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An Ideal Publication For The American Youth

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Issued Weekly. Entered as Second-class Matter at the New York Post Office, according to an act of Congress, March 81879. Published by
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No. 78. NEW YORK, January 24, 1914. Price Five Cents.

 

OWEN CLANCY’S SQUARE DEAL;

Or, The Motor Wizard and the Black “Thunderbolt.”

By BURT L. STANDISH.

CHAPTER I.
THE FREAK CAR.

“Sufferin’ side winders!” exclaimed Jimmie Fortune.
“What in Sam Hill do you call that thing, pard?”
“Looks like a battleship on wheels; Jimmie/’ answéred

Owen ‘Clancy. “Hanged if I ever saw anything just like

it before.”

“Certainly. a most grotesque conception in the line of
motor vehicles,” remarked Judge Pembroke.

The judge\had brought Clancy, and Clancy’s new friend,
Fortune, to the Square-deal Garage for a purpose. Lafe
Wynn, the proprietor of the establishment, had not been
in the office, and so the three visitors had walked out into
the large room where the automobilés were stored.

_ The repair department was at the rear of the room.
Here, swung over a pit in whose depths some one was
working, was the queerest motor car Clancy had ever

its body resembled a huge cigar.

cockpit contained two seats and the ordinary «steering
whel and control apparatus. Rearward of the opening the
cifeular top continued.

There were no fenders or running board, and no search-
light or lamps were visible. The chassis was of the ordi-
Mary variety, however, although the tires were of unusual
construction, and plainly not pneumatic.

“Looks like a bloomin’ spraddle bug!” muttered Jim-
mie. “Wonder if the thing can 'go?”

“1 should say,” returned Owen, “that that is what it is
built for—speed. That pointed nose offers little resistance
to the wind, and if the length of the nose is any indica-

tion, six cylinders are tucked away under those circular

iron pilates. I'll bet it can go, Jimmie!”

; Back of the pointed
end the deck was cut away into a sort of cockpit. This

The car was painted a dull black. Lettered in white on
the side was the word, “Thunderbolt.”

“Thunderbolt, ech?” said the judge. “That name seems
to suggest speed.” ;

Just then a grimy face, with twinkling, good-humored
eyes, was pushed into sight over the edge of the pit.

“Hello, judge!” called a voice cheerily. “This chug
wagon is a good deal of a, what-is-it, don’t you think?
Well, it’s a brain twister in more senses of the word than
one. Fellow brought it in for repairs. It’s out of kilter,
somehow, but I'll be darned if I can figure just how.”

:“Come out of that hole, Lafe,” said the judge. “I want
to talk with you, and there’s a young man here whom I
want. you to meet.”

“T’ll be with you in a couple of shakes.”

The face with the twinkling eyes disappeared for a
moment, and then a tall, slender, well-built form climbed
out of the hole in the floor and stood in front of the three
visitors.

“Wynn,” continued the judge, “this is my friend, Owen
Clancy. The other lad is Jimmie Fortune. They are
‘pards,’ and friends of mine—friends whom I want to do
a good turn.”

Lafe Wynn pulled a greasy glove from his right hand.

“Any friend of the judge is a friend of mine,” said he,
shaking Clancy and Fortune by the hand in turn. “When
are you going to bring your cars over here and let me
take care of them, judge?” he asked, turning to Pem-
broke. ‘

“Well,” answered the judge, smiling, “I was going to
talk with you about that. There are some other matters
to be considered first, however. How is business, Lafe?”

“Rotten! The other.garages are bucking’ me hard, and
it appears like a difficult job to be square, and make a

 
 

2 NEW TIP TOP WEEKLY.

living. Look around. You don’t seé many cars in here,
do you?”

Truth to tell, the Square-deal Garage did not look to be
very prosperous. The premises were comparatively small,
to begin with, and had apparently been remodeled out of
an old barn. Apart from the Thunderbolt, which was but
a stray car brought in for repairs, there were only four
others in the place. And Wynn, the proprietor, evidently
took care of the meager business.

“Don’t be discouraged,” said the judge kindly. “The
policy you have inaugurated is bound to win out, in
time.”

“Sure,” was the laughing response, “but I may go to the
wall before the policy helps me much. It’s a little one-
horse establishment, but,” and there was wistfulness in
the grimy face, “I’d like to see it make good, and grow.”

“I’m going to help it grow. Come into the office, where
we can talk.”

“You've got to talk with me just as I am, judge. I’ve

. got to figure out what’s wrong with this freak catamaran
and have it ready for the road this afternoon. It be-
longs to some scientific chaps who desigtied the car for
desert trips.”

The four walked into the office. Owen and Jimmie sat
on a bench, the judge took a chair, and Wynn perched
himself on the corner of a table.

“Who seems to be bucking you hardest, Wynn?” Pem-
broke. inquired.
. “Rockwell, of.the Red Star,” was the answer. “I’m -not
hammering, you understand, but I don’t think Rockwell’s
competition is honest. A lot of you rich men keep. your
cars in his place. Act as though you were afraid I. didn’t
know my business,” Wynn added, with.a smile.

“A little-while ago,” pursued the judge, “you offered: to
sell a half interest-in this place for a thousand dollars.”

“Nobody has been fool enough to buy.’ A part. of my
square-deal policy is to tell prospective purchasers that I’m
not making expenses, but that I hope to struggle into ‘a
good thing before long.” i Ae

“That’s not the way to. sell anything.”

“T know,” was,the blunt answer, “but it’s my way. |
don’t want to have a pattner sobbing over a’mistake after
he is in with me.”
and the judge nodded toward the: red-
I have advised him

“Clancy, there,”
headed youth, “has a thousand dollars.
to buy a half interest here.”

The twinkling eyes turned to Clancy with fresh interest.

“Know anything about motors, Clancy?” he asked. “I’m
not looking for a figurehead, you understand, but for a
partner who'll be active and do his full share of the
work.”

“He’s a motor wizard,” declared Pembroke, ' taking
Claney’s answer out of his mouth. “I reckon he wouldn’t
put it as strong as that, but that is what he is.”

“Good!” continued Wynn. “This is a struggling estab-
lishment, Clancy, and, up to now, I have been the whole
force. There are just four cars stored here, and the
owners of three of the machines take care of them them-
selves. The other car belongs to a lady. That totals
thirty-three dollars a month By selling oil and gasoline,
and doing odd repair jobs, I’ve been running the total up
to seventy-five a month—and I have to pay fifty a month
for the rent of this old shack. I want you to know how it
is. If the business grows, we can make money. If it

 

doesn’t grow, you'd lose your thousand, and a lot of val-
uable time. Think it. over.”

“T like you, and I like the place,” returned Clancy.
“Besides that, I consider Judge Pembroke’s judgment is
mighty good. I’m willing to take hold here and help build
up the business.”

“You two would make-a good team,” put in the judge.
“Just to show you, Wynn, that Clancy is really a motor

wizard, I’m going to ask him to go out and fix that freak

car while we're talking in here.”

“That’s not a fair test,’ demurred Wynn. “That thing-
um-bob, out there, would puzzle the best motor expert
that ever lived.”

“It won’t puzzle Clancy,” said Pembroke confidently

“Vl bet it will, judge,” laughed Clancy.

“Everything seems to be all right,” explained Wynn,
“but the engine won’t run, The curved plates in the point
open like the sides of a hood and

“Not a word, Lafe,” cut in the judge. “I want Clancy
to figure it all out for himself. That will make a better
test of it. It’s now eleven-ten,”
his ‘watch. ° “Go to it, Clancy, and I’ll time you.”

Clancy left the office. Judge Pembroke kept his watch
in his hand. ae a

“T happen to know,

 

judge, that Professor Martin has
had that freak car to every garage in town. None of them
could put the engirie in shape. ‘I’m always’ a last resort”
—Wynn spoke grimly—‘“and af professor thought he
would: take a chance on me. I'll admit I am staggered.
What -can this youtig chap, ee do, with: every maigie
anician. in towtr throwing. up his hands?”

The judge’s confident’ smile- did not waver:

“Reddy has this here machinery business throwed: dil

hogtied,” spoke up: Fortune: “You.:can’t faze him at
nothin’, He’s'my pard, arid‘I reckon I know.”
“Clancy came here to collect a note for a

thousand
dollars against Rockwell,” said the judge. 7S
“And: didn’t make good, ‘eh?” ‘queried Wynn.
“Ves, he did, Lafe:’ Rockwell hired Clancy to work for
him and then set up my Hibbard, to
steal the note from.Clancy.. The scheme went wrong; and.

discharged driver,

while it was going wrong Clancy and Fortune leafned that

my house was going to be robbed.” Clancy ‘and Fortine
did what they could for me, and I appreciate: it: “That's
why T helped Clancy wring the thousand dollars out of
Rockwell, and “that’s. why I have: advised him to buy an
interest in this garage of yours. I know you and T Know
Clancy, and. I'll bet’ a thousand against a plugged nickel
that you’ two’ will make good. Why, you’ll——

The judge was interrupted by a pop and sptitter’ com-
ing from the big room. Wynn. jumped: from the edge of
the table and took a listening attitude. The sputter length-
ened out into a steady hum.

“By George,” cried’ Wynn,
running !”

“the Thunderbolts motor is
“Whoop-ya!” jubilated Fortune. . “My red-headed com-
padre has turned the trick! Next timé you got to bat tip
somethin’ real hard to him.”

rising . and

“Fifteen minutes,” announced the judge,
pocketing his watch. “Oh, I reckon he’s a motor wee
all right!”

Wynn flung open the office door and started for the
Thunderbolt.
his heels.

he remarked, pulling out —

The judge and Jimmie followed close at

ft

  

 

 

 

 

   

 

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CHAPTER II.
CLANCY & WYNN.

When those from the office reached the shop, they found
that Glancy had rolled the Thunderbolt off the planks—by
which it had been suspended over the pit—under its own
power. The young “wizard” was still sitting in the cock-
pit of the queer machine. He seemed wrapped in thought,
for he leaned over the steering wheel with his eyes bent
on vacancy. The motor was purring sweetly under the
pointed hood. 4
"By George!” exclaimed Wynn. “How did you ever
get that old pop bottle to going, Clancy?”

Clancy brought his mind back from its woolgathering,

got out of the machine, and explained how he had ex-

amined the car and made the slight adjustment that had
put the motor back in commission.

“T never saw a finer piece of mechanism, Wynn,” he re-
marked, his face glowing with admiration. “This car is
built like’a watch. The fuel reservoir is three times as
big as you'd expect to find, and the Thunderbolt’s cruis-
ing Tadius must be three hundred miles, at least. There’s
one searchlight, right in the point, and it’s concealed by a
shutter that opens automatically.”

He bent over and touched a button. Noiselessly a shut-
ter unfolded and a blinding glare shot across the garage.

“Great, eh?” continued Clancy enthusiastically. “And

_there’s a shaded bulb on the dash that illuminates the °

clock, speedometer dial, and everything else on the con-

| trol bulkhead. That master vibrator is a peach! The self-

starter is electric, and so are the lights. All the while
the motor is running, the ‘juice’ is being saved in a storage
battery. And yet, although the mechanism is so delicate
and fine, it’s plain that the car was built to stand the hard
knocks.”

He shut off the searchlight and stopped the motor.

“The whole thing is shipshape and ready for the trail
—or the untracked deserts,” he added. “What sort of a
scientific highbrow owns the machine, Wynn?”

“Two of them had it towed in here,” replied Wynn.
“They said they were out picking up desert specimens,
Studying the picture rocks, and examining old acequias for
the Smithsonian Institute. They'll be mightily pleased to
have the car in running order again. Clancy, I reckon you
and I are going to hook up in great shape. You're just
the sort of fellow I’ve been looking for. If you’ve got
the nerve to drop a thousand dollars into this risky garage
venture, we'll put ‘Clancy & Wynn’ over the door and start
off together.”

“Vm game,” was the answer, “only you'd better have
the sign read ‘Wynn & Clancy.”

“The other way sounds better to me—with the ‘Wynn’
tacked on the end of it. Got a successful ring, don’t you
think ?”

“It has, and that’s a ‘fact.
good business asset.”

That name of yours is a

“Say, compadres,” spoke up Jimmie, “the firm name
would have a still better ring if it was ‘Clancy, Wynn &
Fortune’ Talk about business assets. I’ve got a label
that is plumb to the good. How about it?”

Wynn looked smilingly at Jimmie.

“Are you a motor expert, too?” he inquired.

“Well, { know which end of a benzine buggy runs ahead,
and thats about the hull of it. But I’m right spry at

| Jimmie,” said Wynn, “charge them eight dollars.

   

NEW TIP TOP WEEKLY. 4

learnin’. You can’t run this here place without me. Ought
to have seventy-five a month, but I’ll work for fifty per.”

“Fifty perhaps,” grinned Wynn. “If Clancy and I had
all that money in sight we’d divide it between us.”

“Shucks!” grunted Jimmie. “Pard,”’ and he appealed to
Clancy, “you ain’t goin’ to turn me down, are you?”

“Jimmie is a good sort of a chap, Wynn,” said Clancy,
turning to his business partner. “Would you have any
objection to his taking hold here if I paid his board and
keep for a month and he didn’t ask for any wages? In
a month we ought to know how matters are going to
shape up, and maybe we'll be so prosperous after that
we can pay him real money.”

“I can’t object to such an arrangement, Clancy, al-
though I’ve been able to do everything here single-handed.
Do you want to close up this partnership deal right
away?”

“At once,” was the prompt reply.

“Leave Jimmie here to watch the garage,” suggested the
judge, “and you two come with me. I'll help you attend
to the formalities.”

Wynn went to a sink and made himself more present-
able.

“If those fellows come for that car before we get back,
That
will be four dollars an hour for two hours——”

“Tut, tut!” cut in the judge. “You ought to charge
twenty-five dollars, at least.”

“I can’t go back of my schedule of prices,” laughed
Wynn. “If Clancy thinks we ought to change the schedule,
we'll talk it over; but the rate is established and I think
it ought to stand.”

Clancy nodded approval, and the judge smiled. A little
later all three of them left the garage in charge of Jim-
mie and went off to attend to the necessary matters’ for
transferring half the business to Clancy. :

There was something on Clancy’s mind, and it was evi-
dent that it bothered him considerably.

“Do you think the Thunderbout will be called for while
we're gone, Wynn?” he asked, halting outside the garage.

“I’m almost sure it won’t be,” was the answer. “The
owners of the machine said I’d probably need all day to
repair it, so they wouldn’t call before evening. I just
told Fortune what to charge them in case they happened
to drop in before they were expected.”

Judge Pembroke was some distancé ahead and leading
the way down the street.

“See anything queer about that car?” Clancy asked, in
a low tone, as he and Wynn started on together.

“Queer?” repeated the other, flashing a curious glance
at his companion. “Why, the whole machine is queer,
and——.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I don’t just seem to ‘get’ you, Clancy,” said the puzzled
Wynn.

“Oh, all right,” returned Clancy. “I'll explain later.”

In an hour the papers had been drawn and signed, a ©
thousand dollars in cash turned over, and Clancy was the
owner of a half interest in the Square-deal Garage. The
judge would take no money for his services, and warmly
congratulated both young men on their future prospects.

“You fellows: are going to make a winner of that
garage,” said he. “I am as sure of that as I am that I
am alive this minute. Stick to that ‘square-deal’ motto,
and, in course of time, you'll get the cream of the garage
 

4 NEW. TIP TOP WEEKLY.

trade in this town. Good luck to the firm of Clancy &
Wynn!”

“How about those cars of yours, judge?” inquired Wynn.
“If you're going to be a booster for the new firm, you
might let the ‘Square Deal’ look after the big six and the
electric.”

“Wait a minute.”

The judge sat down at his desk, picked up his pen, and .

wrote a few lines.

“There,” and he handed a paper to Wynn, “is an order
on Rockwell for my two cars. You and Clancy can go
after them this afternoon and tdke them to your garage.”

A glow of pleasure overspread Wynn’s face.

“Tudge,” he cried,'“you’re the clear quill! Clancy, and
I won’t forget what you have done for us, and you can
count on finding those cars in bang-up condition whenever
they are called for.”

“Just see that they aren’t in a banged-up condition,”
was the laughing response, “and I'll be satisfied.”

On the way back to the garage the partners stopped in
at a restaurant and celebrated the beginning of their busi-
ness career with a hearty dinner.

Wynn, Clancy learned, had once been a mechanic’s
helper in a garage in Chicago. His health had failed, and
he had ‘come to that part of the Southwest, three years
before, to recuperate. A year in that dry, clear air had
brought back his health but depleted his finances, and he
had gone to work in a Phoenix garage as mechanic.

The methods in that particular garage were high-handed
to the verge of robbery. Being a young man of honest
character and high ideals, Lafe Wynn’s whole nature had
revolted. He kept ‘his place and drew his pay, but mean-
while dreamed of starting a garage of his own, with
“Square Deal” above the front doors and the principle of
the-square deal running through every detail of the estab-
lishment.

In a year he had saved money enough to start in a small
way. By signing a lease for a year at fifty dollars a
month he had persuaded the owner of a big barn, no
longer used for livery purposes, to remodel the structure.
Wynn had equipped the place with as much machinery as
his slender savings would allow, and had then begun an
up-hill fight, with all the other garages solidly against him
and trying to put him out of business.

He had hung on for three months, leading a sort of
from-hand-to-mouth existence, confident that luck would
turn if he could only manage to keep going. But he ad-
mitted that he would have: had to close his doors very
soon had not Clancy happened along with that thousand.

“This money, Owen,” said he, “goes into the bank to
the firm’s account. We'll use it for keeping our heads
above water until the tide turns.”

“The tide has already begun to turn, Lafe,” Clancy an-
swered. “Judge Pembroke is on our side, and he has a
big influence in this town.” =“

“That’s right; but we have a tough combination bunched
against us. We'll have to watch sharp, or the other
garages will get us, in spite of the judge. Rockwell, of
the Red Star, is the one we must look out for. He'll be
pretty ‘sore’ at us for getting the judge away from him.”

When the partners got back to their establishment, they
found Jimmie lording it around the place. And they also
found, much to Clancy’s apparent relief, that the Thunder-
bolt had not been called for.

Clancy gave Jimmie a quarter, and told him to go out

and get his dinner, then; as soon as Jimmie was gone,
Clancy led Wynn to the freak machine.

“Get on the other side of the car, Lafe,” said Claney,
“and watch. I’ll show you what it is that’s bothering me.”

Wynn leaned over the cockpit close to the steering
wheel. Clancy pulled at the tufted edge of a seat\cushion,
released and doubled back a leather flap, then thrust the
fingers of his left hand into an aperture and dumped into
his right palm a number of small yellow lumps.

“Great jumping Maria!” exclaimed the astounded Wynn.
“What’s that?”

“Gold nuggets,” returned Clancy, “Question is, Lafe,
what are those scientific sharps doing with the stuff?”

CHAPTER III.
UGLY SUSPICIONS.

Wynn’s eyes were almost popping from his head. Me-
chanically he took one of the small yellow pebbles from his
partner’s hand and gave it a closer inspection. ,

“You're right, Owen,” he breathed; “this stuff is the real
thing. And it’s cached in the seat cushion! Funny place
to carry a lot of nuggets! How did you ever find out the
stuff was there?”

“That was a happenchance,” was the reply. “I leatted
over the cockpit to push the button of the self-starter and
rubbed my arm against the edge of the cushion. The
flap opened, and I thought the cushion was torn. Then
I investigated and found the yellow lumps.”

“How many are there, all together?”

“A big double handful—two or three pounds, I should
say. This stuff hasn’t anything to do with picture rocks,
or desert specimens, Lafe, and these Smithsonian chaps
would hardly carry their money in that shape. Even if

they did prefer nuggets to double eagles or banknotes, |

they wouldn’t hide the nuggets in a seat cushion!”

“Hardly,” muttered Wynn. “This is too deep for me,
and that’s a fact.”

“Two men brought the car here?”

“Yes.”

“What did they look like?”

“Like highbrows—dead ringers for professors, out on
a hike. They wore solar hats and pugrees, khaki clothes
and puttees, and each had a pair of spectacles balanced
on his nose. A couple of old fossils, Owen. Maybe they
picked up that gold somewhere in their wanderings.”

“That hole in the cushion is a secret cache. If they
picked up the gold honestly, why did they think it neces-
sary to hide it?” '

Wynn’s first shock of surprise had passed. He now
showed a disposition to pooh-pooh the suspicions which
Clancy was plainly manifesting.

“Theyte professors, Owen,” said Wynn lightly, “and
professors fiever do things the way other folks do them.
Of course, we don’t know how they got this gold, but the
fact that they represent a great and honorable institution
proves that they are men of good character, and must have
come by the gold in a proper way. As for having a secret
cache in the car, there’s nothing about that to excite sus-
picion. The Thunderbolt travels in out-of-the-way places,

‘“

and its passengers probably encounter all kinds of tough.

and unwholesome people. In those circumstances, Owen,
I’d want to have my valuables concealed, too. Wouldn't
you?”

“Sure,” agreed Clancy: “For all that, though,” he added,

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

  
 

puckering up his brows, “I have a hunch that there’s
something wrong about this business.”’

Wynn came around to the front of the car. There was
a quiet smile on his face as he laid a friendly hand on
Clancy's shoulder.

“Old man,” said he, “I’ve found it pretty good policy,
during the time I’ve been in the garage work, not to get
too ‘nosey. When I thought of having a garage of my
own, I made up my mind that the affairs of my patrons
were their own entirely, and that I had no call to pry into
them. It’s just like a hotel, Owen. No hotel keeper looks

into the luggage of a guest to find anything incriminating,

although often it might be there. A garage, it strikes me,
should be run in the same way. If a machine runs in here
for a few gallons of gasoline or a quart of oil or a few
repairs, the needs are attended to, the account is squared,
and that ends it. Our business is with the car, and not
with the car’s owner. Eh? What do you think about
that?”

“Correct, Lafe!’”’ said Clancy promptly. “So far as
we're concerned, we’re to give everybody a square deal,
and not run a detective agency. Maybe I’m too darned
suspicious. I’ve been thrown with people lately who were
tricky, and needed watching, and maybe I’ve got the habit
of looking for crookedness,”

“I can understand that,” returned Wynn, “if you have
had anything to do with Silas Rockwell, of the Red Star
Garage. I don’t want to knock anybody, but it’s a cinch
that Rockwell isn’t straight.”

He dropped into Clancy’s palm the nugget he had been
holding, and Clancy at once returned the yellow lumps
to their place in the cushion and put the flap back as he
had found it.

“All the same,” commented the red-headed chap, “I
cant make it seem right that those nuggets should be
there.”

“They have been in that little cache while the Thunder-
bolt was being tinkered with in the other garages, It’s a
safe bet that you're the only one, Owen, who happened to
locate the gold. If those professors were up to anything
unlawful, they’d have been careful not to leave the stuff
there while the car was being overhauled. Wouldn't
they ?”’ Se

“T guess so—if they didn’t forget about it. Well,” and
Clancy laughed, “we'll forget about it. What's to be done
now, Lafe?”

“Nothing, except to go over to the Red Star, present
Judge Pembroke’s order, and bring back the big six and
the electric. We'll go as soon as Jimmie shows up.”

“That will be an easy job,” said Clancy, as the two
walked in the direction of the office.

“Maybe it won’t be so easy as you think. Rockwell is
apt to show his teeth. He hasn’t any use for me, and, as
I gaid, he'll be sore because we've taken the judge’s trade
away from him.”

“Old Rocks hasn’t any cause to love me, either,” re-
marked Clancy, as he dropped down on the office bench.
“T hired out to him yesterday, and was to begin work at
the Red Star this morning. Something happened last
night, though, that made me change my mind,”

Wynn displayed considerable interest.

“Did what happened have anything to do with that
thousand-dollar note?” he asked.

