Boy's Cinema (1935-39)

12 "A horse!" exclaimed TTTlie Tilks. "Well, for ever morel" gasped Amanda Witherspoon. " Is this a stable or a house?" They approached the cradle and they looked down at the baby. "Why, Tillie," breathed Amanda, " it's really quite cute." "Amanda!" rebuked the shocked president of'the Ladies' Society. "A child without a name cute?" Tarzan knocked her away with his nose, and Jack Swift's offspring liked lh.it and gurgled. Tillie stared at the horse, which had ceased to rock the cradle. "Why, For goodness' sake!" she ex- claimed. "He acts like he don't want us here! We're not going to hurt the baby!" Amanda ventured nearer the cradle, and was smitten in the face twice by Tarzan's nose. "Stop that, you old goat!" she cried; but, Tarzan bumped against her sideways ant! sent her staggering. The whole quartet retreated in haste. "Imagine leaving a horse in charge ol a baby!" fumed Tillie Tilks. "And just look at all these contraptions." The three women proceeded to investi- gate Ken's domestic arrangements; (he tinned stuff upon a row of shelves, the mysterious ropes and pulleys, the bed in the corner. "What'll we do?" said Jinks, the clerk, to Potts, the attorney. "Ken Armstrong is not here to be served with the order of the court." "That's all right," replied Potts calmly; "just deliver the child to Mrs. Dwyer and leave the papers here so that Ken can find them when he comes back." Tarzan went straight to the rope attached to the warning cowbell and tugged at it again and again; but Ken did not arrive on the scene, though he heard the summons. Five men pounced on him as he came up out of his mine, and though he struggled valiantly enough against such overwhelming odds they held him fast. "All right, boss, we've got him!" one of his captors shouted, and John Motley strode forward. "When I've finished with you," he rasped, snatching Ken's guns from their holsters, "you'll wish you hadn't been born !" The butt of one of the guns was smashed into Ken's face, knocking him nearly unconscious. "That'll hold him," said Motley, in no May ashamed of his brutal action. "Mount up and lake him away." Ken was dragged away to the horses, which had been concealed behind some i««:ks. and a as flung across the back of one of them. A man mounted behind him, and the whole parly went off at a gallop, not past the shack whero the bell was still ringing, but straight mi over rock strewn ground and out of sight. Tillio Tilks opened the door of the shack and out flew Tarzan, convinced that something had gone wrong. He reached the mine, and there the sound of hoofs beating on rock reached his alert ears. Without the slightest hesita- tion he followed the trail of the men who had captured his master. A bnckboard driven by a red-headed man climbed the hill to the shack and was stopped beside the wagonette. A pleasant-faced and middle-aged woman was sitting besido the driver, and the weatherbeaten old fellow on the wagonette greeted her. Howdy, Mrs. Dwyer?" ho shouted. "How d'you do?" returned tho woman, who was Bill Dwyer's wife. Those inside tho shack heard and February '.'Utb, 193ft. BOY'S CINEMA came out, Tillie Tilks carrying the baby. "My dear Mrs. Dwyer," sho said, handing over the infant, "I'm sure that you will take •splendid care of this child until the law decides what to do with it." Thanks to a Horse ! JANE had driven almost recklessly down the hill into the coach road at the foot of it, but as she drew near to Sicoma City she slowed the horses to walking pace. She had passed first the wagonette and then the bnckboard, and she realised Hiat Ken was about to be deprived of firxj tntby he had so suddenly acquired. Already she had begun to repent of having given Ken no opportunity to explain matters, and she was debating in her mind whether to turn about or to go home when Hank Carter and Spurs Hawkins came riding towards her, Hank nursing a jar of liquor which he had acquired at the saloon. She stopped the buggy as they pulled rein beside it. "Howdy, Miss Jane?" said Spurs. "Say, ain't that Motley's outfit?" She nodded, and the two cow- punchers saw that there were tears in her eyes. "If that hombre's done anything to make you cry, Miss Jane," blurted Spurs, "I'll take him apart." "It isn't that," said Jane haltingly, "it—it's about Ken, and—and his baby." "Oh, the baby?" Spurs looked at Hank and Hank looked at Spurs. "Oh, don't let that worry you any, Miss Jane. Ken's sure got a kid out at his shack, but he couldn't help that. He inherited it from his old pal Jack Swift, who's died " "Inherited him?" echoed Jane, her eyes very round and her brows uplifted. "Sure." "How do you know?" "I saw