David Lannarck, Midget: An Adventure Story — John Shaqi
David Lannarck, Midget: An Adventure StoryHarney, George S.
General
David Lannarck, Midget: An Adventure Story
Harney, George S.
Adventure stories; Circus -- Fiction; Western stories
For five or more miles, the route led over a national highway. Then
Welborn turned to the right, drove a few hundred feet and stopped.
"Look out here to the left" he said. "See that big mound with its head
in the clouds? That's Longs Peak, the highest in the country. On a
clear day, it can be seen from Cheyenne. From here on, you are to see
mountains and more mountains, but Longs Peak is the daddy of them
all."
Now the roadway was not so good, but the ancient car labored on in
full vigor. Fences had disappeared; the roadway no longer held to
section lines but took the course of least resistance, generally
following the stream bed which it crossed and re-crossed many times.
The direction was generally west and up. Twice on the trip, Welborn
took a bucket out of the car, dipped water from the stream, and cooled
the heated engine. On one of these occasions, he washed his face in
the cooling waters, explaining that he did this to overcome
drowsiness.
Davy saw everything. This was his country. Except for meeting a lone
herder in charge of a band of sheep, they had not met a human being in
the last fifty miles. Yet there was plenty of life. They were never
out of sight of cattle--not the big herds as Davy thought it would
be--just a few here and there. There were some horses around the
little pole barns off the roadway. High up on distant hills, bands of
sheep were grazing.
Overhead, but not too high, hawks skimmed the levels or tilted over
knolls and hills in search of a quarry; larks gathered in flights for
a final powwow before beginning the long trip southward. Magpies
flitted through the shrubbery of the creek banks. In crossing a little
wooden bridge near a waterfall, Davy saw an object in the water, then
in the air, and then in the water where the spray fell and where foam
formed. Later, he was to know this little slate-colored bird as the
water ouzel, a bird that was neither wader nor swimmer, yet took his
subsistence from the foam and spray.
"That road leads to Laramie," said Welborn pointing out a trail to the
right. "Laramie is closer to our place, and one less mountain range to
cross."
"Why didn't we come that way?" asked Davy.
"Well, the big circus didn't show in Laramie, and I had to get to
Cheyenne for contact. There I met a fellow who freighted me down with
pump tools and I had to take back some of the wrenches I borrowed.
Then this fellow made an appointment for Cheyenne, and I would not
have missed the appointment for anything."
"Oh yeah," said Davy, "I suppose out here, the matter of a few
mountain ranges is all in a day's work. Anyhow, we are seeing some
country, and the lizzie is going fine."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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