Clancy nodded.
“My father,” he explained, “had some investments in

    

   

NEW TIP TOP WEEKLY. : 5

Mexico, He went below the border to do what he could
to save them, but he lost out. Everything went to pot, and
the governor himself only got out of the country by the
skin of his teeth. Broken in health and fortune, he has
gone East, and here I’m left to make money enough to
keep the family going. That thousand-dollar note, signed
by Rockwell, was a doubtful asset: Everybody told me old
Rocks wouldn’t pay, but I came to Phoenix determined to
get that money:

“I was walking from Tempe—I didn’t want to waste
any money on stage fare—and I was nearly run down by
a big six-cylinder car on the mountain trail. There was a
cliff on one side of the road and a blank wall on the
other, so I flattened out against the wall and let the big
car slide past. But there was another fellow ahead who
wasn’t so lucky. He jumped the wrong way, and went
over the cliff. I pulled him up into the trail from a bit
of a shelf where he happened to lodge, and we came on
to Phoenix together. The fellow who went over the cliff
was Jimmie Fortune, Lafe, and the’big car was Judge
Pembroke’s, and the only passenger was the driver, Dirk
Hibbard.”

“Hibbard!” exclaimed Wynn. “I know him. For the
last few months he has been developing into a tough
citizen.”

“Well,” resumed Clancy, “Jimmie and I came upon Hib-
bard and the car at the foot of the mountain, The car
was disabled, and the judge and Rockwell had come hunt-
ing Hibbard in another machine. They were all there,
and the judge was laying the law down to Hibbard for
running away with the big six. Rockwell wanted to tow
the car into town and give it a thorough overhauling. All
that was the matter was crossed wires. I fixed the motor
for the judge in about two shakes, and——”

“Tt was a scheme of Rockwell’s,” declared Wynn hotly,
“to rob the judge of a big repair bill!”

“Sure!” said Clancy, with a laugh. “And when I nipped
the scheme in the bud I got both Hibbard and Rockwell
down on me. I rode into town with Rockwell, and told
him about the note. He said he’d get the thousand to-
gether, in a week or two, and pay up; meanwhile, I was
to work for him at fifty a month, and sleep in a little
room off the rear of the garage. Rockwell had another
scheme, as I found out later. He had put up a dodge
with Hibbard to steal the note, but the dodge went wrong.”

Clancy chuckled.

“Fortune happened to be sleeping in my bunk, at the
rear of the garage,” he continued, “and Hibbard and Long
Tom mistook him for me.”

“Long Tom? Chantay Seeche Tom?” :

“That’s the fellow, Lafe, and he’s a bad one. The
judge had received five thousand in cash from Prescott,
and, as it was after banking hours, had put the money in
a safe in his study, at home. Chantay Seeche Tom and
Hibbard went after it, last night, and Jimmie and I helped
save it for the judge. Hibbard was captured, but Long
Tom got away. Then the judge gave Hibbard a lecture,
and let him go. I’m telling you this so you'll understand
why Judge Pembroke is such a good friend to Jimmie and
me.

“The judge made Rockwell write me a check for that
note, with interest, and then advised me to buy in with
you here. I’ve taken his advice, and I’m glad of it. On
the way here from the Red Star I dropped in at the bank
and got the money on the check. Of course, I couldn’t
6 NEW TIP TOP WEEKLY.

show up to work for Rockwell. I’ve had proof that he’s
crooked, and I was only going to work there, anyway,
until he had paid the note.”

“You've had a mighty interesting experience, Owen,”
said Wynn, “and you were pretty lucky to make a friend
of the judge and have his help. I’m obliged to him for
advising you to buy an interest in this establishment.
We're going to get along fine—I can feel it in my bones.”

“If we don’t, Lafe,” returned Clancy, “it won’t be my
fault.”

Just then Jimmie came back. He had had a good meal
and was wearing a smile that could have been tied behind
his ears.

“I’m likin’ this job a heap,” said Jimmie. “By next

month there'll be more work than three of us can do, and
I'll be pullin’ down wages. Fust place I ever had where I
felt like I was goin’ to stick.”
-“Just hold yourself in, pard,’ advised Clancy, with a
smile, “and don’t bother with things you don’t know any-
thing about, That will help you to stick. Lafe and I are
going to the Red Star Garage to get the judge’s cars and
bring them over here. Watch the place while we're
away.”

“Better take me along,” advised Fortune.
need somebody who’s handy with his dukes.”

“I guess Lafe and I will be handy ‘enough, if it comes
to that,” said Clancy, as he and Wynn left the building
and started for First Avenue.

The Red Star Garage looked peaceable enough. Clancy
and Wynn stepped in through the broad doors—and the
next moment the peaceful atmosphere gave way to a threat
of squalls.

The office door banged, and Silas Rockwell, his face
fairly livid with rage, bounded into the big room and
planted himself fairly in front of his two callers.

“Get out o’ here!” he roared. “I won’t have you

‘trouble makers around the place!, D’you hear? Beat it!”

But Clancy and Wynn did not “beat it.” They stood

their ground.

“Mebby you'll

CHAPTER IV.
GETTING THE JUDGE’S CARS.

“Keep your shirt on, Rockwell,” said Wynn coolly.
“We're here on business, and as soon as it is finished
we'll be as glad to leave as you'll be to have us. Here’s
Cineniios”

Wynn had taken from his pocket the judge’s order for
the two machines. He held it toward Rockwell, but the
latter ignored it.

“lll have no business with you, one way or another!”
shouted the proprietor of the Red Star Garage. “You're
ruining the garage trade in this town with your cut-rate
methods and fool ideas, and you'll get your gruel before
you're much older. Clear out!”

“We'll clear out just as soon as you honor this order
of Judge Pembroke’s for his touring car and coupé,” said
Wynn, keeping himself well in hand.

“So you’ve got Pembroke’s trade away from me, have
you?” queried Rockwell, showing his teeth in a snarl.

“The judge made up his mind he wanted to change
garages. If you have any fault to find, Rockwell, go to
him. Meantime, there’s the order and we'll expect you
to turn over the cars.”

“You’ve sneaked around and’ soft-sawdered Pembroke

  

until you’ve got him to give your amateur joint a trial,”

fumed Rockwell. “It’s the sorriest move he ever made,
and you'll be plumb full of regrets, too, before you see the
end of this double-dealing.”

“Cut that out, Rockwell!” spoke up the hot-tempered
Clancy. “There’s been no double-dealing on Wynn’s part.
It was your low-down scheming that disgusted Judge
Pembroke.”

Rockwell partly turned to give his attention to Clancy.

“Where in thunder do you come in on this?” he de-
manded savagely.

“Wynn is my partner. The Square-deal Garage is now
owned by Clancy & Wynn.”

“Then you better call it the Square-steal Garage,”
sneered the rival garage owner, “because that’s what this
work of yours with the judge amounts to.”

“Don’t begin calling names, Rockwell,” said Wynn
sternly. “There’s the order, and we're here to get the
cars. Are you going to give them up, or do you want us
to telephone to Judge Pembroke that you refuse?”

Rockwell snatched the paper out of Wynn’s hand and
angrily looked it over. :

“This may be a forgery,” he snarled. “I wouldn’t put a
game of that sort past you any. If Judge Pembroke wants

you to have his cars, he’ll have to come to me and say so.” |

“You know that order is not a forgery,” went on Wynn,
his eyes glistening, “and you are making a fool of your;
self by disregarding it. We're here for Judge Pem-
broke’s property, and we’re going to take it away. Come
on, Owen,” and he started along the big room.

Rockwell’s wrath had grown to unreasoning propor-
tions. Catching up a Stillson wrench that happened to
be lying near, he brandished it threateningly and leaped
to bar Wynn’s path.

“Barton! Cogswell! Hooper!” he bellowed. “This
way, on the run! We'll see,” he added, between his teeth,
his flashing eyes on Wynn, “whether you can come in hére
and make free with the cars left in my care. I’ve or-
dered you off the premises, and you won’t go. Now youre
staying at your own peril.”

Barton, Cogswell, and Hooper were employees of Rock-
well. They came hurrying from the rear of the garage,
and ranged: themselves silently beside the propfietor.

Batton, as Clancy knew, was a pretty good sort of a
fellow. He had little sympathy with the rascally schemes
of his employer, but if orders were given he would be
obliged to carry them out or else lose his job.

Besides Rockwell and his men, there were two others in
the garage. They came forward, just then, attracted -by
the excitement near the big doorway.

One of these men. was lean and wiry. He wore a khaki
suit that had plainly seen hard service, and a solar hat
was pulled down on his head. His eyes, keen and res-
tive, peered out through a pair of spectacles.

This man answered Wynn’s description of one of the
Smithsonian people, and Clancy wondered what he was
doing at the Red Star Garage. With this scientific-look-
ing chap was no less a person than Dirk Hibbard, the
chauffeur whont™ Judge Pembroke had discharged, and
whom he had generously spared on the night of the rob-
bery.

Hibbard and the man in the solar hat had been con-
versing earnestly until the commotion at the door had
drawn their attention. Now, Hibbard, who felt that he

~~

  

——

 

 

 

    
=

 

 

 

     

ma

 

_ With the mechanic and liked him.
been mutual,

grievance against Clancy, lined up with Rockwell
and his men.

“Leave that red-headed duck to me!” Hibbard cried. “I
owe him somethin’, and here’s a good chance to pay up.”

The tan in the solar hat drew off to one side and his
glimmering eyes followed developments with interest.

Wynn was not overawed. He was as cool as a day in
June, and he was also clear-headed. He laughed softly as
his gaze roved over the formidable line summoned by
Rockwell to defend the garage.

“For a full-grown man, Rockwell,”
aré showing mighty little sense.
slightly toward his partner,
man to come this way.”

“li I go for a policeman,” Clancy answered, “I'll lodge
a charge against Rockwell that will get him into the law
pretty deep. T'U——”

Hibbard’s animosity toward Clancy weak not brook any
delay. Possibly he felt that if Clancy left to get a police-
man, the disturbance would end without a clash. At any
rate, before the red-headed chap could follow the instruc-
tions of his partner, Hibbard sprang toward him and
struck out with his: fist.

‘On another memorable occasion Dirk Hibbard had at-
tempted to use force in getting even with his enemy. The

ie oe ae
had a

said Wynn, “you
Owen,” and he turned
“just step out and ask a police-

results had been disastrous for Hibbard. But he was not

the sort of feliow to. profit by experience.
. The chauffeur’s warlike move was. the. spark needed to

precipitate a clash.

“Throw them out of the garage!’ cried Rockwell: “I'll
teach these. upstarts to try to meddle with my. business!
Throw them. out, and shut the doors!”

Losing Judge Pembroke’s trade was.a hard blow for
Rockwell. It was not so much the loss of the two -cars
as the influence the judge wielded among the better class
of automobile owners in town. If his machines were

taken away, many machines belonging to his sends would

follow.

Te was 2 situation that rendered Rockwell desperate.

He did not seem to realize that. he was fighting against
the inevitable.

Clancy took care of Hibbard very handily. There was
a brief give and take, and presently the chauffeur was
knocked against- the office’ partition. As he sat up on

‘the floor, stunned ‘and. bewildered; thee man in the solar

hat’ tegarded hirh with a half-humorous’ ‘smile—a very

‘queer attitude of mind for a professor to. take in such

a brawl.

Wynn, meanwhile, had wrenched the heavy  Stillson

from Rockwell’s hands, and flung. Rockwell headfirst into

the front of a car that stood against a ‘side wall, and had
started for the place. where .Judge. Pembroke’s machines
were stored. Wynn seemed to know just where to go, and
as he went, he whirled the wrench in a circle about him.
It was a charmed circle,.and .Cogswell and Hooper kept
well on the outside of it.

Barton made a grab at Clan¢y. It was.a useless grab—

and evidently Barton had intended it to be so.

“Get the cars, son,” he muttered, with a suppressed
chuckle, and in a voice intended for Clancy's ears alone.

“Vil gamble no one will.interfere with you,. providin’

Rockwell is down and out.”

Clancy had met Barton the day before,-and had talked
The liking must have

for Barton was.only making.a show of op-

   

NEW TIP TOP WEEKLY. 7

position, and was not really trying to stop the move to
secure the judge’s cars.

Clancy hurried on after Wynn. Cogswell and Hooper
and Barton gave their attention to Rockwell, who was
prone on the floor, temporarily in distress.

“Ll take the electric, Owen,” said Wynn, “and you fol-
low with the six. I reckon we can make it before Rock-
well comes around and realizes what’s happened.’’

A minute later the coupé was gliding toward the door.
Clancy cranked the touring car, got the engine turned
over, and jumped to the wheel. The six emerged from
the long row of cats and pointed for the door. The elec-
tric was in the street, safely away, and without any fur-
ther interference.

By then, however, Rockwell had regained his wits and
his feet. Fuming with rage, he jumped into the doorway
and shook his *fist.

“Leave that car
yelled.

“Get out of the way or I’ll run over you!” flung, back
Clancy.

The roaring echoes of the six racing. cylinders echoed
through the big room, and the touring car was gathering
speed swiftly and recklessly.

“Stop him! Stop him!” bellowed Rockwell.

No car ever plunged. through the door of that garage
as.Clancy was plunging with the judge’s six-cylinder ma-
chine. He pressed the bulb, and the horn ogee huskily
in warning.

i

alone, you red-headed robber!” he

Rockwell was beside: himself, and did-not heed the warn-
ing. He would surely have been run down. had. not
Hooper grabbed him and jerked him out of the way.
Still sounding the horn, Clancy .drove the big car pell-
mell through-the door and turned it to follow the electric.

Wher well clear of the Red Star Garage, Clancy shot
a@ quick look rearward. The man ih the solar‘ hat-stood
in‘the driveway of the garage, hands in his pockets, staring
after the disappedring machine. He was-the only one in
evidetice. S

Five minutes’ later the six ran quietly into the doorway
of the Square-deal ‘establishment, came to a halt, ‘and
Clancy jumped out. Wynn and Jimmie were waiting for
him. : :

“Jupiter, but that was rough work!” exclaimed “Wynn.

“We got away with it, old. man,” returned the exultant
Clancy, “and with ground ‘to spare: es the

“Yes, we got away with it, but I hate a row.’

“We weren't to blame. Rockwell made: a fool-of him-
self by refusing to honor Judge Pembroke’s written
order.” Cd EE

“And there was high jinks,”
“and I wasn’t in on it. I’d have liked blame’ well to take
a whack at my Uncle Si. -Nothin® has happened here, ‘and
I could jest as well as not have been along with you. Gee-
wollops, you must ’a’ had a time!” ee

put in Fortune gloomily,

“Question is,’ said Wynn soberly, “what will the judge
say when he hears about the squabble?”

“He'll say that you showed nerve. and determination at
the time when they were most néeded! . You did the only
thing you could do, in the circumstances, and you did it
well.”

The three in the large room looked around, to see Judge
Pembroke himself standing in the office door. And the
judge was. smiling his approval.
   

 

NEW. TIP

CHAPTER V.
THE JUDGE HAS HIS OWN SUSPICIONS.

“You know what has happened, judge?” inquired Wynn.

“Tust as well as though I had been an eyewitness,” was
the answer. “You took my order to Rockwell, he refused
to honor it, and you and Clancy brought away the cars in
spite of that refusal and without bothering me. That’s the
spirit!’ You had the right on your side, and stood by
your guns.”

He laughed delightedly.

“Rockwell hadn’t a prop to stand on,” he added, “and
he was only making a bluff. I’m glad you called him.
It’s the only way you can handle such a trickster. But I
did not come here to learn of your success in getting my
cars away from the Red Star. There’s something else on
my mind. Come into the office a moment, will you?”

Clancy and Wynn entered the little corner room. The
judge sat down and drew a cigar from his pocket.
Thoughtfully he lighted the weed and began to smoke.

“I suppose,” he inquired, “that it’s all right to smoke in
here?”

“Oh, yes,” said Wynn, “in the office.
gerous in the other room.”

“Exactly. Will you join me?”

The judge leaned forward, with two cigars in his hand.

“I’m by, judge,” said Clancy, smiling. “The habit never
caught me. While I was at school I went in for athletics
—and tobacco and athletics never hitch.”

“T don’t smoke, judge,” said Wynn, “because I can’t af-
ford to. It’s all right for those who like it. I tried it
once—and made up my mind I didn’t like it.”

The judge returned the cigars to his pocket.

“You're the kind of a firm to tie to,” he remarked. “I
suppose you know, Wynn, that I discharged Hibbard?”

Wynn nodded. “I heard about it,” he answered.

“I discharged Hibbard, for good and sufficient reason,
and tried to hire ‘Clancy, but he had already hired out to
Rockwell. An hour later I secured a new driver. I
could have sent Hibbard to jail for somethingyhe did last
night, but the young man’s parents are friends of mine,
and I spared him. Dirk Hibbard has been going down
grade pretty fast since he has had dealings with Rock-
well. And it’s a pity. His father and mother are as fine
people as you would care to meet—high-principled and
worthy in every, way. I am sorry for them, and, on their
account, I would like to see Dirk brought to his sensés
and given a start toward something better.. But-I could
not keep him’ in my employ after he had flagrantly dis-
obeyed my instructions and then made a deliberate at-
tempt to rob my house.”

The judge was showing a very getierous side of his char-
acter, and one that defied the hard and fast principles of
his profession. But, for all that, his sentiments were a
credit to him.

“Ym afraid,” he went on reflectively, “that Hibbard is
about to make q false move. It is only a suspicion of
mine, and I may be wrong. Still, I am so impressed by
what is going on that I have done what I could to block
the move he is intending to take. I don’t want to see the
boy go to the dogs entirely.”

The judge paused, exhaled a few wreaths of smoke, and
then went on: .

It might be dan-

“You had not been away from my office twenty minutes
when a tall man in a sun hat and khaki clothes dropped

TOP WEEKLY.

     

in on me. He called himself. Professor Rocco, and claimed
to be the representative. of an Eastern scientific instittu-
tion, studying the desert and out-of-the-way places in the
interests of science. It took me about. two mifitites 10
guess that he was the owner of that freak car—the 7Amp-
derbolt—which. was brought here for repair. The pro-
fessor told me that his companion was ill, and that he
needed a chauffeur. Rockwell had recommended Hibbard,
and the professor had come to me to learn something
about Hibbard.”

Clancy remembered having seen Hibbard -and the man
in the solar hat together in Rockwell’s garage. This fact
took on a new interest, in view of the judge’s distlosures.
Clancy held his. peace for the present, however, and le
the judge continue.

“I was not impressed favorably. by Professor Reéceo.
There’s something about the man that doesn’t ring teme. 1
told him point-blank that. 1 could not recommend dAibe
bard. I did not go: into details, but let the matter go
at \that. I felt a premonition that’ Dirk should be kept
out of Rocco’s hands. When the professor left, 1 Had one
of the clerks in my. office follow him.

“Rocco went straight into the Mexican quarter, and
there, in the heart: of the quarter, a man suddenly ap-
peared in front of an adobe, took a letter or a folded
note which Rocco handed him, and, vanished inte the
adobe again.. From the clerk’s. description, that Man tay
have been Tom Long, otherwise. Chantay Seeche Tome—a
thorough-paced rascal, and one who: helped Hibbard ii
the criminal work at my housae last night... OF course:
the fellow may not be Tom Long, but-the clerk’s @estripe
tion comes close to Long’s appearance. . Now, wate get
ting to the point. Is the Thunderbolt still in the Garage?”

“Yes,” Wynn answered.

“Have you any idea when it will be called for?” ‘

“T was told that it would be called \for this: evemingy”

“Tl am anxious to keep Hibbard out of Rocco's hands,
but if Rocco is crooked, what I have said against Mibbard
will not count. Truth to tell, I was surprised 1 Wave
Hibbard send Rocco to me. Hibbard must count Strongly
on my friendship for his parents if he supposéd=that T
would give him a good recommendation. But Roe came,
and I would say nothing in Hibbard’s favor except Mat he
was a gdod driver, and I tempered that with the infor
mation that he was not'to be depended on. If Hibbard”
should call here for the Thunderbolt, I wish you would
give the young fellow a square deal.”

“How?” queried Wynn.

“Why, by keeping him from taking out the car. Ii he
does take it out, I fear he will get himself into grave
trouble, and bring lasting disgrace upon his father, who
is one of my best friends.”

 

“How can we keep him from taking: out the Thunder-
bolt, judge,” asked Clancy, “providing he brings an order
from this Professor Rocco? We can’t very well refuse
to honor such an order—especially after what we did this
afternoon, over at the Red Star.”

“That's up to you,” said the judge. “Try and be equal
to the occasion, in some way. I have wired Washington
to find out the exact standing of this Professor Roeco,
and when I receive an answer to that message IT will be
in a better position to doubt or have confidence im this
professor. Can’t you see, though, that if Roceo hires
Hibbard in the face of what I said against him, that it will
reflect-on Rocco himself?”

  

 

 

 

 
NEW TIP TOP ,.WEEKLY.

“When we were at Rockwell’s' place, judge,’ remarked
‘Clancy, “a fellow answering your description of Rocco
“was there. And he was talking with Hibbard!”

-“Ah!” and the judge frowned. “That was after Rocco
talked with me. It looks as though he was going to hire
“Hibbard, after all. Frankly,” he. finished, “I don’t like
the looks of this business.”

“Neither do I,” averred Clancy.
 derbalt with me a minute, judge.
GaN something.”

The three left the office and aude their way into the
room. Jimmie was giving his attention to a motor
over in one corner, and was so wrapped up in the
twin-cylinder flyer that he paid no attention to what
Claney, Wynn, and the judge were doing.
‘Clancy showed the judge the little cache in the seat
‘io and offered some of the nuggets for. his inspec-
a took little part in this, and aayeacee ill at

,

“Come out to the Thun-
ies

Judge Pembroke. iyirmured: “this may
; In the present state of my mind,
iplines iis thfeit ‘that St. sneans'a good deal. Still, my
, maka: ae may be entirely groundless. I’ll know more
tat when I- hear from Washington. Put the stuff
back, , Clancy,” he added.
¥ y returned the nuggets to the cache, and he and
fe and Wynn walked toward the big doorway.
it strikes me,” said Wynn, “is a private affair of
sor Rocco’s. His car, and everything about it, is
roperty. I have made it a point, judge, not to pry
tt affairs of my patrons.”
*Tt’s a good point, too, Wynn,” returned the judge, with
short. laugh, “but sometimes private affairs must give
to public expediency—and this ‘may be one of the
I know Bitke pean isn’t very deserving, but, on

a ful”
Ps With that, the judge left, and the two partners watched
him | of. sight.

Aihed Clancy, as they went back into the tite

The judge is clear-headed, but maybe he is shying at
; ie out of ‘a desire. to help Hibbard,” was. Wynn’s

MDIY: 3.

“I don’t believe he’s amend: at trifles. If Rocco hired
Hibbard after what the judge says, that would look queer
on ‘the face of “it.” »

‘Possibly.’

And if Rocco went divans from the judge’s office into
" the Mexican quarter and gave Chantay- Seeche Tom a let-
ter, that would look even more queer.”

“Well, yes, but. the man who got the letter may not have
been Long Tom. The clerk’s description merely leads to
a guess—and a guess is always a guess. The judge has
“handed us a poser, and no mistake. How are we going to

< ies Hibbard from taking out the Thunderbolt, if he
- brings proper credentials from Rocco?”
«We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, old man,’
lancy answered easily. “I don’t believe in Bnd
pf * rouble,”
_ “Neither do I, Owen, but it’s just as well to make up
your aa what you're soins to do—in case something

I want to show you

,
9’
i

ter of Hibbard and the Thunderbolt it is difficult to plan
what you're going to do. That would have to be governed
by circumstances.”

“All right, we'll let it go at that. I tell you flat, though,
that I hate to have ‘private affairs give way to public ex-
pediéncy’ in this garage. We take care of machines,
Owen, and we're going,pretty far when we interfere in
the business of -the machines’ owners. Personaliy, I—~”

The rest of Wynn’s words were never spoken. At that
moment a wild whoop echoed from the other room, ac-
companied by the roar of a motor, and Jimmie Fortune
shot past the office window on the motor cycle. As he
plunged into the street, a frantic cry for “Help!” was
wafted back. Clancy and Wynn rushed from the office.

“What’s the matter with him, anyway?” demanded
Wynn:

“I think,” said Clancy, “that he’s doing his best to lose
his job. That’s a failing of Jimmie’s. Whose motor cycle
is that?”