the letter, and Hank saw it, too. Didn't we, Hank?" Hank nodded, and abruptly Jane snatched up a whip and lashed at the horses attached to the buggy. "Hi, where you going?" cried Spurs, as the vehicle was turned almost in its own length. "Back to Ken!" shouted Jane. She drove back to the shack, passing the wagonette at the foot of the hill. Tillio and Amanda hailed her, but she paid no attention to them. Mrs. Dwyer, with die baby, was on her way to Motley's mine m accordance with the instructions she had received, and so Jane did not encounter the buckboard She reached the shack only to find it deserted, and she sat down to wait for Ken. imagining- him to be in the mine. But Ken had been bundled into quite another shack over by Motley's workings, pending the completion of preparations for blowing up the tunnel. Ken tried to force open the door of his prison with a piece of wood, after the footsteps of his captors had died away, but the door was a stout one and had been securely fastened. He found a metal poker at the stove, and was about to attack the door again with it when a sudden knocking at the side wall caused him to drop the poker and to listen intently. He whistled a shrill and curious little whistle, and immediately there was an answering neigh from outside. Flo knew then that Tarzan had found him and that it was Tarzan who had knocked From the back of the stove an iron flue rose up to an elbow-joint whence a long length of pipe passed out through the side wall at an angle. It was a matter of minutes to detach the pipe Every Tuesday from the elbow-jo. V and then ho pulled the pipe in t \m the wall and looked out through the circular hole it had occupied. He saw Tarzan and spoke to him. "Good boy, Tarzan," he said, his voice husky with emotion. "Wait Ihere just a minute, old man." He searched his pockets for paper, but could find none. He took out a handkerchief, still more or less White, and with a charred stick of wood from under the stove wrote upon it at tho table. Back at the hole he called guardedly through it to the horse. "Come close, boy. Come on." Tarzan moved close to the hole, and Ken thrust his hand and arm through it and managed to tuck the handker- chief tinder the saddle. "Now take it to Hank, at the Bar-X, Tarzan,' he directed, and Tarzan hacked away from tha side of the shack and made a bee-line across country for the bunkhouse of Ken's friends. He reached it in record time, w hilo down in the south tunnel of Motley's mine a long train of gunpowder was associated with a charge of dynamite, a connection between the gunpowder and the electrical plunger up above was established, and the men started to ascend the shaft. Hank himself was in the. farmyard when Tarzan bounded oven the five- barred gate near the muck-pond and made straight for him. "Well, what are you doin' around here?" exclaimed the eowpunchcr. Tarzan reached his head round to tha saddle and managed to pull the hand- kerchief away in his teeth. "What you got there?" Hank asked, curiously, and the handkerchief was offered to him. He read the message, and in a stale of wild excitement rushed off to round up all the available members of the Bar-X outfit. "Look here what Tarzan's brought!" he shouted "Look what Ken's writ on this here handkerchief! 'Held prisoner in tool-shack at Motley's mine. Come a-rimnin'. Ken.' Let's go, f( I your horses!" A hundred yards or so from the en- trance to the shaft of Motley's mine, Dwyer watched the last of the workmen emerge from the workings, then said to his employer: "Wei!, it's all set now. I'll move tho plunger over about a hundred yards. That ought to he safe enough." "All right," said Motley, and looked round as he heard the sound of whi "There comes your wife now!" The buckboard driven by the red- headed man was approaching, and on it was Mrs. Dwyer with the baby in her lap. Her husband waved a hand, then picked up the canister arrangement and carried it farther away from the mine and spt it clown near a boulder. Motley went to meet the buckboard. "Hallo. Mrs. Dwyer," he said, hold- ing out his arms, "let's have a look at what represent? so much money." Jack Swift's offspring was handed down to him, and he was looking into its dismayed littlo face when Tarzan came flying through a gap between (all rocks near tho entrance to the mine, and behind him pounded the boys of tho Bar-X outfit, fourteen of them all told, with their guns out. Dwyer saw (hem and shouted: "It's Ken's friends! Let's get out of here!" Shots rang out as the miners made for their horses and scattered in hasto upon them. Some of the cowpunchea dis- mounted at tho shack and began to (Continued on rage 28)