David Lannarck, Midget: An Adventure StoryHarney, George S.
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David Lannarck, Midget: An Adventure Story
Harney, George S.
Adventure stories; Circus -- Fiction; Western stories
"It was built the summer before last and it took all summer,"
explained Welborn. "The crazy galoot called himself the Count of Como.
He came barging in here and bought out Clark and Stanley, the
homesteaders, and brought in two men who had been building fancy
cabins in Rocky Mountain Park and tourist camps. He left them here on
the job while he drove the roads like a madman, in a big, black,
powerful coupe to Laramie, to Cheyenne, to Denver, anywhere he could
get whiskey and dope. He would come back, rave around, threaten
everybody with a gun, but paid out money like he had the mint back of
him, and finally got it done. You notice that the logs are "treated,"
stained or shellacked, to retain their first color. The mechanics did
that, and the count was mightily pleased until he found out that it
made the shack stand out so that it could be seen for a long distance,
and then he threw a fit. He went wild, ran 'em off the job, then I
came into the picture.
"I was prospecting down Ripple Creek Canyon and living in that shack
that you can see from the rim over there. I was trying to locate a
claim, mining claim. But from the homestead lines, this cabin was off
the reservation, built off the edge of Stanley's claim and on the
government's land where I wanted to stake off a mineral right.
"I came up out of the canyon on the day he had gotten the men back and
explained the error and showed him his predicament and then bought him
out...."
"Ah, tell hit right," growled Landy. "Tell him like them scairt men
told hit to me." Landy took up the recitation of how the home was
acquired. "He made that greasy counterfeit eat his gun that he whipped
out from under his left arm. He kicked him in the ribs, he did, after
he'd knocked him down a coupla times. Made him go down thar and look
at the old survey stakes, he did, then made him drive his crazy car
over to Adot, and old Squire Landry made out the deed and he signed
hit and Welborn here paid him in a sack of gold dust that they weighed
on the grocery scales. That's how 'twas done. Tell hit right, so's
Davy here will know the story."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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