“It happens to be mine,” was the answer.

CHAPTER VI.
TEACHING JIMMIE A LESSON.

Fortune, going like a streak, vanished around the cor-
ner of the block as Clancy and Wynn ran out in front
and looked after him. The red cotton handkerchief about
his throat was fluttering in the wind, and the brim of
his old Stetson was blown upward against the crown.
Humped over the handlebars, he continued to whoop like
a Comanche; but the whoop sounded like a death song,
and here and there it was punctuated with a frantic, howl
for aid.

“Do you think he’s chasing somebody, Owen?” Wynn
asked, as the din of Jimmie’s flight faded out ir the dis-
tance.

“Search me, Lafe,” was Clancy’s answer. OM te was
fooling with that motor cycle while we were examining
the Thunderbolt with the judge. I don’t know who he
could be chasing. I’m inclined to .think that he got to
experimenting and tumbled into hot water.”

“Experimenting ?”

“Maybe we ought to call it tampering. Jimmie claims
to have worked for pretty nearly everybody in Arizona.
He says that the shortest job he ever held was fifteen min-
utes, and the longest one was two.days. He always gets
into some sort of trouble by being too curious, with the
result that he’s usually fired.”

“I can’t imagine what. sort of trouble he’s in now.
Hadn’t we.better follow him?”

“No use, Lafe. He’s probably a-mile away by_now, and
going like a scared coyote. If we tried——” ~

“What’s that?” broke in Wynn, listening.

A distant clamor was heard. It grew in volume by
swift degrees, accompanied by the popping of a motor.

“Sounds a lot like Jimmie!’ exclaimed Clancy.

“By Christmas, that’s who it is!” cried Wynn. “Look!
He’s coming toward the garage from the other way, and
has merely circumnavigated the block.”

Jimmie was tearing down the street, just a-smoking.
The engine and Jimmie had entered into a competition, it
seemed, to see which could roar the loudest.

“Er-wow! Head me off! Stop me! Help!”

These words came very clear and distinct as Jimmie
dashed toward the garage. In front of the establishment _

 
 

10 NEW TIP TOP WEEKLY.

his hat blew Gff, and his shock of hair snapped and
crackled in the wind of his flight.

“Shut off the power!” shouted Clancy.

“Oh, gee-wollops!” came the despairing response, “I
don’t know how! Whoop! Help! Help!”

Once niore Jimmie fluttered out of sight around the
lower corner of the block. Clancy and Wynn stared at
éach other for a moment, and then Clancy burst into a
laugh.

‘It’s just as I thought,” said Clancy, in a stifled voice.
“Jimmie doesn’t know a thing about motors. He got on
the machine and happened to get it started, and now he
doesn’t know how to stop.”

“T’ll have to tell him, when he comes aroynd next time,”
returned Wynn.

“Don’t you do it.
until the gasoline gives out.
him,”

“Why, he may have to keep up that pace for an hour!”

“Tt will be an hour well spent—for Jimmie.”

Once more Jimmie hove into sight from around the
block. He carne down the road like a frantic comet, yelp-
irig huskily,

“FassoO me, or somethin’,’? he begged. “I’m gettin’

Let him keep sailing around the block
It will be a good lesson for

dizzy.”

“Stick to the machine till the gasoline gives out!”
shouted Clahcy. “Keep on riding around the block until
the machine stops of its own accord. Understand?”

“Wow! How long’ll that be? I’m mighty nigh a nary-
ous wreck!’ ,

His voice died into the roar of the twin cylinders, and
he shot around the lower corner of the block once more.

Crowds began to line the streets surrounding the block,
The people were undecided as to whether Jimmie was rac-
ing against time, or was taking a joy ride, or was just
plain crazy.

The third time around, a policeman ran out from the
throng that had gathered across from the garage.

“Stop!” he cried, waving his club; “stop, or I’ll pinch
you!”

“Pinch me!” howled Jimmie. “I’m runnin’ away with
myself, and don’t know how to stop! You throw a crimp
into this here go-devil and I'll be mighty glad to’ pay a
fine !”

The officer leaped out of the way, and Jimmie flickered
past. When Jimmie had vanished, the officer came across
the street to Clancy and Wynn,

“He’s scorchin’,” said the angry blue coat, “and goin’
about five times as fast as the law allows. When I get
hands on him I’ll see that he gets the limit!”

“Be easy, officer,” answered Clancy. “He told you the
truth. The motor cycle is really running away with him.
He wants to stop—there’s nothing in this wide world he
would rather do than bring that machine to 3 a halt—but
he can’t—he really doesn’t know how.”

The officer looked incredulous, and turned inquiring
eyes upon Wynn.

“That’s right,” said Wynn, nodding. “You shouldn't
arrest him for something he can’t help.”

“Tf he knew how to start that contraption,” femarked
the policeman, “he sure ought to know how to stop it.”

“That’s what you’d naturally think,” continued Clancy,
“but you'd guess wrong. He'll have to keep circling the
block until the gasoline gives. out.”
put in. Wynn,

“Lots of fellows,” “have been known to

start more trouble accidentally than they were able’ to”

take care of. That’s the case with Jimmie.’

A slow grin worked its way over the officer’s face. Just
then Jimmie came streaking by, the crowd “yelling” and
jeeting. The expression on Jimmie’s face would have led
a person to think he had corralled all the trouble in the
universe. The officer laughed loudly as the runaway ma-
chiné whisked out of sight.

“This is funnier than a box of monkeys!” he gasped.

By actual count, Jimmie circled that block thirty times
before the fuel reservoir was emptied and his iron: steed
stopped from sheer lack of power to go any farther. Tlie
motor cycle went out of commission almost at the garage
door, falling on its side and hurling its rider half a dozen
feet.

Jimmie lay where he had dropped.
hurried to his side, fearing he might be hurt.
wasn't

“All right, Jimmie?” Clancy asked.

Jimmie’s eyes slowly opened.

“Am Tf still hittin’ the high places,” he inquired feebly,
“or is that there -hootin’, tootin’ ole teakittle dimes laid
down on me and quit?”

‘ “You're at a standstill,” answered Clancy,’ with difficulty
suppressing a laugh.

“My eyes is blurredlike,’ mumbled Jimmie, sitting up,
“and if I ain’t still ‘runnin’ around the block, then the
block is ‘runnin’ around me, I gota sickness in the pit o’
my stummick, and I’m as weak ag a cat. Pard, 1 wisht
you'd take an ax°and knock that iron *bronk ‘in the) head.
It has sure raised Cain with me!”

The crowd was surrounding Jimmie and making un-
Clancy lifted him to his feet anid as=
Wynn, at the same time, took

Claney and Wynn
But he

feeling remarks.
sisted him into the office.
care of the motor cycle.

Jimmie slumped down on the office bench with a proan
of relief.

“T never rid no man-killin’: cayuse that handled me so
rough!" he murmured. “Seems like I was on that ma-
chine a thousand years and traveled more’n a million
miles.”

Wynn came into the office just then.

“How did you happen to. get the thing started, Fimmie’ ri
he asked, with a wink at Clancy.

“Ain’t an idee,” was the lugubrious response. . “I ‘est: got
a-straddle, while it stood up with. that. rear’ bracket for
a brace, and begun pumpin’ the pedals. Then 1 prodded,
foollike, at knobs and levers, until sudden she begun to
bark like all possessed. Fust I knowed, we was out 9’
that garage like a shot from a gun, Say, it was orful!
It was jest like ridin’ a streak 0’ greased lightnin’, Blamed
lucky I didn’t run into somethin’, and that I had* savvy
enough to keep in the trail and stay right side up.”

“It's also blamed lucky you didn’t wreck a two-hundred-

and-fifty-dollar moter cycle,” said Clancy, with a frown.
“Until you learn the ropes, Jimmie, you'd better leave the
machinery alone.” §

“Some folks would fire me for what-I doné,” observed
Fortune, with considerable confidence, “but you wouldn't
play it so low down on a pard. Believe me, though, I’m
done with monkeyin’ with your fool machinery. ° The
stuff seems to have a kick to it, and I allers did Know
when I had enough.”

Jimmie revived, after a time, and Wynn set him to
washing the judge’s’ two cars and polishing ‘the brass

 

ae

 

 
 

NEW

work. This gave him all he wanted to do for the rest
of the afternoon.

Wynn had a room at his boarding house, but he had
been staying in the garage nights and sleeping on a-cot
im the office. Clancy took over the night work, and it
was arranged that he and Jimmie should both sleep in
the garage.

It was eight o’clock before Wynn left the establish-
ment. In the present state of business there was not
much to be attended to between sunset and sunrise.

Another cot and a supply of bedclothes were secured
for Jimmie, and he set it up in the big room and crawled
into his blankets early. The doors were closed, and
Claney, with the office light turned on, idled away the

‘time while waiting for some one to come and take away

the Thunderbolt.

This was about all the business Clancy expected to at-
tend to. And there were circumstances surrounding that
which might give him all and more than he could manage.

Professor Rocco was late in coming for his car. If he
eaine personally for the machine, there was not much that
Claney could do in the way of giving Dirk Hibbard a
“square deal”—as Judge Pembroke put it.

Nine o'clock was sounding from the big clock’ in’ the
courthouse plaza when the office door opened and some
one stepped across the threshold. Clancy aroused from
his reflections and gave attention to the caller.

The man was clothed from head to heels ina long: dust
coat. The collar of the coat was turned up <about his
ears, 2 cap was pulled down over his forehead and large
goggles concealed his eyes and most of his face.

“Thunderbolt fixed?” queried a voice, which was. pal-
pably disguised.

“It’s all ready,” Clancy answered,

“What's the bill?”

“About eight dollars, Hibbard,” said Clancy.

CHAPTER VII.
HELPING HIBBARD.

The chauffeur must have had a hope that the dust coat,
cap, and goggles would cloak his identity, for he showed
chagrin and anger when Clancy so readily called him by
name.

He umbuttoned the long coat, thrust a hand into his
trousers pocket, and brought out a roll of bills.

“There's your money,” he snapped, laying the eight
dollars on the table. “Now I'll take the car—if you really
have it repaired.”

“It is repaired—really,’ returned Clancy. “But what
right have you to the machine, Hibbard? It was brought
here by Professor Rocco. He didn’t tell us to deliver
it to anybody else.”

Hibbard came further into the room. He walked un-
steadily, and it was clear that some of the huskiness in
his voice was not assumed. ' He had been drinking.

“T’m workin’ for Rocco. His pard, the fellow who
usually runs the car, is under the weather, and the ‘prof’
has hired me. Does that satisfy you?” Hibbard finished,
with a sneer.

“Hardly,” was Clancy’s response. “Have you got a writ-
ten order?”

“You seem to make a specialty of written orders, don’t
you? No, I haven’t an order of that kind. Rocco is at
the Clifton House, waitin’ for me to pick him up there.

 

dir Awe. WEEALY. ~} tt

Call up the hotel and ask him if I’m to take out the
Thunderbolt.”

“All right,” said the other, reaching for the desk phone.
“Sit down, Hibbard. I don’t want you to think I’m doubt-
ing your word, but you ought to understand that it wouldn’t
do to let the car go without instructions from Rocco
personally.”

“Like thunder you don’t doubt my word!
friend of mine and never will be.
quick about it.
can.”

Hibbard lurched toward the bench and dropped heavily
down on it. Clancy soon had the Clifton House on the
wire, and it was not long before he was talking with
Professor Rocco.

“This is the Square-deal Garage, professor,” said Clancy.

“Yes?” came the answer. “Are you the proprietor?”

“One of the proprietors—there are two now.”

“I presume my car is ready for use? I was to have
been notified if you found it impossible to repair it.”

“Tt is all ready.”

“Then deliver it to Mr. Hibbard. I have hired him
to drive the machine. The tank must be filled with petrol,
and kindly see that there is plenty of oil. Mr.. Hibbard
will pay for the repairs and supplies. Anything else?”

“That’s all I want to know, professor. Thank you.”

With that, Clancy “hung up” and turned to face Hib-
bard.

“T.reckon you're satisfied now that I’m not tryin’ to steal
the car, eh?” leered Hibbard.

“T had no idea you were attempting to steal the ma-

chine.. In fact, I was rather expecting you to call for it.
Professor Rocco went to Judge Pembroke to ask about
you, so I made a guess you might show up here and take
away the Thunderbolt.”
,“The judge knocked me, confound him!” growled Hib-
bard, with an oath. “He told Rocco I was crooked—but
that didn’t cut any ice with the ‘prof.’ I had other recom-
mends. Rockwell stood by me, and so did Long.”

“Long?” echoed Clancy.

Hibbard’s wits were befogged with liquor.
a condition to talk recklessly.

“That’s what I said,” he cried roughly. “Tom Long—
Long Tom—Chantay Seeche Tom. “A good word from
ihem went farther than a bad word from the judge. We're
pals, and we stand together, by thunder! That’s right.”

“Rather queer Rockwell would stand by you after the
way you talked about him to the judge.”

“That’s nothin’ to you!” grunted Hibbard.
got your orders, now gi’ me the car.”

The chauffeur’ got up. Clancy also sprang to his feet
and, stepped in front of the door leading out into the
big room.

“Wait a minute, Hibbard,” said he. “You’ve been drink-
ing and you’re in no fit condition to run a car.”

You're no
Call up Rocco and be
I’m due to get out of here as soon as |

He was in

“You've

, ‘I’m as steady as a clock,” asserted Hibbard. “What's
it to you, anyhow? ’Tend to your own business; and I'll
‘tend to mine. Get that? Get out o’ my way or I'll
make trouble for you. I opine you know, by now, that
you and me don’t hitch for a cent. It wouldn’t take much
to make me hand you somethin’ you wouldn’t get over.”

Balancing himéelf in front of Clancy, Hibbard reached
an unsteady hand under his dust coat and toward his hip.
Something dropped from his pocket. It proved to be a
quart bottle, which crashed to pieces on the floor, leaving

 
NEW TIP TOP WEEKLY.

a little pool of whisky rilling around the fragments of
glass. Hibbard stared at the wreck, and then lifted his
eyes savagely to Clancy.

“Now see what you done!” he hiccuped.

“You did that yourself,” was the quiet reply, “and it was
a good thing. Hibbard, you’re going dead wrong. The
judge let you off last night, but you’re headed straight
for something worse.”

“Quit your yaup. You can’t do no preachin’ to me.
You’re a red-headed psalm singer, and you’ye bothered
me enough. It was through you I lost my job with the
judge. But I got a better one, and don’t you forget it.
I’m pullin’ down a hundred a month from Rocco. Say,
you open that door and gi’ me the Thunderbolt, or there'll
be fireworks.”

Hibbard reached for the other hip pocket and pulled
into sight a gleaming “bulldog” revolver. He flourished
the weapon threateningly.

“I got somethin’ here,” he said, with a hoarse laugh,
“that can throw a crimp into you. You're better’n me
with your hands, but I’ve got you foul with this little
six-gun. Open that door and gi’ me the car. Rocco’ll
be along to see what’s keepin’ me, if you don’t hurry up.
Start yourself, or So that’s your game, is it?”

Clancy, watching his opportunity, had suddenly hurled
himself forward. Quick as a flash one hand had closed
on the revolver while the other gripped the chauffeur by
the throat. ,

Hibbard was so far gone with liquor that his resistance
was feeble. The athletic young motor wizard handled
him as easily as he would have handled a child.

Throwing him down on the bench, Clancy leaped back
with the revolver in his hand.

“Don’t you make a move, Hibbard!” warned Clancy.

“We're not very good friends, and that’s a fact, but I’m
going to do you a good turn to-night—give you a square
deal when you don’t deserve it. You have Judge Pem-
broke to thank.”
« “TM fix you for this!” growled Hibbard. “What busi-
ness you got handin’ me such a deal, hey? You'll get it
_ good and proper for what you're doin’! Hand back that
gun, d’ye hear?”

At this moment,
only half awake,
trousers,

_ *Jumpin’ jew’s-harps!”’ he gulped, staring at the two in
the office like a man in a trance. “Some un tryin’ to hold
up the place, pard? Who—why, if it ain’t our old friend,

_ Dirk Hibbard!”

_ With the swiftness of a lightning flash a plan took tie
in Clancy’s mind. It was a daring plan and yet it was
one which might be carried out successfully. At any rate,
it appealed powerfully to the red-headed chap. It called
for nerve, but he had plenty of that.

“Take off the cap and goggles, Hibbard!” he ordered,
keeping the revolver leveled and looking across the sights
with flinty eyes.

“What in blazes are ‘you tryin’ to do?” demanded the
_ chauffeur.
. “Take them off for him, Jimmie,” said Clancy.

- Jimmie snatched off the cap and roughly removed the
goggles. These he tossed on the table.

“TI can’t jest figger out what you're intendin’ to do, pard,”
said he, “but if there’s anythin’ else you want, just say
what. aA fe fi .

Jimmie entered the office. He was
and was clad in his undershirt and

“That long coat next,” went
Hibbard !”’

“I won’t put up with this!” fumed Hibbard t

“You're tryin’ to rob me. Help! Hel——’”

Jimmie slapped a hand across his lips and stifled ‘the
outeries. 3

“That’s enough of that, Hibbard!” said Claney shisthly.” Yi
“{’m trying to be a friend of yours and help you out of
a bad scrape, You don’t understand that now, but maybe
you will later. Another yell from you and I'll be the one
to engineer the fireworks, Get up and take of | at
coat |”

The chauffeur stared into the muzzle of the rials
as though hypnotized. Slowly he arose to his feet.
mie helped to remove the long dust coat, aed

“Now,” went on Clancy, pointing with his left a
to the cot at the end of the room, “go there and lie down
and make yourself comfortable.”

“Hanged if I will! I won't stand for——’

“Go on!”

Clancy took a step toward him. Jimmie, orebbiae Hib.
bard by the collar of his flannel shirt, pushed him to-
ward the cot. The two shuffled across the floor, and,
last, the chauffeur tumbled sprawling upon the bed.

“Get a rope, Jimmie,” said Clancy, “and tie him. Might
as well gag him, too, while you’re about it.”

Jimmie left the office. He was gone only a moment
and presently returned with enough rope to secur
bard’s wrists and ankles, A twisted handkerchief
as a gag. in short order, Hibbard was bound an

on Clancy. “Stand up

ais eyes.
“When you git time, pard,” chuckled Jimmie, “y “wal
you'd tell me sh all om” berg about.”

inside the gi cethetialii sie from Hibbard. When th
collar of the dust coat turned up about his ears, the ;

in place, it would have been difficult to recone
in the chauffeur’s rig. My

“Jimmie,” said Clancy, “Hibbard came here fas" ‘that
freak machine. He's not going to take it eh Choy

‘“ ‘Why? Pid

“For one thing, because he’s drunk. For another t
because I’m trying to give him a square deal. Tt isn’t |
necessary for you to know all the facts, just now, but——
Well, the Thunderbolt’s going out and I’m going e, be
behind the steering wheel.”

At that, Hibbard, on thé cot, twisted impotently and
muttered behind the gag. i

CHAPTER Vil.
TAKING THE TRAIL WITH ROCCO,

He would take Hil bs
In the darkness he hoped

a
ts .

This was Clancy’s plan.
place in the Thunderbolt.

pass muster with Rocco and not, have his identity ques

tioned. If there was nothing “shady” about the professor’:
night riding, and if Clancy was discovered, he could ex-
plain that Hibbard was not in a fit condition to take the
car out. In the event that the trip developed si methi
to the professor’s discredit, Clancy would be on tt aes
to see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears.

The red-headed chap was glad that Wynn was 1

around to learn what was oneg | on. une affairs

 
 

ome ee nee

NEW TIP
giving way to public expediency with a vengearice, and
it was searcely possible that Wynn would have approved of
what his partner was doing.

tut Clancy was acting in the interests of Dirk Hibbard.
And he would not have taken the course he did had Judge
Pembroke not expressed himself as he had regarding his
diseharged chauffeur.

“You've got more nerve than I have, pard, ” said For-
tune. “By glory, I wouldn’t do what you ’re a-goin’ to for
all the gold in Arizony!”

“You'll have something to do, yourself,” returned Clancy.

"What ?”

“Take care of Hibbard. If I am not back early in the
morning, you had better call up the judge and ask him
to come to the garage. He'll know what to do with
Hibbard, and you and Wynn coulg hardly keep him a pris-
oner here during the day.”

“What d’ye mean if you ain’t back in the mornin’?”
asked Fortune, showing symptoms of alarm. “Sure you're
goin’ to get back. If you ain’t, by glory, I’ll send the
sher’ff lookin’ for you.”

The telephone bell jingled. Clancy’s nerves fluttered
a little as he picked the receiver off the hook.

“Hello,” he called.

“That the Square-deal Garage?” came a voice which
Clancy easily recognized as Rocco’s,

“Ves.”

“How long have I got to wait for that car?”

“Not long now, sir. It will be over just as soon as
we ean fill up the gasoline tank.”

“Well, hurry. It is getting late.”

“On the jump, professor.”

Clancy turned from the phone and hurried out of the
office. He wheeled the moveable fuel reservoir up to the
Thunderbolt and was able to crowd eight gallons more
into the big tank. Then he replenished the oil supply,
pulled On a pair of gloves, and climbed into the car. At
one touch of a button the shutter folded back and a
column of dazzling light shot from the pointed end of
the Thunderbolt. Another button set the self-starter
to work.

“Tf I met that thing comin’ at me in a dark night.”
breathed Jimmie, “I’d be scart stiff.”

“There are eight dollars on the office baal Jimmie,”
said Clancy. “Put it in the desk. And mind, you keep
a shetp watch on Hibbard; and don’t forget to call up
Judge Pembroke early in the morning if I’m not back.
Now open the doors and I'll start for the Clifton House.”

Fortune swung back the big doors and the Thunderbolt
slid out of the garage and into the night. Clancy’s blood
coursed a little more swiftly through his veins and his
pulsés Heat a little faster as he fared forth on the un-
known adventures that lay ahead.

It was an undertaking that appealed to him. He had
no fear, although he felt that he might rub elbows with
danger before he saw the Square-deal Garage again. He
had thrills a-plenty, but not a tremor of apprehension or
dPead.

One of his last moves, in hurrying out of the office, was
to lin Hibbard’s “bulldog” revolver into his jacket pocket.
He detested firearms, but reflected that it would be a wise
precaution to take that weapon with him.

The Clifton House was close to the Mexican quarter.

_ As Clancy drew near the hotel, he descried a figure pac-

ing up and down the walk in front, Closer inspection re-

TOP WEEKLY. 13

vealed the fact that the figure was clad in khaki and
topped with a solar hat.

“Here’s the professor!” thought Clancy, and swerved

the car to the curb. 4

Rocco grunted out something or other and got over the
side of the machine and into the vacant seat.

“Did I.tell you where we were going, Hibbard?” he
asked, in a low voice.

“No, sir,” answered Clancy, in husky tones.

“Have you been drinking?” demanded Rocco sharply.

“No, sir.”

“Your voice is thick enough for a good-sized jag. Head
for the Tempe trail'and see how quick you can get me to
Chantay Seeche Tom’s.”

This order gave Clancy another thrill. Rocco had ex-
pressed himself in terms which would have jarred on the
finer sensibilities of a real professor. And then, his in-
structions to proceed to Long Tom’s suggested evil things,
and promised much for a boisterous and criminal night.

Clancy started the car at once. As soon as they were
clear of the town, he let the machine out, and they fairly
flew over the trail.

There was a beautiful reciprocity in all the working
parts of that freak car. The purring cylinders stirred into
smooth activity all the other machinery. Clancy was

‘conscious of a feeling of delight as his hands gripped the

steering wheel. Oh, it was a great car, a splendid car, in
spite of its ugly shape!

“If you work for me at a hundred a month and a share
of the proceeds, Hibbard,” said Rocco, “you've got to hustle —
a little more. Understand? You were a quarter of an
hour longer than necessary in getting this machine from
the garage.”

“Boss held me up, professor.”

“fT told you to cut out that ‘professor.’ When a fellow
works for me, I don’t intend to tell him twice what to do.”

“All right, sir.”

