Page:The Pacific Monthly vol. 14.djvu/79



"short stories"

This department is devoted to short, crisp, interesting stories. The aim is to publish ^\y. each month more short stories than any other illustrated ten cent magazine. Manuscripts W^ are solicited.

LOCO

By R. C. Pitzer

HE wore a red vest. You can shut your eyes, now that you know this, and Richard Lacey will materialize before you. You are sure to see him if you know that his moustache was small and of a clerkly blonde. He was the foreman of the dress goods counters in a well-known department store, and, after the third season there, he was given a two months' vacation. The West was a sealed book to him; so he determined to go out into the Rocky Mountains and have something to talk about the rest of his life.

He followed the beaten track until he reached a summer resort in Western Colorado, where he met Bill Cummings. Bill was a professional guide and bear killer, and was looking for something to be guided.

One afternoon he found Lacey at the postoffice, and told him all about Eoutt County. The result was that he then and there hired Cummings to take him into the pleasant lands. They bought an outfit and went away from the sulphur springs, the Aveak lungs, the fishing rods, and the blue dresses and white trousers of the resort.

Three weeks in the hills made a wonderful difference in Dick Lacey's appearance. His blue shirt and corduroy suit lost their newness, his face turned red, and a fringe of dirty whiskers sprang out around it. He was of an excitable temperament, and the wild spirit of the mountains entered into and possessed him. He became a hunter, without the skill to hunt; a hillsman, without the strength to climb.

Then, one day, he saw a deer and shot at it. He was surprised when it doubled up and lay down under a pine tree, but exultation mastered even that emotion, and he cheered lustily. Cummings ran up the hill to learn what had happened.

"Hurrah!" Lacey cried again. "I've. killed it! I've killed it!"

"Killed what?" Bill puffed.

"A deer ; see, there it is over yonder."

Bill sat down suddenly. "Say," he ejaculated, "you are a tenderfoot, an' no mistake ! D' you know what that means ?"

"A tenderfoot? Oh, yes, you've called me that — "

"No; I'm talking about that deer there. It means a good big fine, an' a good stiff sentence."

"Eh?"

"It's agin' the law to shoot deer this time o' the year, as I've told you fifty times afore — an' we passed a game warden this mornin', too. Good Lord ! I'm