Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/26

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

arsenic when he heard of this tough break, Young Halliday borreys enough sugar to send his thoughtless parent down to South America for a rest, brushes back his hair, and starts out to dumfound the universe with stunts that would make a Douglas Fairbanks thriller look reasonable. With the reputation he had grabbed off at college he figured he was in soft, and it was only a question which bank he'd start off bein' president of.

It took the kid about a month to find out that the young men which writes all the movies, novels, and plays in which they is a hero amongst the other characters is slightly addicted to exaggeration. The fact that his father had been granted a absolute divorce from his bank roll had leaked out, and his one-time buddies become the busiest guys in North America when he went to call on 'em.

Now, if Halliday had only known a scenario writer, he would of been tipped off to sneak out immediately for the "great open stretches of the untamed Northwest," where, as a six-day-old infant knows, "a man has his chance to live clean, fight hard and square, and win his way to the top with his pure-hearted, fearless, flashing-eyed, and becomingly, though sensibly, garbed mate at his side." Or he could of gone to punchin' cows, reformin' all the rough yet golden-hearted cowboys by his inability to cuss and his ability to fan a six gun, windin' up by weddin' the rancher's sensationally beautiful daughter, which had been to New York and is through with the cold, merciless, and gilded sham of the city, and craves for the sweet smell of the pines, rodeos, cactus, sagebrush, and steers.

Instead of this, Halliday got as far as Ohio, where,