Rocco pulled off his solar hat, struck a match, and
shielded it from the wind in the hat’s crown while lighting
a cigar.

“Want to smoke?” he asked.

“Not while I’m drivin’.”

“Bad trail, eh?”

“Yes, sir, when we get to the mountains.”

“Well, if you’re as good as Rockwell says you are, the
bad trail won’t bother you; and if you’re to be depended
on, as Long Tom says, I'll not bother you. Try any
tricks with me, though, and you'll have your hands full
of trouble. Understand?”

“You bet!”

Clancy was in a fever of apprehension all the while
Rocco was asking him questions. If anything betrayed
him he knew it would be his voice. For'the rest of it,
he was about Hibbard’s height and build, and the dark-
ness, and the sheltering dust coat, cap, and goggles, made
discovery well-nigh impossible.

For a time there was silence between the two in the car.
Clancy was glad of this for it enabled him to get himself
better in hand.

He was now more than sure that Rocco was a criminal of
some kind. That night journey to Chantay Seeche Tom's
ranch was not being taken for any honest purpose! Long
Tom’s character alone would have settled that point. Pres-
ently Roeco began talking again.

‘Rockwell hasn’t any good to say of that Square-deal

 
 

14 NEW TIP TOP WEEKLY.

Garage, but they’ve certainly got a mechanic there that
knows his business. Every other garage in town took a
whack at the Thunderbolt, but it was the Square-deal fel-
low who solved the difficulty. What was the charge?”

“Bight dollars.”

“What ?”

Claney repeated his words. Rocco laughed.

“If they had soaked me for eighty I wouldn’t have
kicked !’’ he “The boss, over there, must be a
fool. If he had known how I get my money, maybe he’d
have tacked it on. You don’t like that Clancy person, eh?”

“He’s a red-headed buttinsky!”’ Clancy gurgled—and he
meant it.

“He’s certainly handy with the mitts,’ laughed Rocco.
“The way he bowled you over at Rockwell’s place was
mighty neat.”

Clancy merely gurgled this time without saying anything.
Even to have his praises sung by his companion was not
exactly pleasant.

“I'd like mighty well to get an owner’s badge on that
fellow,” continued Rocco. “He wouldn’t be crooked—if
it paid him well?”

“Nary he wouldn't,” and Clancy put his heart in the
words.

exclaimed.

“Rockwell says that all his troubles are due to Clancy,
and that, sooner or later, he’s going to get even with him
and drive that other garage out of business.”

“Old Rocks is-a hard juniper to have stacked up against
you as an enemy.”

“There’s nothing smooth about him. The will’s there, but
he lacks the finesse for carrying it out. The way he
put you up to steal that note was about the most foolish
piece of business I ever heard of. There were other
ways he could have got the note. Rrockwell strikes me
as being a piker.”

“Sure he’s a piker.”’

“He gave you a good recommendation, and so did
Chantay Seeche Tom. Tom says he’s worked with you—
and that was good enough for me. Wonder what Pem-
broke would think if he had known that what I wanted
was a fellow who had sense enough to be crooked, pro-
viding he got good pay for it?” Rocco chuckled.
have thrown a fit when he knocked you, I guess, if he
had known that was exactly what I wanted.”

More and more Clancy was beginning to realize that
Rocco was a clever and desperate criminal, and that the
object of that night’s venture was lawless gain. The more
the dangers thickened for Clancy, the more he’ under-
stood how much his “square deal” was saving Hibbard.

The car reached the mountain, straggled up the steep
slope, and then plunged on along the narrow roadway
where an unsteady hand on the wheel would have spelled
instant and complete disaster. Once or twice Rocco gave
a cry of alarm, but was reassured by Clancy’s cool and con-
fident laugh.

“You're one of the best drivers I ever saw in my life!”
Rocco declared, as they descended the opposite slopes of
the mountain wall. . “I’m mighty glad I copped onto you,
Hibbard. See that light ahead?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s Tom Long’s rancho, and the light is there
as a signal for us. Make for it,’

And Clancy made for it, trying to guess what might
be coming next.

ed -’

CHAPTER IX.

THE MEXICAN GOLD HUNTERS,

The light proved to be a lantern swinging from one GF

the projecting beams of Long’s adobe house. Long him-
self was seated under the lantern. He shook out his
lengthy body, when the Thunderbolt .came to a haltand
shuffled across a stretch of irrigated ground to the trail.

“Rocco?” he demanded.

“Who else could it be?”

“It could be the sher’ff—I’ve sorter been expectin’ that
feller to come gum-shoein’ ’round on account o' a leetle
bizness that took place last night. I reckon, howsumever,
the sher’ff knows better than to come huntin’ Chantay
Seeche on his home grounds. Who's with ye, Roteo?”

“Hibbard.” °

“Glad as blazes ye hooked up with Hibbard. Dirk is a
comer, and don’t ye never think he ain’t. Conte a yar,
an’ he’ll be able ter turn a trick o’ freebootin’ as well
as ary other homber on the border. I spelled Out that
note ye give me in the greaser quarter, askin’ to have a
lantern up if the game was ripe. Waal, the Sitiwation
couldn’t be no better fer us, Rocco.”

“The Mexicans are there?” queried Rocco eagerly.

“They’ve pitched camp over the ridge.”

“Six of them?”

‘Naw, two. T’other four have gone off some’ts.”

An exclamation of disappointment escaped Reeco,

“What did you mean by hanging up the lantern, then?”
he shot at Long. “What do you mean by saying the
game’s ripe?”

Long laughed in his hairy throat—an ugly, ominous
laugh.

“Kase the four that went left the dust with the two
what stayed,” he answered. “A pair, Rocco, is easier to
handle than half a dozen, huh? I’m scared them other
four’ll git back. Ye’re late arrivin’. Why was it?”

“Never mind that, Tom,” said Rocco. “We're here and
ready for business. How far do we have to go?”

“Not more’n a mile, right over the ridge. Haye I
got to take a hoss, or can I ride in that wagon o’ your?”

“I guess we can tote you to that greaser camp and back.
3ut snuff that light.”

“Sure.”

Chantay Seeche Tom turned away from the machine
and strode into the house. He emerged from the adobe
in a moment and stood beneath the lantern buckling on
a revolver belt. As soon as he had finished, he took down
the lantern, blew out the light, and came back t6 -the
Thunderbolt,

“Foller the trail, Dirk,” said he, after he had elimbed
into the car and seated himself on Rocco’s knees; “Pll
tell ye where ter stop.”

Clancy’ started cautiously along the trail. No doubt was

left, now, of the black designs of the two scoundrels.

Clancy’s whole nature was in revolt against their evil
plans. What was there he could do to foil their taw-
less schemes ? ; : .

He thought of pretending that something was wrong
with the machine. A moment’s reflection, however, con-
vinced him that this would not do. His own pésition

was doubly precarious, since Chantay Seeche Tom had be-

come a member of the party.

Long knew Hibbard well. A very slight false move,
on Clancy’s part, would lead to disaster. The halting

 

  

eam,

arnt -z..”

POET ic

2

eR NS! Se RE A EERE. oe

   

 
 
‘NEW. TIP TOP WEEKLY.

of the machine would give Long an opportunity to discover
that Hibbard was not the chauffuer.

If such a discovery were made, what would the two
men do? Clancy had heard their plans discussed freely,
and the safety of the scoundrels would demand that the
driver of the car be dealt with in desperate fashion.

The red-headed chap’s attempt to carry out Judge Pem-
broke’s wishes and give Dirk Hibbard a square deal
was getting him into deep waters, _

“Can’t do a thing,” thought Clancy, “but obey orders.
After they do what they’re intending at this Mexican
camp, maybe there'll be a chance for me to take a hand.
Blamed ‘if I like being dragged neck and heels into a
holdup! Nice sort of a job for a part owner of the
Square-deal Garage!”

Tt was pleasant for Clancy to think that he had a re-
‘volver in his pocket. The mere presence of the weapon
was comforting. He did not want to use the thing, of
coursé, but it was there to be used in case of extremity.

‘ “Dirk,” said Long, as they skimmed over the trail of the
upgtade to the ridge, “how’d you git away from the judge’s
house?” ~

Clancy had been afraid of a direct question. Here was
one he-had to answer, and his heart fluttered in his
throat.

“Tell you some time, Tom,” he replied hoarsely.

“What ails yer voice? Ketched a cold or somethin’ ?”
“Don’t bother him, Long,” interposed Rocca. “He has
his hands fult running the car.”

“T jest wanted ter know——’

Chantay Seeche Tom bit his words short. While he
was ge pehiie a horse had suddenly whinnied, from some-
where in the dark shadows,to the left of the trail.

. “What's that?” asked Rocco, startled.

| “The greasers’ live stock,” said Long. “They must ’a’
' shifted the caballos from the place where I seen ’em,
when I was sizin’ up the camp a spell ago, Better stop
here, Dirk. We’re clost to the top o’ the ridge, anyways.
We don’t want to git so near the greasers’ll hear this
thing a-comin’.”

Clancy stopped the machine at once. The ridge crest
was only a few yards away, and Long and Rocco tumbled
out of the car,

“You can watch purceedin’s from the ridge top, Dirk,”
said Long, in a guarded voice. “If things goes wrong,
“and-I whoop fer ye ter come, you bring that keer with a

,

rush. Sabe ?”

“Sure,” croaked Clancy.
“J ain't expectin’ nothin’ ter go crossways, but it’s jest
as well ter be ready fer everythin’ that might happen.
Come on, Rocco.” ;
| The two, like a pair of evil specters, glided to the top
- of the ridge and vanished from Clancy’s eyes. Clancy,
_ his heart thumping wildly against his ribs, stole after the
men, At the crest, he saw Long and Rocco stealing down
the opposite slope in the half gloom,
d-give a farm if I was out of this!” Clancy mut-
I’ve jumped into a worse layout than I expected
find. Those fellows are going to rob a party of Mexi-
gold hunters—and I can’t turn a hand to prevent it!”
erhaps a hundred yards from the base of the ridge
e was a charko, or water hole. Two or three dusky
eottonwoods grew by the edge of the pool, and the moon,
falling on the small stretch of water, caused it to gleam

Clancy. “Now Long and Rocco are in for it!”

15

Under one of the cottonwoods a fire was burning.
Against the glow, Clancy could. make out the silhouetted
forms ‘of two men. These, undoubtedly, were the Mexi-
cans Long and Rocco were planning to rob.

The two thieves approached the camp slowly. They
took to the brush and Clancy lost sight of them. Lying
flat on the sandy earth, Clancy strained his eyes and tried
to soothe his rebellious nerves.

He forced his mind into thought that had little to do
with that prospective robbery. Rocco posed as a pro-
fessor. He excused his presence in that part of the coun-
try, and apologized for the freak machine in which he
traveled, by declaring that he was a scientist, traveling
the deserts and collecting material for an honorable in-
stitution in the East.

It was a brazen performance. The audacity of Rocco's
pretensions quite took Clancy’s breath.

Who was Rocco’s original companion? Why was that
fellow out of this deal, and where had he been left?

And this was the sort of company into which Dirk
Hibbard would -have fallen, had not Clancy used force
to keep him out of it!

“Tt’s a good thing for Hibbard,” the venturesome: youth
thought, “but a bad thing for me. Wonder what sort. of
a move it would be if I took the Thunderbolt and ran
away with it?”

This would have helped Clancy, but it would not have
helped right and justice in the least. Long and Rocco
would probably get the gold dust from the Mexicans, and,
failing to find the car, take to the hills with their ill-
gotten gains.

An ambition had been slowly taking hold of Clancy’s
brain—an ambition to capture Long Tom and Rocco, and
take them into Phoenix with their loot. He had not the
least idea how he could realize such an ambition, but the
very idea held a strong appeal for him.

No, he would not run away. He would see the affair
through toa finish. If he found himself in too much dan-
ger, perhaps he could run away later. Those——

Something happened below which brought his wits back
to the camp of the Mexicans with a rush, Two more
forms had suddenly leaped out of the mesquite bushes

and were thrown into bold relief against the firelight.

They were Long and Rocco, and their. work of robbery
was in full swing.

Claney could see that the two men who had come in
the car had concealed their faces with handkerchief masks,

The Mexicans had yelled wildly, jumped erect, and thrown _

up their hands. One of them, at the point of a gun, was
made to step into the chaparral.
carried a_heavy bag.
“There's the gold!” muttered Clancy huskily.
getting it without firing a shot!
greasers, and no mistake! Those nuggets in the seat cush-
ion probably came into Rocco’s hands in the same way.”

He watched with wide eyes while Long and Rocco, side
by side, backed away from the Mexicans with the bag;

then, just as all seemed clear sailing for the robbers, a

“They're zs
Pretty tough on the -

When he came back he i

revolver barked in the brush and a bullet whistled through y

the night. Oaths burst from Long and Rocco, and they

turned and began running up the ridge slope. — ’
More reports followed.
fire, followed by the sharp crack of guns.

“The other four Mexicans have arrived!”

t

exclaimed

There were quick flashes of —

 
  

  

16 NEW TIP

“Dirk!” yelled the voice of Long. “This way, on the
jump! The keer, the keer!”

Clancy sprang up, rushed to the car and got aboard.
Should he abandon Long and Rocco to the Mexicans, or
should he try to capture them himself? They might es-
cape in the night from their pursuers; they might——

Before he hardly knew what he was doing, he was fling-
ing the Thunderbolt over the ridge.

CHAPTER X.
THE MASK FALLS.

The Mexican camp by that time was in a flurry of ex-
citement. Voices were calling excitedly, the bushes were
crashing, and sounds of running feet were mingled with
a tramp of hoofs.

The Thunderbolt’s headlight bored far into the gloom.
In a few moments, as the machine went careering down the
slope, Long and Rocco were brought out distinctly in the
glare.

Rocco lay on:the ground, attempting fruitlessly to rise.
Over him stood Chantay Seeche Tom. Hovering in the
background were Mexicans hungry for the lives of the
two Americano miscreants.

The pursuers’ shouts of rage gave place to cries of won-
der and fear. The vague, ugly shape of the Thunderbolt,
charging through the night with its bright, far-reaching
eye, was enough to startle them.

The firing ceased for a space. While the Mexicans stood
and stared, Clancy brought the car to a halt close to Long
and Rocco.

“What’s the matter?” asked Clancy, his voice unsteady
with excitement.

“Rocco’s hurt,”
him.”

“Got it in the thigh,” spoke up Rocco, in stifled tones.

y?

“I can’t walk. Help me into the car, Long—quick!

was the answer, “a piece of lead found

Tom Long lifted Rocco bodily in his powerful arms
and dropped him into the seat beside Clancy. A groan
was wrenched from Rocco’s lips, but his pain did not
cause him to forget the loot.

“Get the bag! Don’t leave that.”

“Them varmint$ are sure goin’ ter lose their dust ter pay
fer this!” gritted Chantay Seeche Tom, moving back to-
ward the place where Rocco had fallen, and where the
bag of dust had dropped.

“It ain’t here!” Long presently called, in consternation.

“It must be there!” returned Rocco. “Look around,
and——”

A jeering, triumphant laugh broke from the Mexicans.
Their dread of the car had faded, and again they were
rushing forward to bring the fight to close quarters.

“They grabbed it while I was totin’ you to the keer!”
roared the exasperated Long.

Furiously raving, he was forced to give up his search
and execute a quick run for the Thunderbolt, The snap
of revolvers and the snarl of bullets had broken out afresh,
and on top of the ridge a horseman or two could be dimly
seen, making ready to dispute the road with the men in
the car.

“Run them junipers down!” shouted Long. “Roll the
keer right over em! They have played hob with us ter-

, q°7

night—and we’ve had all our trouble fer nothin’!
The loss

Chantay Seeche Tom was in a savage temper.

* that.”

  

TOP WEEKLY.

of the money, Clancy thought, had more to do -with that
than the wounding of Rocco.

The last thing Clancy wanted was to hurt the Mexit
cans. They had turned the tables very néatly on Long
and Rocco, and Clancy had nothing for them but good
will and approval. He was relieved to see the two
horsemen scramble out of the car’s way.

The Thunderbolt went roaring back over the ridge; with
its three passengers crouching as low as possible in the
cockpit. An instant later the lead of the Mexicans began
to play a tune on the rounded surface of the machine.

Bullets rang against the curved steel plates only to
glance singing off into space. It was necessary for Claney,
of course, to attend to the driving.

two companions.
struck him, and in a very few seconds the speed of the
car had carried its passengers out of range of the Mexi-
can’s guns.

Rocco was groaning and seemed to be in. much pain.
Long was sputtering wrathfully, and berating the luck that
had attended the night’s black work.

“It’s gettin’ so I ain’t no good at all at turnin’ a trick
of this kind!” complained Long. “Them other fouf greasers
was handy by. I didn’t see nothin’ of ’em when we bobbed
up in the camp, but they was sure around.”

“Tt’s tough luck, and no mistake,” said Rocco, through
his teeth. “No use crying over spilled milk, though. T’ve
got to get a bandage on this leg of mine as§ soon as
possible.”

“Vl tinker ye up at the ranch,” returned Long, “We
ain’t fur from there now. Dirk, hit ’er up!
reckon them greasers’ll foller us, but ye nevet Gan tell
They’ve got their dust back, and we’re slippin’ away from
‘em so fast it must be plumb discouragin’ even ter think
o’ comin’ arter us. They’re li’ble ter come sneakin’ along
the trail, though; so I opine, when we git that wound o”
Rocco’s fixed up, [ll keep right along inter Phoenix
with ye.”

Clancy was beginning to think that he should have con-
trived, sowehow, to leave Long in the hands of the Mexi-
cans. Rocco, injured as he was, could be managed, but
Long was promising to be a source of continued menace
and peril. ‘

In a few moments the car halted in front of keds dark
adobe. Long got out of the machine and peered back
along the vague trail.

“Can’t see a blamed thing o’ them greasers,” lie reported.
“Dirk, help me lift Bory out o’ the keer and tote him
inter the shack.”

“No, you don’t!” eeciea Rocco, with all the energy that
was left in him. “Do what you can for me here. Tf the
greasers were to come, while you had me in the house,
I might not be able to get away.” .

“T don’t see how we can do much for ye, all doubled
up as ye are in that hole,” grumbled Long.

“Do what you can,” was the answer, “and let it go at

“Come inter the ’dobe with me, Dirk,” said Long. “I
want ye ter bring out a basin o’ water.”

“Hadn’t I ought to stay here and look out for ee
cans?” asked Clancy. ‘

“Waal, ye won't be gone long, and I need ye, ea
ahead, an’ don’t waste no time palaverin’.”

Long strode toward the house, and Clancy; with some

For that reason he
could not protect himself in the cockpit so safely as his.
Fortunately, none of the flying lead

I don’t

  

 

 

 

  
 

 

NEW TIP

  

appreltension, followed him. At the corner of the adobe
Long paused, pickedeup the lantern he had left there,
lighted it and carried it on into the house with him.

When Clancy crossed the threshold, Long, with the lan-
tern in hand, was standing in the center of a large living
room. —

“The kitchen is back o’ this room, Dirk,” said he. “I
feckon you know the lay o’ things. around here without
my tellin’ you, though. Go -out there and git a basin
o water. Here, take the lantern.”

He held out the light and Clancy stepped forward to
relieve him of it. Then, before Clancy could take the
lantern, Long reached out suddenly and jerked the cap
from his head.

“Who the howlin’ blazes are ye?” gritted Long. “I
made up my mind, a spell ago, that ye couldn’t be Dirk Hib-
bard, and Waal, I'll be hanged! If it ain’t the red-
headed juniper as raised Cain with Dirk and me at the
yedge’s. That'll do! Pull that hand away!”

Clancy, realizing that he was in a tight corner, had made
an attempt to snatch the revolver from his jacket pocket.
The vigilant eyes of Long detected the move, and, with
marvelous celerity, the tall scoundrel conjured a weapon
ito his own hand and leveled it.

“Clancy’s yer name, huh?” he barked. “What’s yer
' game—palmin’ yerself off fer Dirk Hibbard, this-a-way?
Stand right where ye are! Try ter run and I'll put a
hole plumb through ye. But you talk, understand? And
don’t use no crooked tongue with me! I want ter know
Why ye’re out here with Rocco.”

Clancy’s situation was desperate. He saw, that
he had made a mistake in not abandoning Rocco and Long
to the enraged Mexicans. Thinking of his mistakes, how-
ever, did not help out in his present emergency.

“I came with Rocco,” said Clancy, “because Hibbard was
intoxicated and not fit to take out the car.”

He was talking against’time,. hoping some idea that might
help him would suggest itself.

“Oh, ye did!” sneered Long. “Ye took Hibbard’s
place in the keer because Hibbard was drunk, and ye didn’t
tell Rocco nothin’ about it. That ’u’d please Rocco a

 

now,

heap—I don’t think. You're a red-headed meddler, and I°

reckon you've grabbed off more’n you can take keer of, this
time. You know too much, Clancy.~ Rocco and me has
been too free in our talk in front o’' ye. We thought
ye was Hibbard, all right.”

While Long was talking, Clancy had slowly edged him-
‘delf to the back of a chair. He executed this movement
Graftily, and in such a way as not to arouse Long’s sus-
picions. The tall scoundrel stood holding the lantern in
one hand and the revolver in the other.

“What're you doing in there?” came the pain-wrenched,

| impatient, voice of Rocco, from outside. “Hurry up, Tom!

We can’t stop here long.”

“I’ve made a diskivery, Rocco,” called Chantay Seeche
Tom through the open front door.

“Bother your discoveries! We've got to pull our freight,
‘and do it pronto.”

“This here feller ye reckoned was Hibbard: ain’t Hib-
_ bard at all,” persisted Long.

“What do you mean?”

“J mean Hibbard didn’t come out with ye this trip.
He was left behind.. The feller that come, and has been
makin’ believe he was Hibbard, is that red-headed cimi-
roon from the Squar’-deal Garage.”

    

TOP WEEKLY. ry

“Look here,” from Rocco, “do

mean-———”

came excitedly you

It’s jest as I’m tellin’ ye,” cut in Long. “Clancy has
been with us on the raid ter-night, and we have palavered
free and confidential right in his hearin’. What he’s seen
and heard ain’t goin’ to do us any good. What’s ter
be done with the meddlin’ whelp, Rocco?”

Before Rocco had a chance to reply, Clancy used the
chair suddenly and with vigor. The point of the leveled
weapon had swerved a little from its mark, and this had
invited the red-headed chap to make a quick, offensive
move.

Crash!

The swinging chair struck the lantern in Long’s hand
and crashed it to fragments. The light went out and left
the room in darkness.

Long roared with anger and sprang toward the place
where he had fast seen Clancy. But Clancy was on his
way to the-door.

The lad’s plan was to escape from the house and make
off with the car and with Rocco before Long could inter-
fere. But something else interfered.

Clancy, in the dark, fell over a table that stood between
him and the door and went down with a crash. Before
he could struggle to his feet, Long was upon him. ~

CHAPTER XI.
THE JUDGE IS WORRIED.
Jimmie Fortune had the telephone book on the desk and
hunting through it for Judge Pembroke’s phone
number. Jimmie’s education had been somewhat neglected,

was

and he was finding his task a hard one.

“Pembroke!” he muttering. “However do you
spell Pembroke? Gee-wollops, but this is a ‘tough pro-
persition my red-headed pard batted up to me.”

was

He had been awake nearly all night, keeping a sharp
watch of Hibbard. He yawned, rubbed his eyes, and once
more made an attack on that puzzling book.

While he was bowed over the desk, the door opened.
Some one came into the office and Jimmie, looking up, ex-
ploded a delighted shout.

“The jedge—if it ain’t! Say, I was jest gettin’ ready to
call you up on the telephore!”

It was rather early for Judge Pembroke to be around.
There was something on his mind and he gave little
heed to Jimmie’s words.

“Where is Wynn?” he asked.

“Over to his boardin’ house, I reckon,”

“f thought he slept here at the. garage?”

“Him and Clancy changed that. Clancy and me takeg
the night duty for a spell, jedge.” .

“Well, where is Clancy? He'll do.”

