the dogs rushed after him. Luckily,
I had on a pair of light running shoes instead of my usual heavy
shooting boots, so was easily able to keep up with the others who had
joined us.
We must have gone about three miles when we heard the dogs barking
and knew that they had bayed the leopard. In a few minutes it would
be quite dark, so I put on a fresh spurt to try to get a shot while I
could see my sights. The leopard was standing outside a thick patch of
bush with the dogs, furiously excited, surrounding him. After several
shots and misses, the leopard breaking away each time, a lucky shot
struck him in the neck and killed him.
I was glad the matter ended as it did, for I found that two of my
previous shots had hit him, and it is seldom that a wounded leopard
does not attack his assailant. It is curious that he did not take to
a tree, as is nearly always the case when chased by dogs. He was an
excellent specimen of a large male. We got back to the camp about 9 p.
m., a very jubilant party, and when I had had my supper I again took up
my position at the water hole. Plenty of game came that night, but no
lions.
The next day was very hot and oppressive, and we felt sure that if
lions were anywhere near they would come down that night to drink. I
took up my position soon after sundown, and about 12 o'clock, as we had
no meat, shot a male sable antelope. He was mortally wounded and ran
about sixty yards to die, when, as I discovered, in the morning, he was
pounced upon by a lioness and immediately killed. I heard nothing and
saw nothing till about 3 a. m., when I heard lap, lap, lap from the
pool in front of me.
I knew by the noise the beast was making it could be nothing else but
a lion, but for the moment I could see nothing, as it was in the pool,
and from the position I could only see an animal as it came in or went
out. At last the noise stopped and a shadowy figure came out of the
pool. It stood for an instant on the edge silhouetted against the sky.
I could not distinguish whether it was a male or a female, but there
was no doubt it was a lion, and, as it turned out afterward, a female.
I brought my rifle in line with the object and fired. I knew at once I
had hit by the terrific growls that followed. I hastily fired again and
the brute lay down, all the time growling terribly, so much so that it
woke up all the natives in my camp, some distance away.
As soon as it was light I could see her ears moving and fired again,
this time hitting her just below the head, which finished the matter.
She was a splendid specimen of a lioness. My first shot had hit her in
the neck, and the second in the stomach. Her skin was perfect and very
glossy. We found the remains of the sable antelope she had killed about
eighty yards away, and saw by the spoor that there had been at least
six lions around the pool that night.
They had evidently been frightened by the fate of the lioness and had
not come down to drink. We followed the spoor of a lion and a lioness.
After we had gone a short distance the bushman pointed to a tree and
showed us where the lion had been standing up on his hind legs clawing
it. He said that the lion was looking around for the lioness I had
shot and was very angry at being disturbed from his feast of the sable
antelope. We went on mile after mile, but a breeze springing up behind
us we had to go back.
That night I again sat up at the water hole, but saw nothing more
exciting than a few sable and roan antelopes. The next day it was again
very hot, and at night I went down to the hole full of hope that the
lions would come back. About 1 a. m. I heard a rustle and saw a leopard
going into the pool, walking very quietly and without the least idea
of my near presence. She disappeared into the pool, but I could not
hear her drinking, as I had heard the lioness two nights before. She
soon came out and stood for a few minutes on the bank; I fired and she
bounded away. My bullet went through her body and she was found next
morning a few yards distant. She was very prettily marked, in good
condition.
About 3 a. m. the same morning I could hear some animals at the remains
of the sable antelope. The cracking of the bones was one of the most
horrible noises I have ever heard. I made sure that the lions had come
back, and expected them when they had finished their feed to come down
and drink; but they did not come, and in the morning we found that they
were jackals that had been eating the meat during the night.
I continued to sit up at nights, but the lions did not return. On the
third evening just before going down to the game hole the leader came
running into camp and said that he had heard the cries of a dying sable
antelope, so we went out as quickly as possible to the place, and on
getting near to it heard the peculiar half growl, half bark uttered by
wild dogs. There were four or five of them. They did not run away when
they saw us, but bounded a few yards and then turned round and looked
at us, all the time making a hideous noise. I shot one of them and the
rest then decamped. This wild dog appeared to me to be differently
marked from one I had shot a few weeks before more to the southwest.
These brutes do no end of damage among game, and the bushmen say that
sometimes if they are disturbed in their orgies they will attack a man.
They certainly look fierce enough to do so.
SPECIALISTS IN THE WOODS.
