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Newspaper Page Text
mwwmmwmm9mmmmmmmmm A DESPERATE .HERO By George Elmer Cobb. "I'll discount Roy Waldron's hero game two- to one," declared Levi Pierce in so markeda way that his auditor stared at him curiously. "Sort of envious of that diamond spangled medal the steamship people sent him?" it was suggested. "Not at all. Why, any schoolboy diver could have done what he did. Boat a-leak, two little children tipped "Have You Thought Over What I Said Yesterday?" out. Bah! I'm not much of a swimmer but I could have done as much my elf." "But you see Waldron was quick and did just the rigtit thing at the -ight moment." "Well, I'm watching my chance. It vill come along. Just because all the girls are making a hero of him, I want to show 'em I can shine in the same line." ."Especially Estelle Bartley?" was significantly hintecL t "Oh, I fancy I'm solid there," swag gered self-conceited Pierce. "I'm in with the old man, I've got more money than Waldron. Estelle sort of admires him, like all the silly girls here, but that will wear off." And then Levi Pierce swung on" his way chuckling. He had indeed some money and fancied that he ought to be idle to show his aristocratic con tempt for work. Idle hands find mis chief to do and Pierce was in the midst of carrying out an extremely hazardous plan. About a mile from Rushbrook where the railroad curved through a deep cut some phosphate mining had been done in the past. It had not paid and the digging had been abandoned. One of the men employed, a shift less, dissipated old man named Red Davids, had" remained in the disman tled tool hut on the place, working at odd jobs about the village only when he needed food and liquor. It was to this same hut that Pierce now made his way by a circuitous route, as if chary of anybody knowing whither he was headed. Red Davids, bleary eyed and rag ged, sat smoking a blackened clay pipe in front of the hut as Pierce ap proached. A crafty expression came over his mottled face as Pierce greet ed him vrfth assumer cordial famil iarity. "Well, old man," hailed the latter, "have you thought over what I said to you yesterday?" "All of the time, guvnor," promptly replied Davids. "That bottle you gave me helped my ideas wonderfully.'' "I've brought another one," an nounced Pierce, producing an oblong package which his host seized greed-Ay- . "And I'm to have two dollars each day I work?" he inquired. "That's it Now see here, Davids, don't you go to fooling me." "Why should I with plenty to eat and drink?" "You've got thevtools to do the work?" ' i mmmmmmmtmamaam