“He aint around, nuther. I was jest gettin’ ready to
talk with you over the phone and tell you about that,
Friend o’ yourn on the cot, jedge. Look him over.”

Judge Pembroke turned to look at the bound and gagged
form on the cot. He started back with an exclamation,

“Hibbard! Who put those ropes on him, Fortune?”

“Clancy—with a leetle help from yours truly,” answered
Jimmie, grinning.

“Why ?”

“Well, jest to keep Hibbard from goin’ out with the
There’s a hull lot about this busi-

Thunderbolt, I opine.

  
looking for him.

NEW TIP TOP WEEKLY.

ness which I don’t sabe, but I’m wise to that mueh. Clancy
wouldn’t let Hibbard take out that spraddle-bug machine,
and in pfder to make a cinch of it, Clancy roped the
shuffer,’

A look of relief crossed the judge’s face,

“A Spartan method,” he murmured, “but I presume noth-
ing else would. serve. It’s a splendid thing for Hibbard
that he was kept out of the hands of Rocco, I’m obliged
to Clancy--and Hibhard ought to be, too.”

“Clancy said as how I was to call you up and turn
Hibbard aver to you, jedge, purvidin’ he didn’t get back
early this mornin’.”

“Providing who

“Clancy.”

“Where is Clancy?”

“He took Hibbard’s place, disguised himself in Hib-
hard’s dust coat, cap, and goggles and drove off with the
Thunderbolt.”

The judge flung up his hands in consternation.

“Merciful powers!” he gasped. “Why in the world did
the boy do that? Here’s a situation, and no mistake!”

Judge Pembroke was worried. Clasping his hands be-
hind him he walk€t up and down the office, his head
bowed and a thoughtful frown on his face, Presently
he stopped in front of Jimmie.

“Call up Wynn—tell him to come over here at once,” he
ordered,

“Can’t do it, jedge,”
phone.” '

“Then go over to his boarding house and get him. I
must talk with Wynn as soon ag passible.”

“Tm off,” and Jimmie faded through the office door.

_ The judge walked to the side of the cot and stood there
looking down on Hibbard. The chauffeur was wide awake
and making noises behind the gag. The judge bent down
and removed the twisted handkerchief,

“What have you got to say for yourself, Hibbard?”
he asked.

“Somebody’ll pay fer this!” said the chauffeur hotly,

“Yes, no doubt of that! You have Clancy to thank that
you’re not to suffer any evil consequences. Rocco is a
criminal, In an hour, the sheriff and a posse will be out
lf you were with Rocco, Eepard, they’d
be looking for you, too.”

_ -“T came here to take out that car for Rocco,” fumed
Hibbard, “and that confounded Clancy made a prisoner
of me! He left me here and took out the car himself.”

_ “Which was a bad thing for Clancy, but a good thing
for you! Haven’t you any regard for your folks, Hib-

_ bard? Do you want to cover them with shame and dis-
‘ grace? Why don’t you brace up and turn over a new
leaf before it’s too late?”

“You needn’t preach to me!” grunted Hibbard. |

“Your father’s my friend,” said the judge firmly, “and

lm not going to let him suffer through you if T can help

didn’t get back?”

said Jimmie. “He ain’t got no

it. I spared you the other night, and I think it is be-\

cause of what I said that young Clancy, at his own ex-
pense, saved you last night. Clancy is trying to give
you a square deal.”
eg AY don't ask anything of him,” was the sullen rejoinder,
_“nor/of you, either, exdept to let me alone.”

it The judge turned on his heel, walked over to the desk
hone,, and called up the sheriff. All he asked of the
sherift was to come over to a: the Sacare-deal Garage. Just

_for the night?

_to blind the public to his real purpose.

as he finished talking, and hung up the receiver, Wynn a:
entered the office excitedly.
“What's been going on here?” he demanded,

“Your partner seems to have taken matters into: his
own hands, Lafe,” answered the worried judge, “and I am
afraid he has got himself into a lot of trouble.”

“Jimmie has been telling me how Clancy made a pris-
oner of Hibbard and went out with Rocco’s car. What
in thunder has got into Owen?”

“So far as that is concerned, Clancy showed his usual
nerye and determination, He was trying to: befriend Hib-
bard—~and he was doing it in spite of Hibbard, and be- —
cause I had requested it, I have only admiration for
young Clancy, although I am badly worried about him.

He went away in the Thunderbolt and presumably picked a

up Roceo somewhere. What business had Rocco on hand _
It was not lawful business, you may be
sure of that, I hate to think of Clancy’s being mixed
up in it. No telling what has happened to him.”

“Rocco patronized this garage,” commented Wynn, “and

we repaid his patronage with a trick!”
Rocco's patronage is no cregibe an

“Don’t fret about that.
to anybody’s garage.” e
“My red-headed pard allowed Hibbard was drunk,” put Bb
in Jimmie, rallying to Clancy's defense, “and not fit to ‘dvs te
a machine. Mebby Clancy will tell Racco that, and Roceg

will be glad my pard kept a drunken driyer out o’ ne :

Thunderbolt.” e
“Then Hibbard was drunk?” demanded Wynn, whirling m
on Jimmie.
Fortune pointed to ‘the glass on the floor. ci
“There’s a busted bottle o’ fire water,” said he. “Can't _
ye smell the stuff? I've been smellin’ it all night. You
see, when Reddy left he told me to watch Hibbard; and —
if Red wasn’t back early this mornin’ I was to call up
the jedge and turn Hibbard over to him. I was jest gettin’
ready to call the jedge when he blew in,’ .
“What brought you, judge?” asked Wynn. “Ficamie
hadn’t telephoned, and this is i pretty early for you to be
around.” (ae
“T received an answer to that telegram I gl anit to.
Washington,” answered the judge. “No such person as_

Racco ig known at the Smithsonian Institution, and he

has not heen sent out into these deserts on a scientific

mission,” A
“Great jumping Maria!” murmured Wynn blankly.

“Rocco lied about his wark—he misstated the case just

I was correct -

my suspicions, Lafe! That fellow Rocco is a criminal of

some sort. He left a companion here in town. Do you,
know where?” J

“No. ”

“That man must be found, if possible! And ee must
be taken at once to locate Clancy and Racco. We—",

At this juncture, the sheriff entered the room. He was a ”
quiet-appearing man and wore a business suit. He looked © a
as though he might be a well-to-do merchant—and, in
truth, that was his calling before elected to fill the hans
he now held.

“Hello, judge!” he called. “What’s the a Rediiy 3
early for you to be calling on the ae for’ aceytia:
isn’t’ it?” 4

“Goed morning, agree answered Pentroke.

 
  

‘

——

ei
~

pt ema ai Nar a

 

 

    

NEW

heard of this fellow, Rocco, who came to town with that
queer automobile?” ;

“He called on me,” said Pingree, laughing, “and wanted
to know if there were any bad men loose in the neigh-
boring deserts. Professor Rocco, of the Smithsonian In-
stitution. A harmless old fossil.”

“Harmless, eh?” returned the judge dryly. “Read that.”

He handed over a yellow sheet for Pingree’s inspection.
The sheriff’s expression changed completely as he read
the telegram.

“Jumping sand hills!” he muttered. “Who'd have thought
that professor was bogus? What’s his scheme, judge?
Do you know?”

. Pémbroke at once related all the details connected with
Reeco’s stay in Phoenix. He told the whole story, so far
as he knew it, adverting to his own suspicions and going
comprehensively into Clancy’s and Hibbard’s connection
with events. Pingree listened with deep and growing in-
terest,

“And another professor came here with Rocco, Wynn?”
the sheriff asked, turning to Clancy’s partner.

“He was dressed the same as Rocco,” was the reply,
“and looked as much like a professor.”

“And this other chap was sick, judge,” went on Pingree,
*so that Rocco had to secure Hibbard to drive the car?”

“Yes,” said the judge.

“We'll look for him. I’ve an idea that the adobe in
the Mexican quarter, where your clerk saw Rocco de-
liver the note to the man supposed to be Long; Tom, may
be the place where Rocco’s pal in staying. I want that
clerk!”

“Tl go with you to find him,” returned the judge.
“What I want most, though, is to have you do something
to find and protect young Clancy. He——”

Judge Pembroke and Pingree were in front of the garage.

,

While the judge was speaking, his eyes roved along the,
The words faded from his lips and a look of won-—

street.
der filled his face.

“Look, Pingree!” he exclaimed, in startled tones, point-
ing.

The sheriff, staring in the direction indicated, gave vent
to a startled exclamation,

CHAPTER XII.
CLANCY’S GET-AWAY.

Clancy, pinned to the floor of the adobe by the weight
6f Chantay Seeche Tom, would not at that moment have
given a copper cent for his chances of escape. His mis-
takes of the night flashed through his mind, and he re-
proached himself bitterly for not doing certain things and
for leaving other things undone. He should have aban-
dened Rocco and Long Tom to the Mexicans, and raced
‘back to Phoenix when he had the chance. Now it was too
late.

“"Ve’re a slick one,” breathed Long wrathfully, “but ye’re
not slick enough to git away from me. What’ve ye done
with Hibbard?”

Long was compressing Clancy’s throat so that he could
not answer. He tried to talk, however, and Long relaxed
his fingers a little.

“He’s back at the garage,” said Clancy.

“How did ye keep him from:*comin’ with the Thunder-
~ bolt?”

“Tt’s as I told you—Hibbard was under the influence

Mr TOP WEERLY: 19

of liquor and:would have smashed the car if he had tried
to drive it.”

“Why didn’t ye tell that to Rocco, hey?
masqueradin’ as Hibbard?”

Clancy was silent. ;

“Ye wanted to git next to our plans, that’s why!” hissed
Chantay Seeche Tom. “A héap o’ good it'll do ye, my ban-
tam !”

What the ruffian would have done to Clancy is problem-
atical. He was desperate and unscrupulous. and the night’s
misfortunes had left him in ugly temper. But he had no
opportunity to carry out his evil will. A shout came from
Rocco.

“The greasers! What in blazes is keeping you, Long?”

A clippity-clip, clippity-clip of galloping hoofs could be
heard, far off in the night swiftly approaching the adobe.
Long swore under his breath. His hard luck for
night was not yet at an end.

A greater menace than Clancy and the knowledge he had
acquired was drawing its coil about Chantay Seeche Tom.

Why was you

ate
that

‘The scoundrel sprang to his feet, gave no further attention

to Clancy, and rushed out into the night? With his re-
volvers drawn, he stood looking off along the trail.

Clancy had a few moments’ grace. If he used them to
the best advantage, he knew he must be quick.

Softly he arose and slipped through the open door. In
the moonlight, Long stood like a statue, @azing in the
direction from which the sound of, galloping was reaching
his ears»

Rocco, lifting himself by the back of the seat, was staring
at Long and shouting for him to make haste and come
to the car. Both scoundrels were so wrapped up in their
threatening dangers that little heed was paid to Clancy.
The latter had climbed into the car before Rocco knew
what he was doing. A revolver swung from a belt around
Rocco’s waist. Clancy pulled the weapon from the holster
and flung it into the road; then, leaning down, he pressed
the button that started the motor.

“Wait!” cried Rocco, forgetting in his excitement the
recent discoveries regarding his driver; “wait for Long!”

Long had whirled, at last, and started for the machine.
Back of him, like swiftly moving blots, mounted Mexicans
were sliding along the trail.

Clancy threw in the clutch and the Thunderbolt started
off.

“Hold up!” roared Long.

Clancy paid no attention, but swiftly ran up the speed.
Swiftly the car drew away+from the running man _ be-
hind.

.

“Stop!” yelled Rocco. “What’s the matter with
eh? Stop, or [’I—

Then he must have remembered that the driver whom
he had thought was Hibbard was, in reality, Clancy. Ina
burst of anger, he reached for his revolver. Failing to
find it, he threw his arms around Clancy and tore his
hands from the steering wheel.

“Let go!” cried Clancy. “Do you want to wreck us?”

The car had slewed wildly from the road and plunged
into a thicket of greasewood bushes. Rocco, unable to leave
the machine on account of his wound, realized that he
was only inviting disaster by interfering with Clancy. He
untangled his arms and fell back in his seat.

you,

him to that

“Wait for Long!’’.he panted. “T can't leave
yelping pack of greasers !”

 

  
20 | NEW TIP TOP WEEKLY.

“We haven’t time to bother with Chantay Seeche Tom,”
flung back Clancy, grabbing the steering wheel and bring-
ing the car again into the trail. “He hasn’t any more use

for me than I have for him.”

“What’re you going to do?”

“Get back to Phoenix as soon as possible.”

“Where are you going to leave me?”

“T guess the jail is the proper place for you, Rocco.”

Rocco was helpless, and he knew it. If he had not
been wounded, if he had had his revolver. But there
was no earthly use in trying to reconstruct the situation.
Events were as he found them, and there was no way to
make them different.

Perhaps he reasoned that it was better to ride on With
Clancy than to stay behind and fall with Long into the
hands of the Mexicans. He remained quiet, but it was evi-
dent that his wound bothered him, for the jolting of the
car now and again wrenched a groan from his lips. He
was in no condition to combat the plans of the determined
and resourceful youth at his side—that is, not with force.
There was a chance that guile might win the day for
Rocco—at least, from later developments, it was quite
evident that he thought so.

The car gained the mountain trail, and Clancy covered
the treacherous path at slower speed. By that time, he
and Rocco were well away from Chantay Seeche Tom and

- the Mexicans, and there was nothing to be feared from
them.

When they descended the opposite slope of the mountain,
and almost in the very place where, on another occasion,
Clancy had encountered Hibbard, Judge Pembroke, and
Rockwell, something went wrong with the engine.

Clancy removed the switch plug when he got out to
look for the trouble—merely as a precaution, for he felt
very sure Rocco.could not run the car, even if the motor
had been in condition.

Opening the tool box he took out an electric torch.
With this he went over the engine carefully, and then lo-
- cated the trouble in the carburetor. Perhaps he was an

hour remedying the matter, and during all that time Rocco
sat back in his seat and held his peace. It was not until
they started on again that Rocco began to talk.

“Drive slowly, young man,” he requested. “We have
plenty of time, and swift running causes me jolts and
torture.”

The voice was pleasant, almost genial, and Clancy won-
dered at it.

“T haven’t known you very long, Clancy,” said Rocco,
“but I have seen enough of you and your work to give

me a very high regard for your ability.” |
 -*Thanks,” laughed Clancy. “Why don’t you tell me what

you want, right out, without handing me all that bunk?”
“I mean what I say,” insisted Rocco. “I saw you knock
_ Hibbard out, in the row at Rockwell's garage, and I heard
how you had repaired this car when every other mechanic

in town failed to locate the trouble. What you have done
to-night has still further impressed me. I have a propo-
sition to make to you, Clancy.”

“Keep it to yourself, Rocco,
‘you at all.”

_ “Wait. You are planning to hand me over to the sheriff.
. If you will take me in this care to Mesa, and leave me at

the ranch of a friend near that town, I will give you ten

- thousand dollars in cash.”

~ Ten thousand dollars in cash!

I want no dealings with

‘Clancy caught his breath.

That amount of money would drive the wolf from the door
of the Clancys, and place them in easy circumstances. It
would lift from Owen’s shoulders the heavy responsibility
in looking after the welfare of his father and mother.
It would——

But Clancy, in accepting such a proposition, would have
to turn his back on all the principles of honor and in-
tegrity which had been instilled into him by his parents.

“No,” said he, “you can’t bribe me, Rocco.”

“Not only that,” continued the other, “but I'll take you
in as an even partner in all my enterprises. We will share
and share alike in some of the many ventures I have in
mind, They are all easy and safe. With the Thunder-
bolt there is not a particle of danger from the law. The
machine can take us anywhere. If there is peril in one
place, we can travel elsewhere. The prospect for rich
pickings are greater than you can possibly imagine. This
little work of to-night amounts to nothing at all. It was
Long Tom’s scheme. There may have been six or seven
thousand dollars’ worth of dust in that bag. We lost it,
but it is nothing. I am out for jobs that yield sixty or
seventy thousand dollars. And they can be comfortably
turned.” eo a

Rocco paused. Clancy had nothing to say. .

“In a year, Clancy,” pursued Rocco, “you will tie i
rich man. If you do not like the work, you can go to
other parts and live honestly, honored and respected by all —
who know you. I,” and Rocco laughed, “am a financier. —
My methods are no more unscrupulous than those em-_
ployed by some of the money kings of the country. They
simply do not come within the pale of the law. Here is _
an opportunity for you. Nothing like that was prenees ne
Hibbard. What do you say?” :

“I say you're a blacker scoundrel than I thought,” re-
turned Clancy steadily. “Do you know why I kept Hib- oes
bard from driving this car to-night? It was because | ~
wanted to drag him out of your clutches. Judge Pembroke _
is a friend of mine, and Hibbard’s father is a friend of ~
the judge’s. Hibbard doesn’t like me; and what I did was
done mostly because the judge wanted it done. I’m glad _
now that I did what I could to save Hibbard.” reer

“You're a fool!” declared Rocco, his voice sharp wich at

pain and disappointment.

“All right,
cheerfully. a ee

And just then the streamers of dawn unfurled them-
selves in the east. They fluttered higher and higher, driy- —
ing the western stars farther back in the receding gloom. —
Then orange and gold glowed over the eastern edge of the ,
desert, and ahead the rooftops and spires of Phoenix lifted —
themselves out of the rich green foliage. The car sped —
on, and neither’ Clancy nor Rocco had anything to say
until the Thunderbolt turned into the street leading to ahs. 1
Square-deal Garage. PBN

“Why,” cried Clancy, “there’s the judge now!” a fh

“Yes,” added Rocco, “and Pingree, the sheriff. You've
lost a fortune to-day, young man, and I have lost my
liberty—for a little while. Bat look out for yourself meee (
I am free!”

The car raced on and turned into the broad doorway. ie 5
the garage. The judge and the sheriff followed it
the building. i

“Clancy !” eee: Judge Pembroke.
surprise!"

if you want to think so,

” returned Cihey. A

“Well, ‘his is

 
  

ir
it

erm Jenene titi

ma i
eRe ie Fee ‘ ¥

 

. gave himself to a study of Rocco’s countenance.

Seg m

CHAPTER XIII.
WHAT COURAGE WON.

The sheriff was about to speak, but something drew
his attention to Rocco. He studied the man’s face intently.
Then, taking off the solar hat and spectacles, he continued
his scrutiny.

Presently he took from his breast pocket a packet of
papers, selected one, looked it over hurriedly, and again
Then he
laughed gleefully.

“George Lowell, otherwise Fly-by-night George, other-
wise Gentleman George,” said he, “I reckon you’re at the
end of your trail. Queer I didn’t recognize you when you
called at my office. The solar hat and the spectacles rather
obscured your identity, I take it. You match up well with
this picture on the circular I received from the Denver
chief of police.”

“Do I?” returned Rocco coldly. “Well, take me some-
where and call a doctor. I’m wounded.”

“Til have you attended to in a brace of shakes.”

Pingree went to the telephone, called his office in the

_ jail and asked for a couple of his best men, one of whom

was able to drive a car, They came in a hurry, received
imstructions and went away with Rocco, one of them driv-
ing the Thunderbolt slowly and the other walking beside
the machine, When the party, had left the garage, Pingree
turned to Clancy, who was talking with Pembroke, Wynn,
and Jimmie,

“Give me your hand, young man,” said he. “I want to
congratulate you on capturing one of the smoothest crooks
in the country.”

“Oh, well,” laughed Clancy, “I blundered into it, sheriff.
I’m not entitled to much credit,”

“No? Well you are entitled to three thousand dollars
in ¢ash, offered as a reward for the apprehension of this
Rocco. Half that amount is to be paid by one of the ex-
press companies and the other half by the government.”

Clancy, dumfounded, almost fell over against the office
pattition, He could only stare speechlessly at Pingree.

Fortune whooped delightedly, Pembroke reached for

_Clancy’s hand and Wynn patted him on the shoulder.

“I earned that money,” said the bewildered Clancy, “and
never knew what I was doing! Say,” he added, thinking
of the broken father back East, “this is great!”

“Come into the office and tell me all about what hap-
pened,” said the sheriff, smiling. “I want to learn what
took place while you were out with Rocco in the Thunder-
bolt. I'll warrant you it’s a good story, all right.”

They went into the office, the five of them, and, while
Clancy talked, the others hung around him and listened
with absorbed attention.

“Talk about nerve,” remarked Jimmie admiringly, when
the recital was finished, “ain’t my red-headed pard there
with the goods? And I'll bet. a pack o’ dinero he hasn’t
told the half o’ what he did. He’s kind o” made himself
as small as possible.”

“You took a long chance, Owen,” said Wynn, drawing a
long breath.

“But he won,” murmured the judge, with eyes gleaming,
“he won!”

Pembroke walked over to the cot and released Hibbard.
The latter had heard everything as it fell from Clancy’s
lips.

 
 

NEW TIP TOP: WEEKLY. 2

“If you had been in Clancy’s place, Hibbard,” observed
the judge, as the chauffeur sat up on the edge of the cot,
“Rocco would not have been captured, but you'd have
fallen into the lawless net Rocco spread for you, and, by
this time, would be well started on a career of crime.

Clancy’s ‘square deal’ has this night been
Profit by the experience. Now clear

Think it over.
the saving of you.
out !”

The judge pointed toward the door. Rather sheepishly,
Hibbard got to his feet, picked up his hat, jammed it oyer
his eyes, and passed from the office into the street.

“I wonder,” mused Pingree, “if that lesson is lost on
him?”

“Time will tell,” answered Judge Pembroke.

THE END.

Whether Hibbard did profit by his experience, what was
the result of Rockwell’s efforts to put the firm of Clancy
& Wynn out of business, and a lot of other mighty in-
teresting things will be told in “Owen Clancy’s Hardest
Fight; or, Foes in Ambush,” which will be found in the
next issue of this weekly, No. 79, out January 3Ist. This
is the most interesting story of Owen’s efforts to make
good that has yet been published, so don’t miss it.

The Wonderful Adventures of Capn Wiley.

Written by Himself. Edited by Burt L. Standish.

SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING CHAPTERS.

At the age of sweet sixteen Walter Wiley runs away
from home along with his faithful dog, Fido, and: starts
to walk to Boston.

They encounter sundry adyentures, but at last, having
no money, they find themselves in danger of starving.

At this crisis they come to a river into which an elephant
froma circus has fallen, and for whose rescue the circus
man is wildly offering five hundred dollars reward.

After super-canine efforts the elephant is saved by Fido,
but the rascally circus man repudiates his promise, and
offers Wiley five dollars, which he finally takes, and spends
on a big dinner for himself and faithful Fido.

Heartened by the meal, they push on, but on the road
are overtaken by a speeding automobile; haying no time
to spring aside, Wiley leaps high in the air, the motor
car passes under him, and he, alighting in the tonneau,
finds himself being rushed along at a speed of a few miles
a minute.

Believing that Fido is left far behind, Wiley makes up
his mind he will never see his faithful companion again,
but suddenly the dust clears, and he discovers the animal
only a few feet behind the car; he calls, and, with a burst
of speed, Fido overtakes the car, and with a mighty spring
lands beside his master,

CHAPTER IV.
THE CHAUFFEUR.

Overjoyed, with Fido. beside me on the seat, I again
settled down. It is a strange thing that all through life
I have ever found it much easier to settle down than to
settle up. All my creditors will confirm this,

We sped on. Occasionally we caught fleeting glimpses
of pedestrators, and other vehicles upon the road, but in
some unaccountable manner we were long denied the
pleasure of running any of them down. If my memory
serves me right, however, we did leave a few dead dogs

  

 

ey
inna wie.

neat epnenac int Mea,

   
22 3 NEW TIP TOP WEEKLY.

and chickens and pigs, and other fowl scattered along the
thoroughfare.

We ripped through towns without dallying at all. Once
we smashed through the closed gates at a railroad cross-
ing and missed the’ cowcatcher of a fast express train
locomotive by less than a sixteenth of an inch. It was
exhilarating, to say the least.

At times I was sure I caught a passing glance of men
who were making frantic signals for us to stop. Some
of these men, I thought, wore badges upon the lapels of
their coats, and I began to have a slight suspicion that we
might be exceeding the speed limit.