Only people who have poked around up there more or less realize how
many persons make a living out of the Maine woods. This reference is
not to the lumbermen and the pulp stuff choppers. Their presence in
the woods is a matter of course. This is a word about the army of
specialists. One might say that they are the gleaners who follow the
red-shirted reapers whose harvest is the giants of the forests. The
side issues of the Maine woods feed many mouths; and speaking about
mouths there are, of course, the gum pickers.
Some people have an idea that spruce gum is gathered in the forest by
the lumbermen at odd jobs. It may be remarked in passing that from 4:30
a. m. until dark the Maine loggers have something else to do. They
haven't any hankering to climb trees.
Practically all the spruce gum of commerce is gathered by men who make
it their business and work at it as steadily as a man in a factory. You
will find the snowshoe trail of these busy chaps zigzagging through
pathless stretches, and if you happen to be up that way you will see
their camp-fires glowing deep in many a lonely glen.
Few people behold them at their work. The constant supply of gum in
store windows shows they are kept busy.
There is more or less excitement about gum picking. The standard price
for gum is $1 a pound, and a fancy article of clear nuggets brings
$1.50. Some days when lucky strikes are frequent the gum picker can
clear from $5 to $10.
The gum picker can sell even the scraps and chippings. The patent
spruce gum maker boils those down. Several medicine firms also make a
spruce gum cough balsam.
Maine gum pickers usually travel in pairs. Some go on their own hook,
others are employed by wholesale druggists. Usually they range over
wide territory, sleeping here and there in the deserted logging camps
that sprinkle northern Maine. A few fresh boughs of browse in the bunks
and some strips of bark over the habitable corner of the camp make the
place a comfortable home.
If a city man happens to be ordered into the woods by his physician he
would do well to take up gum picking for his pastime, even if he does
not care for the money. There is just enough activity about it to keep
a man's mind clear and his muscles healthy. It takes him abroad through
the crisp winter air and gives him an excuse for "hucking it."
A gum picker's equipment comprises warm clothing, snowshoes,
climbers--such as telegraph linemen use--a curved chisel in the handle
of which a pole may be set, a good jack-knife and a gun. These are the
necessaries.
Almost as necessary is a good supply of tobacco, for if you can imagine
a gum picker sitting down of an evening by the camp fire and cleaning
his day's pick of gum without clouds of smoke about his head your
imagination pictures a very cheerless scene.
There is a special thing about gum picking--the daily expenses are
small. The men cannot register at hotels or patronize saloons. It is
either a deserted camp or the lee side of a tree at night.
As they are obliged to tote their household supplies on a moose sled,
they are frugal in their diet. With plenty of work, a few bushels of
beans, flour, and molasses, a gum picker is fixed nicely for a long and
cold winter. He figures that it costs him about 50 cents a week, and if
he is handy with his gun he reduces expenses materially.
Of course it is rather lonely sometimes in the deep woods, but there is
a pretty bright side to the picture.
The gum picker rolls off his bunk in the morning, his nostrils full of
the good green savor of the spruce boughs beneath his head all night.
He fries his bacon, warms his beans and sloofs at his steaming tin of
tea.
Then he has a leisurely smoke before the sputtering embers of the fire,
gets his kit on his back and his gum bag under his arm, ties a lunch of
biscuit and gingerbread in his handkerchief, straps on his snowshoes,
and trudges away into the forest, his pipe trailing blue smoke behind
in the sparkling air of the winter morning.
The gum picker must have a good eye for trees. A careless and myopic
man would travel over acres of territory and miss the dollars right
along. The shrewd picker, the experienced man, runs his practiced eye
along every trunk.
Here and there he sees a tall spruce marked by a seam through which its
life-blood has oozed for years. The bubbles have crept out and have
been clarified day by day in the sun and the rain. They have absorbed
the odoriferous breath of the forest.
There they are at last, amber and garnet nuggets, ready for the
picker's chisel and for the teeth of the gum-chewing girls far away in
the city. Sometimes the picker goes up on his climbers and taps and
ticks and picks like a giant woodpecker. Sometimes the tree is felled.
The gum king of the Moosehead region is a rather cranky old chap, who
has been at the business ever since he was a youth. He roams all over
that region and has reduced the thing to a science.
At regular intervals he makes a trip through some remote district and
wounds the spruces with his ax and chisel. Then after a few years he
travels around that way and gathers the gum.
It is only in Maine that the great gum nuggets with centres like the
red of a dying coal are obtained, and the folks that chew gum say that
for yanking qualities this gum beats the world.
The Maine hoop pole man makes even better wages than his brother the
gum picker. The hoop pole man follows along in the wake of the loggers.
He barbers the face of the hillsides of stuff that no one else wants.
He is after the second growth, as the young birch and ash are called.
These spring up around the rotting stumps.