But this made no difference to the pilot at the helm.
He heeded nothing. 1 wondered if he, also, had a great-
grandmother dying in: Boston.

The telephone poles along the roadside looked. like
picket fences as we sped on. We entered and departed
from great cities so abruptly that they seemed no larger
than small hamlets or Macbeths. ,

“Methinks, Fido,” said I eventually, “that our worthy
skipper hath been looking at wine when it biteth like a
serpent and stingeth like a bladder. He must be slightly
obfuscated. Otherwise his protracted haste is beyond satis-
factory explanation.”

We tore through another town.

“Pardon me,” said I, leaning forward and touching the
navigator on the front seat—that is to say, the navigator
was On the front seat; I touched him on the shoulder.

He did not look round or betray.a token of surprise.

“Pardon me,” I repeated; ”I think, sir, that you killed a
policeman back there.”

“This has been a poor day for policemen” he answered
still without turning. “I have killed only three thus far.”

“What is your usual record?” I inquired,

“I’m never satisfied with less than six,” he returned.
“But the car is running very poorly to-day, and I can’t
expect to do as well as that.”

“T have observed,” said 1, “that the car seems to be
somewhat dilatory in its movements. I’m really tired of

_dawdling along. Don’t you think you can open her up a
bit, and get something like real speed out of her 2”

I think he sighed sadly.

“I am afraid not,” he confessed;
Chicago before dark,”

It was then edging on to four o'clock in the afternoon,

and Chicago was only about one thousand miles away.

“Too bad,” said I. “I’m afraid you will have to light
_ your lamps before you reach Chicago. Would you regard
me with disflavor, or consider it impertinent if I inquired
your ultimate destination?”

“I am bound for the Sandwich Islands?” he replied.

“Do you intend to make the entire trip in this machine?”
was my next interrogation.

“T do,” he assured.

“But don’t you think it may be rather damp traveling
from San Francisco to the Sandwich Islands?”

“Not at all. It will be an easy matter to cover the
ground—or, rather, the ocean—from 8 Francisco to
Hawaii” ;

“Hy? waryer going to do it?” I ventured.

“Well, you see by the time the Golden Gate is reached

“and I must reach

_ Ivshall have acquired such speed and momentum that the

‘machine will jump clean across to the Sandwich Islands.
I have carefully calculated on this point in advance. It
_ will be a delightful experience to’skim the surface of the

i

ocean like a bird, and reach, at a single bound, the land
of eternal summer. I think you will enjoy it very much.” 2

“I am quite sure I’shall,” I responded. “But what if you
make a miscalculation as to the direction of the islands
when you shoot off over the Pacific from San Francisco?
Or what if you acquire too much momentum and we sail
right over the islands, and splash into the open ocean 4
few hundred miles beyond?” ;

“[ hadn’t thought of such a contingency,”
edged. “Can you swim?”

vee:

“Well, if we miss the islands, you'll find it incumben
upon you to exercise your skill at the acquirement.”

By this time, it is needless to say, I was quite willing,
even anxious, to get out and walk. Never before had
plain walking seemed to me such a delightful pastime.
The discerning reader will doubtless understand that, with
great percipicacity, I had arrived at the seclusion that | the |
driver not only had a wheel in his hands, but several more
in his head.

I sought to devise some scheme whereby I could an e
him to linger and let me off, but before I could put any —
plan into execration, we shot through another town, where
a number of persons on horseback tried to detain u
came to a gradua! stop about a mile beyond.

I seized the opportunity to step out, and thanked
good fortune when I again felt my feet safely plant
terra cotta. ,

Nevertheless, assuming an air of insouciance, I as e€
what was. the matter. ie

“T don’t know,” confessed the driver, likewise call
scending to the ground. “Something has evidently g
wrong.” .

“Perhaps,”
carbonize.”

He did not seem to think that was the trouble.

“Then,” I continued affluently, “it may be that the uni-
versal joint has become dislocated. Perhaps we had better
send for a sturgeon.”

“Let me think,” said he, placing his index finger against
the front dome of his bat factory.

“Don’t do it if it hurts you,” I pleaded. 3
He was still endeavoring to think, when the sound. oO i
galloping horses led me to look back along the road over —

which we had quite recently passed, and I beheld the
horsemen who had but lately sought to stop us coming we
fast as their gallant steeds could bear them. — %

he acialille ‘

I suggested, “the carbonator has ceased
ggested, ;

My companion was so preoccupied that he did not per-
ceive them at once. Lifting one of the front apts Be
unscrewed a cap and peered into a hole. i

“I have it!” he cried. “The gasoline is all gone.”

“If the gasoline is all gone,” said I, “you haven't it.”

Then he discovered the horsemen. .

“What, ho!” he exclaimed.. “Who approacheth?” ©

“Doubtless,” I answered, “they are officers of the law. In
running a gas cart haste makes chased.”

He glared. Perhaps he had an. excuse for becoming ,
suddenly violent. At any rate, he became. With a yell,
he leaped at me. ;

“You have betrayed me!” ‘he screamed. “You shall die!”

Now, dying has never held any particular attraction’ for
me, and at that moment I was in no great hurry to ‘see
what it was like. Therefore, I avoided his rush and
handed: him a John L. Sullivan’ of such a soothing an
efficacious nature that he lay night down on the tbe

 
we ‘ye a on

es

sk

Sitti Soe ES hip ee

 

 

  
 

 

 

  
   

NEW TIP

 

f
‘

and fethained in an incumbent position until the horse-
men arrived, and lifted me off his wishbone, on which J
had Seated myself.

Théy were, as 1 had sagely surmised, officers of the law,

and they told me that the man was a dangerous, escaped
lunatic, who had purloined the automabile, All along the
line of his flight officers, warned by telephone, had been
seeking to recapture him, and now, at last, he had been
appréelwended after causing me a great deal of apprehen-
sion...
. Having heard my tale of woe, they voted that I was an
excruciatingly fine chap, and decided to whack up among
themselyes and give me a generous reward of merit, which
they did, one of them passing the hat. The collection
amounted to four dollars and twenty-seven cents.

The following day I read in a newspaper that there
had been a seward of three hundred dollars offered for the
recapture of that escaped lunatic.

CHAPTER V.
A “NANNYGOAT’ AND A CHALLENGE.

T will pass over the approximately succeeding events of
my yoracious narrative by simply saying that at last. I
Succeeded in reaching Boston. Much to my surprise, there
Were no bands of music out to escort me into the city,
HO shouting multitudes to welcome me, and the mayor
did mot even present me with the freedom of the town.
But it must be remembered that I was very young, and as
yet unknown to infamy.

Haye you ever been in Boston, gentle reader? If not,
let me give you a warning. If you do visit the home of
the festive baked bean, the sacred codfish, and other things,
and people of more or less extinction, be careful how you
predestinate upon the streets, for I give you my sacred
word of dishonor that those streets are so crooked that
if you set forth to go some place in a great hurry you
are almost certain to meet yourself coming back.

Boston is full of down Easters, a great concordance of
which seem to hale or rain from the good old State of
Maine. Maine, for political purposes, being a Prohibition
Staté, and Boston, for quite the same purposes, being quite
the diverse, I may further add that most of the people
from Maine are likewise full—of enthusiasm.

‘1 tell you it is a great privilege to walk right in through
a pair of high-cut swinging doors, and stand up, unabashed,
to @ long, beautifully polished rosewood counter, with a
nice brass rail on which to rest one foot, while the other

» is working, and purchase your enthusiasm at five or ten

or fifteen or twenty or twenty-five cents a gargle.
Speaking of this reminds me of a little nannygoat con-
cering old Peter Tiffiny, of Lincolnville Center, Knox
County, Maine. Down that way it is claimed that any-
body who does not trek to Boston at least once during

» his lifetime dies a fool, and old Peter had arrived at the
) temotest and unsatisfactory age of sixty-three without

ever having made the journey.
AlPhis life Peter had been rumoring his intention to take
im the big town before the date of his expiration, but

"Somehow he had never been able to aggregate together

€ieugh spondulics to defray the consequent expenses.
Every time he corralled a few greasy dollars his foot

» Slipped, and he sent a posthaste money order to one of
' the many Boston emphoriums for the dispensing of liquid

 

   

 

TOP WEEKLY. 23

enthusiasm, and had a jug of the same shipped to him
via fast express.

Thus it transpired that Peter had been detained. Folks
had a habit of asking him when he was going to Boston,
and what he meant to do when he got there. He always
replied that he was going in a week or two, and that when
he arrived in Boston, having suffered to such an extensive
extent from a choking thirst in Maine, he proposed to
drink up all the grog in the city.

Finally Peter’s only sister somewhat reluctantly died,
and left him the enormous sum of five hundred dollars.
Say, the old boy didn’t do a thing! Barely were the obse-
quies terminated, and the remains permanently’ located,
when Pete purchased an outfit of gorgeous raiment, and
started for Boston with the greatest extradition.

He took the big boat of the Eastern Steamship Line,
and arrived at the goal of his long-blighted desires in the
early morning hours. Saunteririg ashore with his carpet-
bag in his right hand, and his umbrella in his left; he
made a center rush for the first saloon that greeted his
eager eye. There, it being near the water front, he
obtained a quencher for the modest stipend of five cents.

Having wiped his ruby lips with the back of his hand,
and inquired the route to the main street of the town, he
set forth much heartened and encouraged. It happened
that he took a thoroughfare which for some distance was
given over mainly to warehouses, and he had advanced con-
siderably on his way before his roving eye discovered an-
other saloon. Mindful of his pledge to drink up the entire
stock in the city, he stepped right in and called for an-
other. This time it cost him a dime.

He progressed again, debouching gradually into a better
part of the village, and here he had yet another; for
which, not a little to his surprise, he was obliged to let
go of fifteen cents.

Still farther on, having reached the vicinity of the Com-
mon, he strolled into the headache factory of a rather
swell hotel, and if his breath had not been very strong
by this time he would have lost it when he was charged
twenty cents for a dram.

Later on, he wabbled up to the bar of a Back Bay
hostelry, and was relieved of a quarter for a drink.

When Peter got back home a few days later, bringing
a beautifully polishel brass brick in his knapsack, and a
Canadian dime, which he had been unable to spend, in his
purse, people asked him if he had had a good time, and
he replied that he had had a ripper. “Well, did you drink
up all the booze in Boston?” they inquired. “No, I didn’t,”
he confessed; “but, by gum! I made ’em put up the price
on it.”

Now, youth and inexperience, and lack of simoleons
prevented me from attempting to duplicate Peter’s great
feat. He wore number twelves. Nevertheless, I found
other, more innocent, if not as exhilarating, pleasures, and
succeeded for the time being in keeping my name out of
the police-court records.

On my second day in Boston,’ having heard that the
Harvard crew was practicing on the Charles River, I
rambled thither, in conglomeration with little Fido, to see
’em prac a little.

It was a grievous disappointment to me. I stood on the
same bridge that the poet confessed he had once stood
upon at midnight, and watched the so-called great varsity
eight pass slowly and sedately beneath me, when | had

put of

  
24

confidently expected them fairly to sizz along the surface
of the river.

“Fido,” . said. I,
scow.”’ ‘

Fido looked up at me and winked.

“T think,” I continued, “that I’ll give them a slight ex-
ample in the noble art of rowing.”

Now, I happened to know a promising youth from my
native burrow who had come to the city, and sustained a
job on one of ‘the newspapers as repotter. I sought him

“T can beat that bunch sculling a mud

straightaway in secret conclave, and unfolded to him my

nefarious design.

The next morning his paper printed a full column article,
written in a supposed-to-be-humorous vein, and containing
considerable sourcasm, stating that I had arrived in town,
and would row against the Harvard crew at four o'clock
that afternoon all by my solitary.’ The general populace
was urged to come out and witness the agony.

Still I was satisfied, for I had accomplished my pur-
pose, which was to distill myself into the public eye. It
was now up to little Walter. to find a boat and make good.
Of my ability to do this I had not a single transient
qualm,

But when I tried to borrow a boat I found myself up
against it good and sufficient. I was regarded with sus-
picion which naturally touched my sensative nature to the
apple core. Up and down the river I wandered, pleading
in vain with the owners of such boats as I desired, and
finding myself difftised by them all. Not having the
needful to buy as much as a water bucket, I began to
fear that the whole thing would turn out to be fearful
\ belasco.

At last, however, one man jokingly offered to let me
have an old square-ended punt that weighed about half.a
ton. I looked it over with a cricketal eye, and accepted
his offer, providing he would supply me with a special
pair of long and heavy oars. This he eventually agreed
to do, and I made ready for the conquest, taking par-
ticular pains to instill a new pair of massive iron oar-
locks, and see that they were so firmly set that a yoke
of oxen could not possibly pull thém out.

‘Shortly exterior to the hour set I rowed gently out
upon the glassy bosom of the river and waited for the
varsity crew to approach from a distance.

Both sides of the river, all the bridges, and the roofs of
the adjacent houses were thronged with people. The curi-
ous populace had turned out en massage to behold the
race,

“This is fame,”. said I, speaking to little Fido, who sat
on the stern seat of the punt. “This will send my name
ringing down the cuspidors of time to prosterity.”

Soon the Harvard boat appeared. I waited its approach
with perfect equinamity. Even when it passed me, every
man bending lustfully at his oar, I.made no move. I let
it go on, fully confident that I could concede it half the

distance and yet beat it to the next bridge, which was the

finishing point.

‘The crowd upon the shores and the housetops began to
murmur and grumble. I knew they thought me a quitter,
an. were yearning with indignity at the thought that they
had been hoaxed.

Finally I set my long oars in the oarlocks, and slowly,
almost slanguidly, headed the old punt in the proper direc-
tion. Still I looking over my shoulder
with all the grace of a IT knew

lingered longer,
swan preening its feathers.

NEW: TIP’ TOP WEEKLY.

I was a cynosure of all eyes, and, to save me, I could not
help posing a little.

At last I dipped my oars and gave a great pull at
them. Instantly the old punt leaped like a mettlesome
racer pricked with the spur, or a man who has seated him-
self upon a carpet tack.

Backing up to the edge of the stern seat, little Fido
dropped his tail into the water and steered. There was,
therefore, no need for me to look round to keep the
course, and I gave complete attention to the matter of
getting up speed.

I knew it must certainly appear to the casual mind that
I was beaten to a custard at the start, but when it comes
down to rowing, I’m right there with the huckleberries. 1
knew what I could do, and I proceeded to did it.

By the time I had given five or six mighty pulls at the
oars I had,the old punt fairly hissing through the water.
I heard murmurs of wondering admiration rise from the
astonished spectators, but I did not permit anything to
divest me from my project. With every fresh stroke I
exerted more energy, and soon the shores of the river
began to spin’ past us at such speed that Fido became
dizzy, and was compelled to shade his eyes with one paw.
Despite this, he did not paws in the task of steering,

I knew I must be rapidly overhauling the varsity boat.
The murmur of the multitude had risen to a shout. I was
being cheered all along the shore, and it shore was a cheer-
ful sound to hear. (Please be sure to give this page to a
printer who carries a life-insurance policy and doesn’t
care much what happens to him.)

The coxswain of the crew had looked back and seen me
coming. I heard him importuning the rowers not to mind -
the roar of the spectators, but to. buckle down and yank
away for all they were worth, and then some.

But their efforts. were. vain. My .old punt was now
tearing through the water.with the speed of a bubble
driven by Barney Oldfield.. As I was passing the Harvard
boat, still some distance from the bridge, I notices a slight
haze, like smoke, rising from the water all around . me,
and fancied the oger of smoke saluted my nostrils. |

Still, heedless of danger, I continued .to exert myself
with great energy. The haze grew thicker, and. the smell
of smoke more abundant. The cheers of the spectators
had. changed to wild cries of alarm and: warning.

Suddenly I realized what was happening. The planking
of the old: scow was. growing hot beneath my peddlé ex-
tremities. The friction of the water against the bottom
and sides‘ of the boat had been so excessive. that. there
was grave peril of spontaneous combustion.

This knowledge overcame me just:a modicrum of fiche
too late for me to. prevent the disaster. Even as I slack-
ened speed, tongues of flame shot up all around me, and
I saw that the punt was doomed.

The fire scorched the fringe off poor little Fido’s tail,
causing him to shed silent tears of anguish. Nevertheless,

~ the noble dog, following the example of the late lamented

Jim Bludsoe, remained at his post of duty, and continued -
to steer.

The fire increased with scaitubline rapidity, a in a
very few seconds I was compelled to conclude that I
could not conelude the race as I had originally propounded
to do. Coughing, sneezing, gasping for breath, I finally
relinquished the oars and leaped overboard, calling despair-
ingly to little Fido. '

To my horror, the faithful dog refused to coticaictah

 

 

 
 

NEW: ‘TIP TOP WEEKLY. 25

his position. Plainly ashamed and disgusted with me be-
cause of my lack of nerve, he stuck by the burning deck
and propelled the boat onward toward the near-by bridge
by using his tail after the manner of a sculling oar.

{ saw him reach the bridge barely a yard ahead of the
varsity boat, thus winning the victory and saving my rep-
utation at the fearful cost of his own young life.

For, overcome by smoke and flames, that wonderful dog
keeled over, and was cooked to a crisp when the punt
was entirely consumed by the raging element.

* Poor Fido! Thus perished the most remarkable dog it
has ever been my fortune to own. I don’t think there are
many like him.

Hic jacet, Fido! Rescat in peace!
dog, dog-gone if you weren't!

You were a good

CHAPTER VI.
A LITTLE SUBTERFUGE.

Fido was gone. There was not even enough of my poor
“little dog left to make a medium-sized wienerwurst. Alas,
“how truthful is the saying that in the midst of life we are

m debt!

My grief must have been touching to behold. I will.not
Warrow the reader’s feelings by telling of the tears I shed
as 1 stood there on the shore after swimming out, but it

~ #8 on record that the river rose a foot and thirteen inches

in less than ten minutes.
© Nevertheless, we should realize that when the time

Comes all creatures of the earth, earthy, must take passage
on the ferryboat of old Carron and pass through Sturgeon
§) darkness. We can’t avoid it; some day it will be up to us
to Kick the coil and shuffle off the bucket. We may even
dodge taxes and move our household goods and cattles in
the night when the landlord sleeps, but the debt of nature

= must be paid in toto or other legal tender. ~

"With these few post nostrum remarks I will resume the
limpid flow of my narrative, and let it limp.

_ Although in an hour I had risen to the topmost barnacle
of fame, my pockets were still sadly depleted of that
which induce those who have them to part with the neces-
Sities and luxuries of life. Consequencely, having wended
My sad and weary way back to the Common, I seated my-
Self on a bench and fell into a revelry.
’ As may be surmised, my thoughts were not of the most
pleasant nature. I certainly needed a liberal supply of

: rations to fill the aching void within me, and where I

Was going to find.a downy couch on which to pass the
approaching night was something I wotted not of.
Now, once on a time there was a man who lived on the
‘floor above me—— But that’s another story.
_My musings were disturbed by an open-air orator near
at hand who was undressing an assembled concourse of
people. He was speaking in a loud and rawcuss voice.
“T want land reform,” he shouted. “I want housing re-
form; I want enducational reform; I want——”
“Chloroform,” I interpolated, with great distinction.
Then I rose right up and went away from there.
I stood on the populous corner by the Touraine Hotel
and gazed hungrily at the grim, granite walls. I almost
felt capable of biting a few pieces out of those stones,

| for I have eaten Dent’s crackers in times of great neces-

' $ity and famine.
“While I stood there, I was seized by what, for the time
being, I fancied was a happy thought. Too proud to beg,

and not quite ready to commit suicide, I imagined it might
be a good stunt to pretend that I had dropped a pocket-
book containing my last red susie; for it was not impos-
sible that some soft sucker might take compassion on me
and stake me to the price of a steak.

Immediately I got busy. Stepping from the curbing
into the gutter, I’ began to snoop around with a feverish
and distraught air, which quickly attracted the attention of
the passing prestigators, who began to stop with great and
increasing numerousness and watch me. In less than a
minute I had the whole sidewalk blocked, and still they
came, until the overflow filled the street and interfered
with traffic.

Right here permit me to interlope the observation that
when it comes right down to pure, unadulterated curiosity
the average human man or woman has everything furred,
finned, feathered, or four-footed backed up against the
ropes and groggy.

“Lost something?” inquired one curio.

“T have,” IT answered anxiously.

“What have you lost?” asked ‘another piece of brick-a-
bat.

“My friends,” said I, “I will not dissemble. I have lost
my peace of mind. I am looking for a pocketbook con-
taining a loquacious sum of money.”

“I presume,” said a lady, who was adorned with spet-
ackles, “you mean a pocketbook containing a Jarge sum of
money. You should be more choice and concise in your
verbosity.” ;

“Madam,” I returned, with superlative politeness and
indignity, “I meant precisely what I said. I am searching
for a pocketbook containing a loquacious sum of money,
for is it not claimed that money talks? And as the pocket-
book for which I am searching held several large and
lovely Williams, its conversation should be quite fluid.
Will everybody please be silent so that we may see if we
can’t hear it chatting somewhere around here.”

At that moment a somewhat agitated young man pushed
through the crowd and thrust'a large, fat, leather recep-
tacle of wealth into my hands, saying breathlessly:

“Here it is, sir. I just picked it up. I’m in a great
hurry to catch a train. Don’t thank me. Don’t say a
word. It’s all right. Being an honest man, it gives me
unbounding pleasure to restore your property to you in-
tact. But it is very fortunate I found it instead of some
dishonest rascal.”

He was gone before I could catch my breath. He simply
melted away in the crowd, and vanished like a rake.

I will admit that I was a trifle surprised, as I had not,
for a passing moment, forestalled such a conclusion for
my little piece of persiflage.

I was almost too agitated to open the pocketbook. I
am sufe my hands trembled deceptably.

However, bracing myself for the shock, I presently un-
folded the flaps and took a look at the contents. I would
have fallen prone in my tracks if a kind gentleman had
not given me a refraining hand.

“What is it?” he inquired.

“T fear,’ I answered hoarsely, “that I am going to have
a relapse.”

For that pocketbook was stuffed, jammed, crammed full
of the genuine extended green. The renomination of the
uppermost chromo, I observed with translucent pleasure,
was one hundred dollars! And there were more and more
of them—and then a few.

 
26 NEW TIP TOP- WEEKLY.

Is it any wonder that'I had an attack of regurgitation
of the heart?

In that moment visions of feasts of blue points, and rib
roasts, and chop susy, and Philadelphia squids, and lobster
a la hamburg, and rottenfork cheese, and cafe noises floated
through my feeling brain.

Then came the rude awakening.

A fat man, puffing and blowing, and followed close by
a blue-tminformed garden of the peace—a policeman—came
bucking his way through the crowd like a Harvard tackle
with his eye on a Yale man carrying the ball.

“There he is, officer!” shouted the fat man, pointing me
out. “There’s the thief, and he’s got my pocketbook in
his hands right now. Arrest him! Don’t let him escape!”

The policeman needed no urging. He fell upon me with-
out a single dissenting vote and relieved me with the
utmost impurity of my unexpectedly acquired and only
passingly retained wealth. One of his gnarled hands was
fastened rudely upon the hem of my garment in the vicinity
of my Psyche knot.

“Caught red-handed,” he growled, in huge satisfaction.
“The judge will give you something for this.”

“He ought to,”|said I, gazing regretfully at the pocket-
book as he thrust it into his pocket. “It certainly is worth
a great deal to me.”

“Now, ‘don’t you get gay and go to shooting off any
heated oxygen,” he retorted. “You’re pinched at last.
I’ve had my eye on you for the last month or more.”

“And I arrived in town for the first time only yester-
day. Your eyesight must be remarkably good, to see so
far.”

“Oh, cut it out!
game.”

“It's. checkers,” said I. “Shall I move?”

“It looked to me more like poker,” he retorted. “You
were holding a full hand. You'll come along to the station
house,”

“What for?”

“Why, for stealing this gentleman’s pocketbook.”

“IT assure you,” said I, “I am as innocent as°a babe un-
hung. The mere imprication that I am a thief is a base
label.”

But my protestations of innocence were of no avail.
Requesting the fat man to stick by, which he was pretty
certain to do, as the cop had the pocketbook and the
money, he dragged me to a near-by post, opened a little
box with a key, and pulled a toggle.

Pretty soon a big, handsome litberzerne locomotor ataxie
cab came humming expeditiously along the street, ringing
a sweet-toned bell, and backed right up to the sidewalk
where we were standing. On thé sides of the convey-
ance, lettered just as nice as any store sign you ever
‘saw, were the words: “Police Department.”

“Get in,” directed my unfeeling captor, giving me a
nudge in the slats with a shellaley which he carried.

“Don’t tickle me like that,” I entreated. “I don’t like
to laugh. D’ve got a crack in my lip.”

“You'll have a crack on the block if you don’t step
lively,” gently responded the protector of innocence and
virtue. “You had better come along with us, Mr. Cum-
ming, if you don’t mind, and make the charge against
him.” These final words were distressed to the perspiring
fat man.

“Mr. Cumming,” said I earnestly, “I’d much rather you
would not be coming. If you have any business that re-

You .can’t bluff me. I know your

figures.

quires your immediate attention, don’t for the world let
this little affair cockroach upon your valuable time.”

But, although I spoke in dulcet tones and with all the
insinuosity I could command, he boarded the’ barge, which
had two long, free-running side seats, and, having hoisted
anchor, we got under full sail and made for the offing.

TO BE CONTINUED.

ARMOR OF HUMAN HAIR.

The San Francisco Academy of Sciences has a complete
suit of armor brought from one of the Gilbert Islands.
The coat of mail and helmet, all in one piece, is believed
to be a hundred years old, and looks, when off the’wearer,
like a big wicker chair. When on, the back of the chair
apparently rises above the wearer’s head, which passes up
through the seat of the chair. The low arms, which are
really straps, pass over his shoulders. The solid portion
of the lower part is the corselet, fastening around the
body. This curious garment is made of coconut fiber,
twisted around and around over thick cords, making a
dense fabric, stiff and stout as board. In color it ite
sembles unbleached linen.

The material is woven by hand, after which it is em-
broidered in regular patterns, suggesting grotesque human
This curious needlework is executed with. cords
made of twisted human hair. The thickness of these gar-
ments is surprising, and neither arrows nor spears. could
pierce thein. With the suit of armor are two spears, one
eleven feet in length, the other fourteen, They are long,
pointed sticks of coconut wood, armed with sharks’ teeth.
The teeth are polished until they are smooth and white
as ivory. Each tooth is knotted to the wood by a cord
made of human hair, passing through a hole drilled in
the tooth and another drilled in the wood.

JAPANESE AND THEIR FANS. |
Several millions of fans are exported annually. from

Japan to: America and Europe. - The fan is an inseparable
part of the Japanese dress. A native is rarely seen with-
out one. It is his shelter from the sun, his notebook, and
his plaything. The varieties: of these paper. fans would
form a curious collection in respect to form as. well as
quality.

There are many curious uses for them. The umpife
at wrestling and fencing matches. uses.a heavy one shaped
like a huge butterfly, the handle being the body, and ren-
dered imposing by heavy cords.of silk., The various mo-
tions of the fan constitute a language which the wrestlers
fully understand and appreciate.

Formerly, in time of war, the Japanese consinnnhes sided
a large fan having a frame of iron covered with thick
paper. In case of danger it could be closed, and a blow
from its iron bones was no light affair.

‘One notable variety of fan is made of waterproof paper,
which can be dipped in water, and creates great cool-
ness by evaporation without wetting the clothes... The flat
fan made of rough paper is often used as a grain win-
now, to blow the charcoal fires, and as a dust pan.

The Japanese gentleman of the old school, who never
wears a hat, uses a fan to shield his eyes from the. sun.
His head, bare from childhood, hardly needs a shade,
and when it does he spreads an umbrella, and with -his
fan he directs. his servants, and saves talking: |

 
  

NEW TIP TOP WEEKLY.

NEWoATEMS OF INTEREST.

  

 

  
  
   
  
 
 
   
    
  
    
   
    
   
  
  
   
 
 
  
   
   
 

Lieutenant Governot Joins “Hoboes.”

; Me crett O’Hara, lieutenant governor of Illinois, is a
' hobo. This became known when E. Jeff Davis, president

, Later, O'Hara admitted it, and announced that he is proud
of the connection.
*T met the lieutenant governor at a ball,” said the “king

of the hobos,” “and he told me that once he had been

down and out. I told him that entitled him to member-

Ship, and I pledged him.” The lieutenant governor was

given a number, a road sign, and a badge, but will be ex-

ected to make at least one trip on his own resources be-

Ore he will be acknowledged as a real “bo.” The oath

iken by O’Hara pledges that he will do all in his power

Of unemployed workingmen, will never be a  strike-

breaker, and will always return to his home every run-

faway boy he meets.

Bn ee ; alee

ete

Finds Sister After Forty-five Years.

J. E. Dowler, of Tipton, Mo., has been apprised of the
hereabouts of his sister, Mrs. Maggie Wood, who was
ared at Bellefontaine, Ohio, and from whom he has
"heen separated for forty-five years. Dowler’s nephew, the

Massisted in a revival in St. Louis, Mo., where he insti-
lited a search which resulted in finding his aunt, who
S been a resident of that ‘city since leaving her Ohio

“a flight from Paris to the Orient, was passing over the
Waradine fortress at a height of 4,000 feet, the gunners
the big fort on the bank of the Danube fired several
Shells at him. The tremendous concussion caused: such
an aérial disturbance that the aéroplane was almost upset.
4 ’ Vedrines ascended to a height of 9,000 feet, and con-
b. tinted his flight.

To Identify Man by Veins.

Professor Tamassia, of the University of Padua, in
| Italy, advocates the adoption of an identification system,
fe basis of which is the photographing of the veins of
the hands.

He says the merest novice can detect variations, while
Tong training is necessary to distinguish difference in fin-

 

a att ni os Sie
ee

    
 
 

a locomotive eipiniker: and she has inccewed to the
t of driving one of the big Southern Pacific engines
the railroad yards. Her first run, made on a ten-wheel
nger engine, was a success beyond her wildest dreams.
be sure, it was much too short, consisting as it did
‘practicing stops and short runs, but Miss Vogele is
fident that in a month or so she will be able to clip at
t an hour off the time to San Francisco.

  
 
  
  
 
  
  
  

   
 

 

of the National Hobo Union, reported the fact in an ad-»
dress at a meeting of the Chicago Federation of Labor.

Vogele, as she put her head out of the cab of No. 2,371
and waved a greasy little hand at the group of admiring
engineers standing about the yards. “I have always been
attracted to engines. Whenever I saw one rushing by me,
snorting and puffing, I used to stand fascinated, wishing
I was in it. I just made up my mind I was going to
drive one. I have. What’s more, I’m going to keep on
driving one. It’s the greatest thrill in the world.”

Miss Vogele lightly climbed down and tried ineffectually
to pin up the bronze-red curls that the engine’s speed
had blown about her animated face.

“I think I did wonderfully—for the first day!” she said.
“TI turned around on the round table, and they say that’s
very difficult.”

Youth Given Twenty Lashes.

Failing to secure an eleventh-hour reprieve from Gov-
ernor Miller, Cornelius C. Streit, a youth convicted of
burglary, was given twenty lashes recently at Delaware’s
whipping post, in the Newcastle County workhouse, at
Wilmington.

Streit’ clenched his teeth, clutched the post, and never
whimpered while the cat-o’-nine-tails flayed his back.
The lashing turned the skin a fiery red. No blood was
drawn.

Six Families Blown Up.

A gas explosion blew a house into the air at Coburg,
Germany, the other day. Thirteen persons were killed
and six injured by the collapse. The explosion occurred
while some workmen were searching with a candle for an
escape of gas. The house was blown into the air, six
families being buried under the ruins. There were twenty-
six persons in the house, including ten children, and two
of the latter were deaf mutes.

Man’s Descent.

Scientists agree that the apes of to-day and the human
race sprang from the same ancestors—an ancestor half-
way between the gorilla and the present man—but there
is great difference of opinion as to when the two branches
began to diverge, the human becoming more humanlike
and the gorilla more gorillalike. The finding of part of
a skull 500,000 years old at *Pittsdown, England, was,
therefore, of great importance. Doctor J. Leon Williams
has come from England, where he put the fragments of
the skull together, and he declares that it was that of a
man, not an ape’s. This skull, which is probably the
oldest human relic, proves that the human race is of
greater antiquity than had been supposed. The teeth
found in it were those of a man, Doctor Williams says,
and the brain capacity was large.

2,300 in Steerage “Frisked.”

The Cunarder Laconia sailed recently from New York
for the Mediterranean and Adriatic with 2,100 steerage
passengers, going home to spend Christmas, and two bar-
rels of pistols. and knives, taken from the passengers.

All steerage passengers were required to deliver knives
and weapons of all kinds to insure the steerage against

Re Diec PI
28 NEW TIP TOP. WEEKLY.

bloodshed. The weapons were tagged, and will be re-
stored to their owners when they leave the liner on the
other side,

Three barrels of beer in bottles were also taken from
the steerage passengers for restoration when they land.
Thus there is likely to be perfect peace on the Laconia.

Youth, Not Yet Twenty, is President of a Bank.

W. L. Moody III., president of the American Bank and
Trust Company, at Galveston, Texas, is perhaps the
youngest bank president in the United States. He is nine-
teen years and eight months of age. He comes from a
family of bankers.

W. L. Moody, senior, first of the line, is head of the
big Moody bank at Galveston, the parent institution, while
W. L. Moody, junior, is head of the City National Bank,
as well as head of the American National Insurance Co.
The bank of which W. L. Moody III. is president is a
newly organized concern, capitalized at $50,000.

Unearth Village of Ozark Indians.

Twenty-eight Indian skeletons unearthed in a field at
the mouth of the North Fork River, in a field bordering
on the White, some time ago, and recent work at the
same place which uncovered more skeletons, pottery mod-
eled from clay, pipes, curiously turned stone implements
and weapons and beads, and other articles cunningly
wrought from mussel shell, have created quite an in-
terest among archeologists.

They have also given a much more comprehensive idea
of the habits of the Ozark aborigines than any like dis-
covery ever made in the White River country of the
Ozarks. This find was made on the farm of S. J. Hutch-
eson, a merchant, at the little village of Norfolk, Ark.,
and the relics fotind, especially the pottery, is in the finest
state of preservation of any ever found in this section.

The mound lay at the end of the second bench in a bot-
tom field, and was first discovered by Tom Martin, a
renter, who plowed up several pieces of broken pottery
and bones. People living at Norfolk took an active in-
terest in uncovering the find. Besides this place, smaller
finds of a like description have been uncovered on the
Upper North Fork, White, and Buffalo Rivers in Arkan-
sas, and on the James and, White, in Missouri.

The tribes that inhabited the Ozarks were the Quapaws,
or Arkansa, and the Osages. It was from the Arkansa
tribe that the State of Arkansas took its name. The an-
cestors of the tribes which make up those two great
families were the Dakotas, who drifted into the Ozark
section from the East.

That the Indians who inhabited the Ozark country were
farmers as well as hunters and warriors can be seen
from the location of their camps, which can even.now be
easily located in the numerous rock weapons and utensils
used by them that are found at these sites. Invariably
these locations are in the richest bottom fields near some
big spring along the rivers and the largest creeks.

The most interesting relic of the Ozark aborigines is
their pottery, for in this they showed more modern skill
than in any other branch of manufacture. These old
shapes have been taken up by the modern kilns to some
extent and by the glass factories, especially in the manu-
facture of water bottles, the modern shape being prac-
tically identical with those made by the aborigines. The
material used by the Indians in making these pot and

‘of her journey.

water bottles was a fine-grained red clay tempered with .

mussel shells finely pulverized, which they got from the
rivers.

- The most interesting relic ever found on the White
River was found a short time ago in the shape of a bear-
tooth necklace. Junius Case, of Ruddells, Ark., in mak-
ing his explorations, came upon the skeleton of a large
Indian, presumably a chief. In the earth just below the
skull, where the neck should have been, was the neck-
lace, the buckskin string that once held it together long
ago rotted, but every tooth in place.

Most of the weapons and implements used by the abor-
igines of the Ozarks were made from stone. The ma-
terial used was flint of two colors, black and a light yel-
low or écru. They also used a glassy flint called novac-
ulite. This material came from quarries in Garland
County, Arkansas, near Hot Springs. Many of them are
from fifteen to forty feet deep. The largest were opened
and worked by the aborigines for the novaculite, which
they prized highly, and many tribes from all over the
United States used to make pilgrimages to that place for
this material.

The most commonly found articles are the stone arrow
points, from the size of a little finger nail up to as long
as eight inches; tomahawks, rounded and sharpened on

both ends, with a ridge in the center for the handle; hoes ©
made much like the common garden hoe of modern time,

but straight, without the crook, with which to cultivate
their crops.

Besides these, some stone mortars have been found
in which they used to grind their corn for bread. These
are for the most part made of sandstone of hard variety
and of fine texture. Most of them are about a foot and
a half across and from six to eight inches thick, with a
small bowl ground out in the middle. The small round
rocks are always found near which fit in. the bowls, and
were used to do the grinding with.

Unlike many of the tribes of the West, especially the
Navahoes, the Ozark aborigines had no real sense of aft,

and their efforts along this line were very crude, The’

only. evidences they left were carvings on rocks and in
caves. One piece found lately near Oakland, in Marion
County, Arkansas, had an Indian’s head in full feather
headdress, carved in it, and a bow and arrow. This was
on a small piece of sandstone that had been broken out of
the side of a cave.

\

Men Taken for Birds Slain by Hunters.

Among the, victims of the shooting season in North
Carolina is a man who was mistaken by his companions
for a bear—his head was blown off. Another was mis-
taken for an owl and met his death., Still another was
taken for a quail, and was fatally wounded.

Long Joutney to Wed.

A romance that began in Switzerland and impelled a
young and pretty git] to travel alone across the Atlantic
Ocean and the North American Continent was brought to
a happy culmination recently.. .

In the meantime the adventurous bride met with a
little disappointment that threw a cloud over the last part
She was expected to arrive in Sacra-
mento, Cal., on a Thursday morning, and the bridegroom
went down the previous afternoon in order to be on. time.
The train bearing the bride arrived in Sacramento a day

/

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core Teas one

a hati amet tet ae

 
    
     

 
  

' earlier than expected, and so there was no one on hand
ie to meet her, and she could not speak English. But the
ee matroms at the depot directed the pretty girl on her way,
© and while her sweetheart was speeding to Sacramento she
Was on the way to Placerville, Cal. Their trains crossed
midway.
* When she arrived at the latter place she was at a loss
§ to know what to do, and had some difficulty in making

 

‘
‘7
es,
«

 

x
=) known her predicament. Finding she spoke French, James

- Dixon took her to the home of Julius Basse, in Bedford
= Avenue, who sent a telephone message to the bridegroom
L ‘a in Sacramento and to his family near Placerville. She
© was Miss Valentine Soudan, and Justice of the Peace
b Clarke Howard married her to Julius Ernest Pierroz, and
‘their friends overwhelmed them with congratulations and
good wishes. They are living in Uppertown, Cal, the
bridegroom being engaged in mining.

 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
 
  
    

Doctot New Founds New Religion,

© A new religious denomination for promulgation of
| health, happiness, and longevity, that humanity may over-
some Sin, error, poverty, disease, death, and “all the ills
tat maketh the lie,” filed articles of incorporation in
San Francisco recently.

The hame is the New Church, and its head is the Rev-
trend Doctor N. N. New, who is made bishop for life.
The bishop is to be chief priest, presiding elder, and head
f church.

| The corporation is empowered to institute, maintain, and
sudow institutional churches in all parts of the United
Aies, and in these install teachers, ministers, and in-
|) Structors in the science and philosophy of the religion of
3 *Newology.”

|The properties of the corporation are not to be con-
ducted for profit.

Woods Safe Again for Nearly a Year.

Twenty-one dead, twenty-five wounded is the record of

Msconsin’s shooting season. Twelve were killed last year

Gnd in 1011 there were twenty-four victims.

Among the wounded this season were two women and

) Several children.

"According to the State game warden more than 150,-
000 licenses had been issued to hunters in the State. Deer

were killed right and left in the northern counties where

mot protected by law and shipping transfer stations along

the railroad were congested by the shipments of deer

ates palatine ~~

  

  
 

: |@areasses. The game warden estimated that during the
/ . last twenty days there have been 40,000 hunters' in the
I | Woods in search of big game.

1 The lists of deaths and injured among hunters proves
‘that carelessness is the greatest cause of the accidents.

 

Most of the hunters were either the victims of their
“Own guns or were shot by companions. Only in a few
eases has it been reported that a hunter was shot by an-
other in mistake for a deer, or that he was the victim of a
Stray bullet.
' Though all of the accidents were reported during the
Open season for deer, not all of them include deer hunters.
Nine hunters were killed in the deer-shooting season in
Upper Michigan and fifteen were wounded, More hunt-
@fs were in the woods than in any previous season. Usu-
| ally there are between twenty and thirty fatal accidents in
|Mie northern part of the State.
The killing of 5,180 deer in Maine, New Hampshire, Ver-

 
  
  
  
 
  

=

ace as ie

  
 

a

 

 
  
   
 
 
 

NEW TIP TOP WEEKLY. 29

mont, and Massachusetts this fall cost the lives of thir-
teen persons and more or less serious injuries to seventy-
two others.

Maine leads the northern New England States in the
number of fatalities. Of the eleven persons killed in that
State, four were-mistaken for deer and shot by other
hunters, .six were killed by the accidental discharge of
their own weapons, and a little girl was accidentally shot
by an elder brother who was cleaning a rifle. More than
sixty persons were wounded,

The New Hampshire and Vermont hunting seasons were
accompanied by one fatality each.

Rescue American in Panama Wilds,

After days of wandering in the trackless jungle of
Panama, B. H. Harris, of Berkeley, Cal. was found ex-
hausted, robbed, and a pitiable mental wreck on the out-
skirts of Colon by a company of Panama police, accord-
ing to a letter received by Mrs. Harris.

An incoherent account of his experiences makes it plain
that he was set upon by a party of six natives, whom
he had employed to escort him on a timber-cruising trip
sixty miles up the coast from Colon. Charles Norris, a
companion and surveyor, who had lived in Colon for the
last fifteen years, is believed to have been killed by the
natives or to have died in the jungles.

Harris, upon his arrival at Colon, wrote to his wife that
he intended to make a timber-cruising trip into the wilds.
Three weeks later, a ragged, babbling wreck, he was
brought into Colon by the native “Spiggoty” police. From
Colon Harris was removed to the government hospital, at
Ancon,

“From what they write to me from the hospital,” said
Mrs. Harris, “he must have undergone terrible privations.
Not alone was there a lack of food, but he was forced to
wander unclothed through a jungle that has no paths.”

From meager accounts given by the man, Harris’ return
to civilization was as dramatic as that of the “Man from
Nowhere.”

Greatest Runner Not Guilty of Professionalism,

Hannes Kohlemainen, the champion runner, has saved
his scalp from removal by the Amateur Athletic Union.
He holds every world’s record for from three to ten
miles. Attempts to have him barred from amateur meets
on the ground of professionalism have fallen through, as
Hannes demonstrated to the officials that he had not ac-
cepted money for running, and, that he had not sold his
medals, as alleged.

Says He’s World’s Champion Eater,

Charles W. Glidden, of Lawrence, Mass., has issued a
sweeping challenge, defying all comers to contest with
him for the food-devouring championship of the world,
catch-as-catch-can, nothing eatable barred.

And if there be any doubters of Glidden’s right to
challenge, here are some of his feats:

Forty pounds of watermelon in two hours.

Seventy-eight pancakes in fifty-seven minutes.

Six boiled dinners at one meal.

Fifty-eight ears of corn at one sitting.

One hundred and thirty eggs in two hours.

“And I’m never satisfied,” he declares.

Here is just an instance of what Glidden can do—and
he says it was not a regular test, as he was only half

‘

  
30 NEW TIP TOP. WEEKLY.

trying. Recently he was visiting in Haverhill, and stepping
into a restaurant, mentioned that he was hungry.

The proprietor, knowing neither Glidden nor his ca-
pacity, stated in an unguarded moment, that he would
give him all he could eat for twenty-five cents.

He made this offer, probably because Glidden looks like
anything but a hearty eater.

Glidden did not hesitate. He promptly sat down,
spread out his’ napkin, and ordered the waiter to start
to work. And—take it from one of the lookers-on—
that waiter had to work, work with a capital “W.”

First Glidden ordered a quart of tea. It was right at
that point that the proprietor began to think he had
made a mistake.

Glidden drank the tea, ‘
explained.

Next he ordered a dozen ears of green corn, which
same he devoured, slowly and conscientiously. Another
dozen he ordered and ate in the same way, chewing each
mouthful carefully and enjoying it to the fullest extent.

After he had eaten his second dozen ears, the proprietor
was fully convinced that he had made a mistake.

To shorten the tale, let it be said that Glidden ate and
ate and then ate. The waiter brought him another half
dozen ears of corn, two orders of griddle cakes, another
quart of tea, two pieces of pie, and a dish of prunes.

At the end of the meal the waiter was a tired man.

Glidden was a full man—not, however, uncomfortably so.

The meal required about two hours in the eating. Glid-
den went out of the restaurant, attended to some busi-
ness, and then returned to the eating house.

' “Are you still hungry?” the proprietor asked sarcasti-
cally.

“Well,” Glidden said cautiously, “not exactly hungry,
but I guess I could eat a little bit more.”

“T’ll tell you,” said the restaurant man,
can’t eat twelve frankfurters.”

For the second time Glidden refused to hesitate. “I'll
do it,” he said. And he did. He required two hours, how-
ever, to complete the task.

just to give him an appetite,” he

“T’ll bet you

Lose Fingers in Duel.

Two policemen, of Breslau, Germany, are each minus a
couple of fingers, as the result of a duel, but they still
are friends. They fought with sabers in a restaurant
in the Ringstrasse.

After the loss of the fingers, the spectators were amused
to see them bind up each other’s wounds and walk away
arm in arm to the nearest hospital:~

Leaves Jail After Forty-three Years,

Pardoned after serving forty-three years—the best years
of his life—in a State penitentiary! Seeing the new world
for the first time at 66! Such is the experience of John
Taborn, pardoned by Governor Cox, of Ohio. It’s like
coming to life again after half a century of death,

When Taborn entered the State prison at Columbus in
1870, Grant was President. The telephone was unknown;
electric lights were not dreamed of; there were no elec-
tric cars; skyscrapers in the largest cities were four or
five-story buildings; Edison had not conceived the phono-
graph, while flying machines and wireless telegraphy were
the dreams of madmen. The United States navy con-
sisted of a few ironclads and many wooden ships.

When he was pardoned, Taborn was taken about Colum-

%
bus by Warden Thomas’ secretary, to see that he was
not confused by the traffic and injured.
He gazed in awe at the electric cars;
the revolving doors of an office building, the height of
which astonished him; he enjoyed his first ride in an ele-
vator; he-smoked a good cigar, but was puzzled by the
safety matches, which would not ignite when scratched
on his trouser leg; he heard a phonograph and talked over
a telephone for the first time in his life.
Despite his sixty-six years, Taborn is active and has
keen sight, reading without glasses. In the prison he

learned three trades—that of machinist, shoemaker, and ©

molding—and plans to begin his last span of life as a
machinist.

When he left the prison he had about $100, The pris-
oners took up a collection and gave him $30; the State ~

turned over $20, and Taborn had about $50 himself. He
was placed on an electric car for a trip to Delaware, Ohio,
from which town he was sentenced for killing a man dur-
ing a quarrel.

ployment awaits him.