The hoop pole man takes a horse with him in his tours. He cuts the
poles, and the horse hauls them to camp by daylight. Evenings the pole
man fashions the hoops with a draw shave, sitting beside a roaring fire
and sucking at his black pipe.
Sometimes the poles are sold round, but the harvester who trims his
own stuff and shaves the hoops receives two or three cents each for
the finished products, and that pays. The hoop pole business is pretty
steady work, but the evenings are pleasant, after all, with the slish
of shaves, the crackle of the fire and the rumble of story telling.
Even the rabbit, up-ending outside, looks in through the windows at the
light and warmth, waggles his ears and wishes he might join the group.
As soon as the hoop poles are sold each is marked across with red chalk
a little way from the end. For some time in certain parts of Maine
persons did a snug business by stealing poles, but nowadays no dealer
will buy any that have been thus marked. Yet sometimes the canny thief
cuts off the ends that bear the chalk mark.
A while ago one man sold his hoop poles to a dealer, who marked them
and laid them in his sled. Then the seller came around by night, stole
the poles, cut them off and sold them to another dealer as hoops for
half barrels. It may be seen, therefore, that the city man doesn't know
all the tricks. If this enterprising hoop pole man could have got the
hoops once more he could have trimmed them down and disposed of them as
hoops for nail kegs.
Then there is the axe handle man. He needs ash of a larger growth than
the hoop pole saplings. The trees are chopped in the fall, and then by
means of a "froe" and axe each handle is roughly blocked out. Then they
are buried so that they may season without cracking.
As an additional precaution against parting of the fibres the broad end
of each handle is daubed with a sort of paint the principal ingredient
of which is grease. Ash goes to pieces easily if the sun gets at it and
the axe handle man must be careful of his wares. The rough handles are
sent away to the factory as soon as the snow comes.
Of all tough jobs the ship knee man has the worst in the woods. The
knees bring good prices, but the man who gets them out earns every cent.
He goes prospecting with an axe, hunting for hack or back juniper or
tamarack. When one is found he looks to see if it has the proper crook
in its root. If the right angle is there and the root proves sound he
sets to work digging it out--and it is a muscle racking job.
The man who is after hemlock bark for the tanneries is another chap who
strays far in the woods, for the bark is away back nowadays.
The Indian who hunts after basket stuff or birch bark for a canoe hull
is the most patient searcher. The big birches are few and far between
in the Maine woods, and sometimes an Indian from the Penobscot or
Passamaquoddy tribe will tramp a hundred miles before he finds a tree
that will yield a piece of bark without knothole or crack and which
will be large enough for a canoe.
A number of men are now making good money in the Maine woods by
searching the brooks for fresh water clams. They are getting some
good pearls from these bivalves. Some hunters in the Moosehead region
recently found a pearl valued at $200.
The most unsocial folk in the Maine forests are the trappers. They
don't want anyone within twenty miles of them. Gunners will steal from
the traps, they believe, and lumbermen scare away game. Even bobcats
rob them, as bloody smears near a rifled trap indicate.
Some of the old trappers have a twenty-mile circuit of traps and resent
it if any neighbors come that way. Some of the biggest rough and
tumbles that the Maine beavers have ever witnessed have been fought
out by bow-legged old trappers who have chanced to cross trails and
have believed that they were being crowded on a hundred square miles of
territory.
MISSOURI WILLOW FARM.
East Kansas City is one of the most important centres in the Missouri
Valley in the business of shipping willows. In the last three months
alone the Kansas City Southern Railway has hauled from there 140 flat
carloads of trimmed willows, and is taking out more as fast as the
willow plantations can furnish the crop.
The roots of the willows keep the sand from shifting along the river
banks; but the use of the tops of willows in fighting currents of water
is comparatively new. Government work with willows requires that the
trees shall be more than twelve feet high and between 3/4 and 2-1/2
inches in diameter at the butts. After a patch of these trees has been
cut the ground looks like a stubblefield of corn. The new sprouts,
however, look more like a field of wheat--if wheat only had that
peculiar reddish tinge that willows take on at this time of the year.
In two and a half to three years after cutting willows will grow up
again to the size required for dikes or for plaiting into mats.
The willows now being bought by the railway are for use in checking the
inroads of the Arkansas River between Spiro and Fort Smith, Ark. The
dikes that are being constructed run out into the river 150 feet and
are of willows held in place with large steel cables. Since December
11 nearly 800 carloads of trees--not all of these willows--have been
dumped into the river.
The sand filling the crevices between the bundles of willows makes a
strong and economical pier. The steel cables insure the safety of the
pier until the sand has done its work.