Drop 1,600 Jew Students,
Following the ritual trial at Kieff, Russia, 1,600 Jewish

students of both sexes in the schools of dentistry at Kieff

have, by order of the governor, been served with notices

of expulsion, on the ground that they possess no coe “*

right of domicile in Kieff. i

Spurns $2,000,000 Saving.
Postmaster General Burleson turned down a cool $2,000)-
ooo saving for Uncle Sam recently, when he rejected

a proposition by a Western advertising agency which ©
agreed to furnish all United States mail boxes if they

were allowed to put advertisements on them.

Asleep, She Falls on Pencil; Killed.

Mrs. Ida Sommerville, aged fifty, of Clarksburg, W.
Va., died in a hospital as the result of a strange accident.
She fell asleep in her home: with a lead pencil in her
hand. Her head dropped on the table and the pencil

pierced her throat, making a wound which caused ine

death.

A Famous Detective.

One good look, on his hands and knees, at the scene of
the crime and Sherlock Holmes announced that the crim-
inal was a left-handed man in the flour business who
smoked a Trichinopoli cigar.

Professor Hans Gross, of Gratz, Austria, can some-
times beat that, says Waldemar B. Kaempffert, managing
editor of \the Scientific American. Professor Gross might
be able to add that the murderer came from such and
such a village in Styria, and had once had pellagra,

The system of Professor Gross, as explained recently
by Mr. Kaempffert, really bears a far closer resemblance
to the Sherlock Holmes procedure than do the methods
of Bertillon or other great detectives. The Austrian crim-
inologist has collected and studied all the weapons in the
arsenal of crime, and all the devices that distinguish one
crime from another. As a result he is generally able to
tell two or three things, sometimes half a dozen facts,
about the vanished criminal.

American burglars do not use the same methods to open

he got lost in

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Then he went to his old home in Cass ~ ;
County, Mich., and later to Hillsboro, N. C., where em-~

 
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NEW: TIP TOP> WEERLY: 31

ates as the burglars of Europe. Even where the method
§ @ssentially the same the details differ. Ignorant peas-
nts of the Austrian Tyrol possess, in some mysterious
"way, a profound knowledge of poisons, almost an ex-
vert knOwledge; and they use it. There are obscure vege-
able poisons the use of which in murder can hardly be
detected afterward, even’ by the scientists. Professor
Gross cannot explain how the peasants know of these

% things, but time and again he has found that they use

Oisons with instinctive skill.
© In the professor’s working museum, at Gratz, are
| weapons and accessori¢s of crime that the New York
Spolicemen would never recognize, but that he ought to
"know well, thinks Mr. Kaempffert, since they may be
ised as easily in cosmopolitan New York as in the hidden
lage of Russia or Italy.
| Thstruments of crime gathered in New York are gen-
erally destroyed—gambling paraphernalia, for instance, go

Sup in smoke—and the few unusual weapons that have

ei preserved form a huddle in which you cannot tell
sir uses or whence they came.
Th Gratz Professor Gross will show you almost any
apon ever known to man, tell you where it is used, by
What sort of men, under what conditions and whether it
IS Still in use or is obsolete. He can also tell you by quick
ference to his records, if he doesn’t remember, exactly
what sort of wound this particular weapon inflicts.
Certain men do certain crimes under certain circum-
mees in a certain way. That is the basis of Professor
‘988 method. It is simple, thoroughly scientific, and re-
arkably sure, says Mr. Kaempffert.
"Professor Gross’ is known well by the men really
tséd ‘in® the’ scientific. study’ of crime,” ‘said ‘the. editor.
‘He is perhaps sixty years old, a pleasant, easy-going man,
ith an agreeable knack of conversation; the last person
> Ou would pick out as a $cientist in crime. He could have
een the first Austrian exchange professor to this country
d he wished. |
THe was for a longstime an examining judge, an official
© unites in a way the duties of our coroner and district
iitorney. ‘When a crime had been. committed he ‘took
ge as instantly as possible, made his scientific obser-
jons ‘with care and -detail, drew from them certain
Wiclusions; which narrowed down pretty well the persons
® might be guilty, and then sent forth the police to
ike arrests. When a prisoner was taken Professor
Poss as examining judge questioned him. The whole
Vhitiative: in- investigating a- crite was in his hands.
The ‘New “York ‘police will find Gross’ system’ invalu-
‘I believe, in such cases as the bombs. sent to Judge
Mosalsky and Grace Walker and the murder of Anna
PumMuller, In both cases, I believe, Professor Gross would
ve been able to tell them so much about the murderer
‘he ‘might have been taken itt much less time.
I look to see our system of using both coroner and
e at the scent of a crime replaced eventually by scien-
methods, An expert, such as Professor Gross, will
thé spot, study every detail while it is fresh, and
every clew from the start. We won’t have to go
ng around for days hunting clews. Why in any
there are half a dozen clews, inherent in the very
¢ of the crime itself, there from the start if you

oss I consider one of the greatest, perhaps the great-
“crime scientists the world has had. Lombroso tried

to classify criminals by physical malformations, and failed.
Bertillon, with the twelve million cards recording the
measurements of as many persons, is encyclopedic, but
his collections are more for reference and identification
than the actual study of crime. Besides, Bertillon com-
bines the policeman with the scientist. Gross is a psycholo-
gist who is far removed from the atmosphere of the po-
lice station.

“If Gross were confronted with the poison-needle cases
that are now stirring wide interest, I feel sure he could at
least tell us what sort of man used the needle, and for
what psychological purpose, and perhaps give us enough
other facts to make capture reasonably prompt and sure.”

Mr. Kaempffert says that Professor Gross is the edi-
tor of the rarest and most valuable publication on crime
in the world. It is a little magazine called the Archives of
Criminal Anthropology and Criminalistics, to translate the
German title. It has about three hundred subscribers, and
in it every crime of national or international importance

‘is discussed with the sharp analysis and impersonal exacti-

tude of an engineering treatise.

Railroad May Pay for Agent’s Kiss.
Kissed against her will by a station agent of the Gulf
& Ship Island Railroad, Miss Nancy Leo, 16 years old, has
sued the corporation for $10,000.

Denounces Convict Flogging.

Bare-back flogging of convicts in Delaware was de-
nounced in the House, at Washington, D. C., as degrad-
ing, cruel, and a medieval relic of barbarism, by Repre-
sentative Evans, of Montana. Evans was defending his
resolution for a Federal injunction against the practice.
He said Attorney General McReynolds felt that there was
no action he could take. “When you manacle a man to
a post and beat him across the back,” cried Evans, “you
make him an enemy to society.”

Red Men Weathy’ Over “Movie” Men.

The Sioux Indians, at Pine Ridge Agency, S. D., are
mad. They feel that they have been injured, buncoed,
and instlted by the moving-pictttre concerns, and they
are preparing a big protest meeting which thousands of
Siottx will attend. A committee of red met is to be
sent to Washington to protest to the government against
the acceptance, as authentic, of a “movie” film of the bat-
tle of Wounded Knee, the last battle between the whites
and reds.

The Indians assert the “moyie” people distorted the
facts of the battle to such a degree that the prowess and
bravery of the red men is belittled, and that the film does
not represent the battle which it purports to show. And
since a copy of this film is to be placed in the department
at Washington, thus making it teally an official record
of the last big fight, the Indians are “kicking.”

As ati example of the inaccuracies with which the In-
dians say the film abounds, they call attention to the fact
that General Nelson A. Miles, who takes a prominent part
in the film, was probably fifty miles away, and, so far as
known, was never on the actual field of battle until he
posed for the “movies.” Likewise, Colonel “Buffalo Bill”
Cody, who plays the part of a hero in the film battle, was
at the agency, cighteen miles away, when the engagement
was fought.

But the most serious point to which the Sioux make ob-

 
NEW TIP TOP WEEKLY.

jection is that in the “movies” battle they are about equal
in number to the soldiers, that they are well mounted,
well armed with repeating rifles, and are ready for the
battle—in fact, that the Indians themselves began the
fight. The truth is, say the Indians, thatythe reds num-
bered fewer than 400, a large majority ‘of whom were
women and children. They were all on foot during the
fight, most of them had already given up their guns and
were, therefore, defenseless, the guns were old-fashioned
muzzle-loaders in a decrepit condition, and the Indians
were not the aggressors, they contend.

A significant point to be remembered is the fact that
the soldiers engaged—the Seventh Cavalry—were those of
the old General Custer regiment wiped out by massacre
on the Little Big Horn in 1876 by the Pine Ridge Sioux.

As to the claim that many survivors of the battle of
Wounded Knee took part in the “movie” battle, the Indians
say there were no Indian survivors of that affair. The
Indians were within a hollow square, with soldiers on all
sides. Only one Indian, a lame one, came through without
a scratch or got past the line of soldiers. All the others,
about 400, were either killed or wounded. In the big
gtave into which all the dead Indians were thrown there
were more than 350, a majority of whom were women
and children.

_ After the shooting began, the little band of Indians was
raked by a deadly fire from all directions, and in addi-
tion to this a battery of mountain howitzers assisted in
the destruction. This continued for more than two hours.

According to the films, the Indians started the shooting
by killing Captain Wallace. In the real battle, however,
Captain Wallace was killed by bullets from the soldiers
_ shooting from the opposite side of the square in which the
Indians were herded, In fact, practically every soldier
killed or wounded was a‘ martyr to. the unusual battle
formation of the soldiers.

M. R. Gilmore, curator of the Nebraska State Histacieal
Society, who was present when the films were made, agrees
with the Indian version of the affair. He is indignant
over what he calls the misrepresentation which will appear
in the films, especially as the government is a third party
in the proceedings and expects to file the films as historical
data.

The Indians say they did not know they were reproduc-
ing the “Wounded Knee” battle, but understood that they
were simply taking part in a “sham” battle for the “movies.”
Later, when they discovered that the white people called
the exhibition “Wounded Knee,” and that it was to go
down in history, they were very indignant.

\
Goes 8,000 Miles to Wed,

After a courtship by mail, in which each love letter
_ traveled 8,000 miles, requiring a month to reach its destina-
tion, Miss Tillie Plackmeier, heiress to one of the largest
country places in St. Charles County, Mo., is to depart
for Brazil to marry Reverend Adolph Flor, a Lutheran

| missionary.

No World’s Champions.

There is not a champion boxer in America, Europe, or
_ Australia, except Jack Johnson, who can claim to be a
world’s champion. Johnson is an undefeated title holder
of his class, but has practically retired himself, although
French promoters are planning to have him beaten before
_ his name is effaced from the record tables. You will read

where some overzealous Pacific coast ring critic a
to Willie Ritchie as a world’s champion, and those
Middle West refer to Johnny Kilbane as holder «
world’s featherweight title. Both are incorrect. ©
is a world’s champion. They are simply Ameriega)
holders.

foul. Neither Wolgast nor Ritchie ever beat F
Welsh, the recognized champion of England, and pt
holder of the Lord Londsdale belt. In fact, Ritchie
beaten by Welsh on November 30, 1911, at Los Ang
over the twenty-round route. That was prior to
young Californian’s victory over Wolgast. ,

Until Ritchie meets and defeats Welsh he can o
regarded as the American champion.

Johnny Kilbane, of Cleveland, is the recognized fe;
weight champion of America and not of the wor
he is constantly alluded to by enthusiastic writer
Middle West. Kilbane won the title from A
February 22, 1912, at Vernon, Cal., over the twenty
route, the bout lasting the limit. Attell was not a w
champion at, the time, because he had never beate
Driscoll, then the best man in England at the weigh
bane has never fought an international battle—i
he has not been in a championship contest since
the decision over Attell.

his ring Febuialies. Algona repeatedly challenged, i
lon has not fought a championship battle since Feb
1912, when he was awarded a twenty- “round decision
Frankie Burns at New Orleans, _

Coulon is only champion of America, despite
that ’way back in 1910 he met Jim Kendricks twice i
Orleans, winning on points in ten rounds and agai 1
knock-out in nineteen rounds. Kendrick was an Ei
man, but not.a champion of his country 3

Ten Killed by High Texas Wave.

without warning down Nolan Creek before daybr
Belton, Texas, recently. The creek runs thro ]
center of the city.

hours’ duration.

Lives Yeats on Nine Coil a Day. Pade,
Mareus H. Wood, who with Mrs. Wood lives
cents a day in their cottage, at Webster, Mass, ob:
his seventy-fourth birthday anniversary and his thi
ond wedding anniversary at their home recently
Wood claims to have solved the problem of living on
cents a day per individual.

Mosquitoes Put Under Bond.

Six hundred mosquitoes, ranging in size from
to a pterodactyl, were held up when the stear
Schurz docked at New York, because the custom:
could not find the duty on mosquitoes.

The mosquitoes, which were accompanied bis
Emilio Martine, from the Isthmus of Panama, wer
mitied finally under bond to keep the peace, ‘They
start for Germany on the first ship, to. be st 5

scientists there,

 
 
SOME OF THE
BACK

NUMBERS OF

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700—Frank Merriwell’s Lively, Lads.
701—F rank Merriwell as Instructor.
702—Dick Merriwell’s Cayuse.
703—Dick Merriwell’s Quirt.
704—Dick Merriwell’s Freshman
705—Dick Merriwell’s Best Form.
706—Dick Merriwell’s Prank.
707—Dick Merriwell’s Gambol.
-Dick Merriwell’s Gun.
Dick Merriwell at His Best.
Dick Merriwell’s Master Mind.
Dick Merriwell’s Dander.
2—Dick Merriwell’s Hope.
3—Dick’s Merriwell’s Standard.
—Dick Merriwell’s Sympathy.
Dick Merriwell in Lumber Land.
Frank Merriwell’s Fairness.
-Frank Merriwell’s Pledge.
Frank Merriwell, the Man of Grit.
Frank Merriwell’s Return Blow.
Frank Merriwell’s Quest.
—Frank Merriwell’s Ingots
-Frank Merriwell’s Assistance.
-Frank Merriwell at the Throttle.
Frank Merriwell, the Always Ready.
Frank Merriwell in Diamond Land.
Frank Merriwell’s Desperate Chance.
—Frank Merriwell’s Black Terror.
—Frank Merriwell Again on the Slab.
Frank Merriwell’s Hard Game.
O—F rank Merriwell’s Six-in-hand.
1—Frank Merriwell’s Duplicate.
732—Frank Merriwell on Rattlesnake
Ranch.

—Frank Merriwell’s Sure Hand.
-Frank Merriwell’s Treasure Map.
—Frank Merriwell, Prince of the Rope.
—Dick Merriwell, Captain of the Var-

sity.
87—Dick Merriwell’s Control.
738—Dick Merriwell’s Back Stop.
739—Dick Merriwell’s Masked z ms my.
740—Dick Merriwell’s Motor C:
1—Dick Merriwell’s Hot Pursuit.
2—Dick Merriwell at Forest Lake.
3—Dick Merriwell in Court.
4——Dick Merriwell’s Silence.
5—Dic k Merriwell’s Dog.
46—Dick Merriwell’s Subterfuge.
747—Dick Merriwell’s Enigma.
748—Dick Merriwell Defeated
749—Dick Merriwell’s ‘‘Wing.”’
750—Dick Merriwell’s Sky Chase.
751—Dick Merriwell’s Pick-ups.
52—Dick Merriwell on the Rocking
53—Dick Merriwell’s Penetration.
: —Dick Merriwell’s Intuition.
5—Dick Merriwell’s Vantage.
Bt 3—Dick Merr iwell’ s Advice.
57—Dick Merriwell’s Rescue.
58—Dick Merriwell, American.
59—Dick Merriwell’s Understanding.
760—Dick Merriwell, Tutor.
761—Dick Merriwell’s Quandary.
762—Dick Merriwell on the Boards.
763—Dick Merriwell, Peacemaker.
764—F rank Merriwell’s Sway.
765—Frank Merriwell’s Comprehension.
766—F rank Merriwell’s Young Acrobat.
767—F rank Merriwell's Tact.
768—Frank Merriwell’s Unknown.
769—Frank Merriwell’s Acuteness.
770—Frank Merriwell’s Young Canadian.
Gk S rank Merriwell’s Coward.
772—F rank Merriwell’s Perplexity.
73—Frank Merriwell’s Intervention.
4—Frank Merriwell’s Daring Deed.
5—Frank Merriwell’s Succor.
76—Frank Merriwell’s Wit.
777—Frank Merriwell’s Loyalty.
778—Frank Merriwell’s Bold Play.
779—Frank Merriwell’s Insight.
780—F rank Merriwell’s Guile.
781—Frank Merriwell’s Campaign.
782—-Frank Merriwell in the
Forest.

Friend.

VUE Oo BO ht

onl

4

a

ral

National

784—Dick Merriwell’s Self-sacrifice.
785—Dick Merriwell’s Close Shave.
786—Dick Merriwell’s Perception.
787—Dick Merriwell’s Mysterious
pearance.
788—Dick Merriwell’s Detective
789—Dick Merriwell’s Proof.
790—Dick Merriwell’s Brain Work.
791—Dick Merriwell’s Queer Case.
792—-Dick Merriwell, Navigator.
Dick Merriwell’s Good Fellowship.
Dick Merriwell’s Fun.
795“%Dick Merriwell’s Commencement.
796—Dick Merriwell at Montauk Point.
797—Dick Merriwell, Mediator.
798—Dick Merriwell’s Decision,
799—Dick Merriwell on the Great Lakes.
800—Dick Merriwell Caught Napping.
801—Dick Merriwell in the Copper
try.
Dick Merriwell Strapped.
Dick Merriwell’s Coolness.
Dick Merriwell’s Reliance.
Dick Merriwell’s College Mate.
Dick Merriwell’s Young Pitcher.
Dick Merriwell’s Prodding
Frank Merriwell’s Boy. |
Frank Merriwell’s Interference,
Frank Merriwell’s Young Warriors.
Frank Merriwell’s Appraisal.
Frank Merriwell’s Forgiveness.
Merriwell’s Lads.
Merriwell’s Young Aviators.
8$15—F rank Merriwell’s Mot-head.
816—Dick Merriwell, Diplomat.
817—Dick Merriwell in Panama.
818—Dick Merriwell’s Perseverance.
819—Dick Merriwell Triumphant.
820—Dick Merriwell’s Betrayal.
821—Dick Merriwell, Revolutionist.
829 TDick Merriwell’s Fortitude.
828—Dick Merriwell’s Undoing.
824—Dick Merriwell, Universal Coach.
825—Dick Merriwell’s Snare. |
826—Dick Merriwell’s Star Pupil.
827—Dick Merriwell’s Astuteness.
828—Die Merriwell’s Responsibility.
829—Dick Merriwell’s Plan.
830—Dick Merriwell’s Warning.
881—Dick Merriwell’s Counsel.
832—Dick Merriwell’s Champions.
88338—Dick Merriwell’s Marksmen.
884—Dick Merriwell’s Enthusiasm.
8! $5—Dick Merriwell’s Solution.
836—Dick Merriwell’s Foreign Foe.
837 —Dick Merriwell and_ the
Warriors.
838—Dick Merriwell’s Battle for the Blue.
8839—Dick Merriwell’s Evidence.
840—Dick Merriwell’s Device.
41—Dick Merriwell’s Princeton
nents.
842-—_-Dick Merriwell’s Sixth Sense.
8438—Dick Merriwell’s Strange Clew.
844—Dick Merriwell Comes Back.
845—Dick Merriwell’s Heroic Crew.
846—Dick Merriwell Looks Ahead.
847—Dick Merriwell at the Olympics.
848—Dick Merriwell in Stockholm.
849—Dick Merriwell in the
5s Stadium.
850—Dick Merriwell’s Marathon.

Disa p-

Work.

Coun-

S02
803
S04
SO5
S06
S07
S08
S09
810
811
R12
8§13—Frank
8$14—Frank

Carlisle

Oppo-

Swedish

»

NEW SERIES.
New Tip Top Weekly

1-—Frank Merriwell, Jr.
2—F rank Merriwell, Jr., in the Box.
$—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Struggle.
4—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Skill.
5—Frank Merriwell, Jr., in Idaho.
6—F rank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Close Shave.
@—F rank Merriwell, Jr., on Waiting
ders.

Or-

9—F rank

»3—F rank Merriwell, Jr.

54—F rank Merriwell, Jr.
Merriwell, Jr.’
Merriwell, Jr.’s
be on the Wing.
Merriwell, Jr.
Frank Merriwell, Jr.’

aD
56-
o8
o9-

60—F rank Merriwell, Jr.’
r., at Fardale.

61-
63-
64

65

66—Fr

67
68

69

70—F rank Merriwell, Jr.’s,

—Frank

-~Frank

Merriwell,
thon,
Merriwell,
Ranch.

I'rank Merriwell, Jr.’
Frank Merriwell, Jr.’
Frank Merriwell, Jr.’
rank Merriwell, Jr.’
rank Merriwell, as
In .’s, Star Play.
rank Merriwell, vn
Krank Merriwell, Jr.
Jr.’s, Substitute,
rank Merriwell, Jr.,
rank Merriwell, Jr.,
r., Meets th
Merriwell, Jr.
rank Merriwell, Jr.’
rank Merriwell, Jr.,
rank Merriwell, Jr.’

rank Merriwell,

Frank Merriwell,

rank Merriwell, J
rank

Krank Merriwell,

oes.

rank Merriwell, Jr.,
rank Merriwell, Jr.’
rank Merriwell, Jr.’

Krank Merriwell, J1
Frank
Frank Merriwell, Jr

Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s,
rank Merriwell, Jr.

Race.

rank Merriwell, Jr.’
rank Merriwell, Jr.
Frank Merriwell, Jr.,

-Frank Merriwell, Jr

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Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s,
Frank Merriwell, Jr.

Frank Merriwell, Jr

Frank Merriwell, Jr.
Frank Merriwell, Jr.
rank Merriwell, Jr.

ture.

Frank Merriwell, Jr.’
52—DF rank Merriwell, Jr.’

ble.

Doctor.
Frank
Frank
Merriwell, Jr
Frank

mate.

Frank Merriwell, J

-Frank Merriwell, Jr.
Frank Merriwell, Jr.
Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s,
Frank Merriwell, Jr.

‘rank Merriwell, Jr.,

Black Box.

Frank Merriwell, Jr.
Frank Merriwell, Jr.

emy.

—I*rank Merriwell, Jr. “3 and the *

Honors.

i —Frank Merriwell, Jr.’
la

we
(a-

74—F

-Frank Merriwell, Jr.’
Dated

cation.
Dated

Wolves.
Dated January

Frank Merriwell, Jr.,
10th,

Dated January

EB

ory at

Merriwell, Jr.
.. in the
rank Merriwell, Jr.’
rank Merriwell, Jr.
rank Merriwell, Jr.’

Deedinber
—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s,

December
‘ank Merriwell, Jr.,

Mara-
sar Z

telay
the

s, Golden Trail.
s, Competitor.
Ss, Guidance.

s, Scrimmage.
Misjudged.

s, Blind Chase.
s, Discretion.

Justified.

Incog.

Issue.
’s, Xmas Bye.

s, Fearless Risk.
on Skis.

s, Ice-boat Chase.
Jr.’s, Ambushed

and the Totem.

s, Hockey Game.
s, Clew.

’s, Adversary.

’s, Timely Aid.
Desert.

s, Grueling Test.
’s, Special Mission
s, Red Bowman.
Task.

’s, Cross-Country

’

s, Four Miles.

’s, Umpire.
Sidetracked.

’s, Teamwork.

’s, Step-Over.

in Monterey.
Athletes.

s, Outfielder.

s, “Hundred.”

s, Hobo Twirler.
s, Canceled Game.
s, Weird Adven-

s, Double Header.
s, Peck of Trou-
, and the Spook
*s, Sportsmanship.

s, Ten-Innings.
, Ordeal.

’s, Cross-Fire.”
8s, Lost Teame

s, Daring Flight.

Plebe.

s, Quarter-Back.
Touchdown.
s, Night Off.

and the Little

’s, Classmates.
’s, Repentant

‘Spell.”
Gridiron

En-

8, s, Winning Run.
s, Jujutsu.

20th.
Christmas Va-

27th.

and the Nine

3d, 1914.
on the Border.
1914.

783—Frank Merriwell’s Tenacity. 8—F rank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Danger. 76—Frank Merriwell, Jr.’s, Desert Race.

If you want any back numbers of our weeklies and cannot procure them from your
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