In cutting and trimming the willows the harvesters use nothing but
ordinary corn knives.
ANIMALS THAT DREAD RAIN.
Lions, tigers, and all the cat tribe dread rain. On a rainy day they
tear nervously up and down their cages, growling and trembling. The
keepers usually give them an extra ration of hot milk. That puts them
to sleep.
Wolves love a gray day of rain. They are then very cheery. Treacherous
as the wolf is, no keeper need fear him on a rainy day. He is too happy
to harm a fly.
Snakes, too, like rain. They perk up wonderfully as the barometer falls
and the damp makes itself felt in their warm cases of glass.
Rain makes monkeys glum. They are apt from instinct, when they see it
through the window, to clasp their hands above their heads and sit so
for hours. That attitude, you know, makes a kind of shelter. It is the
primitive umbrella. So, when it rained, the naked primitive man and
woman sat gloomily in the primeval swamps of giant ferns.
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408--Buffalo Bill Besieged; or, Texas Kid's Last Trail.
409--Buffalo Bill and the Red Hand; or, The Ranch of Mystery.
410--Buffalo Bill's Tree-Trunk Drift; or, The Cold Game "Gent" from
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411--Buffalo Bill and the Spectre; or, A Queer Layout in Spook CaƱon.
412--Buffalo Bill and the Red Feathers; or, The Pard Who Went Wrong.
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324--For Big Money; or, Beating His Way to the Pacific. By Fred
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328--The Mystic Isle; or, In Peril of His Life. By Fred Thorpe.
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333--A Bid for Fortune; or, True as Steel. By Fred Thorpe.
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7--Motor Matt's Clue; or, The Phantom Auto.
8--Motor Matt's Triumph; or, Three Speeds Forward.
9--Motor Matt's Air-Ship; or, The Rival Inventors.
10--Motor Matt's Hard Luck; or, The Balloon House Plot.
11--Motor Matt's Daring Rescue; or, The Strange Case of Helen Brady.
12--Motor Matt's Peril; or, Castaway in the Bahamas.
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ADVENTURES OF A BOY GENIUS
MOTOR STORIES
Most five-cent weeklies are founded upon the adventures of boy wonders
who perform all sorts of impossible feats and who never act or talk as
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more logical reading than the old-time boy did.
The boys who want to learn something from what they read, as well
as to be interested by it, will never find another publication that
will satisfy them so well as MOTOR STORIES. "Motor Matt" is not an
impossible boy character. He is simply a youth who has had considerable
training in a machine shop where motors of all kinds were repaired,
and who is possessed of a genius for mechanics. His sense of right and
wrong is strongly developed, and his endeavors to insure certain people
a square deal lead him into a series of the most astonishing, but at
the same time the most natural, adventures that ever befell a boy.
Buy the current number from your newsdealer. We feel sure that you
will be just as enthusiastic about it as the fifty thousand other boys
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HERE ARE THE TITLES NOW READY:
No. 1.--Motor Matt; or, The King of the Wheel.
No. 2.--Motor Matt's Daring; or, True to His Friends.
No. 3.--Motor Matt's Century Run; or, The Governor's Courier.
No. 4.--Motor Matt's Race; or, The Last Flight of the "Comet."
No. 5.--Motor Matt's Mystery; or, Foiling a Secret Plot.
No. 6.--Motor Matt's Red Flier; or, On the High Gear.
No. 7.--Motor Matt's Clue; or, The Phantom Auto.
TO BE PUBLISHED ON APRIL 12th
No. 8.--Motor Matt's Triumph; or, Three Speeds Forward.
TO BE PUBLISHED ON APRIL 19th
No. 9.--Motor Matt's Air-ship; or, The Rival Inventors.
TO BE PUBLISHED ON APRIL 26th
No. 10.--Motor Matt's Hard Luck; or, The Balloon House Plot.
TO BE PUBLISHED ON MAY 3d
No. 11.--Motor Matt's Daring Rescue; or, The Strange Case of Helen Brady.
TO BE PUBLISHED ON MAY 10th
No. 12.--Motor Matt's Peril; or, Cast Away in the Bahamas.
=Price, Five Cents=
At all newsdealers, or sent, postpaid, by the publishers upon receipt
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* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Added table of contents.
Page 4, removed unnecessary apostrophe from "let's" in "That lets
the dago out."
Page 12, changed "Ruffin" to "Ruffian" for consistency with previous
volumes.
Page 21, corrected speaker from Carl to Matt in first sentence of
chapter XIII.
Page 30, changed "jobbs" to "jobs" ("lumbermen at odd jobs").