Charles E. Van Loan

“ The arrival of the Titan special was a great event to the elderly gentlemen sun-drying themselves in front of the general store, and several of them mustered up sufficient ambition to walk across to the sidetrack where the camels were being prodded down a cattle chute into a corral.
"Is this a circus, mister?" asked one of them.
"Not yet," said Ben Leslie, his eye upon Aladdin, who was being coaxed down the chute by Tim Kelly and three men from the animal farm. "Not yet, but stick around, old timer. The show is liable to start at any time." ”

“ As a matter of fact, there are no wild camels, never have been wild camels and never will be wild camels at large upon the Great American Desert, but a thousand times we have been told how they came there and why they are wild. In all probability we shall continue to receive reports of them, for they are to the Sunday-supplement author what rags and virtue are to the melodramatist and the slapstick is to vaudeville—a sure-fire hit.
Thus Pete, smiting his corrugated brow, struck forth the spark of a brilliant idea. ”

“ Furthermore, I'll state that I know that camel personally and he's the meanest camel that ever dipped his face into a bale of hay. The man who takes care of him wears shinguards and a baseball mask."
"Is that on the square?" asked Buck anxiously.
"Everything is on the square but the camel, and he never was on the square in his life. You ask any circus man about Aladdin. They all know him. The old sucker has got a reputation for pure cussedness that reaches from one end of the country to the other." ”

“ Jimmy Montague is it."
"But what does he want with camels?" asked Buck. "The last time I had to do a camel stunt Sharkey stumbled and heaved me forty feet. That old feller can't get out of a walk without stepping on his upper lip. A white man was never intended to ride one of them biscuit-footed outrages, Ben."
"That's me, " said Leslie. "I wouldn't keep a camel in my back yard if I had room for a steamboat. I could arrange to stand it if I never got another pleasant look from one as long as I live. Nix on that ship-of-the-desert stuff for mine." ”

“ The mission of the Sunday supplement of a newspaper is not to instruct or to entertain, but to astound those weary souls to whom the Sabbath is a day of rest and mental relaxation. The young men who write the supplement articles are resourceful as well as clever. They have need to be, for they explain the inexplicable, invent the impossible, spin mysteries out of cigarette smoke, outride Rider Haggard and entrap the reader in a mesh of plausible fiction soberly presented as fact. ”

“ I'll ride this Aladdin camel, you can bet on that, but if he bites me watch out for yourself. And if you think anything of him at all you better breathe it in his ear that it won't be healthy for him to grab no free lunch off Buck Parvin. As a general thing I aim to be kind to dumb animals, but a feller has got to draw the line somewhere, as Doc Bowen said when he found the skunk in his kitchen. Being camel-bit is the extreme tip of the limit with me, and if your friend Aladdin starts anything coarse I'll whang him over the head with the butt of my gun. ”

“ VI The desert moon shone down on two men sitting upon a baggage truck in front of the depot.
"It's too good an idea to waste," said Montague. "Of course it won't be quite as effective without the white camel, but the picture can be worked out some other way. It's up to us to make as much as we can out of the trip. What do you think Ward will soak us for Aladdin?" ”

“ Which kind of a camel would you prefer to ride. Buck, one hump or two?"
"I wouldn't wish to ride none of 'em, " said Buck. "I'd just as soon straddle the walking-beam of a ferryboat—yes, a heap sooner, because you can most generally tell where that's going. I get along with some animals first rate, but I couldn't waste any affection on a camel—not on a bet. That Selim elephant and me hit it off bully; he's almost human. I got a lot of respect for a lion. A lion has got his faults, but he's no hypocrite. He ain't your pal one minute and taking a swipe at you the next. ”

“ Buck is one of our own people and he gets up in the night and steals the camels out of jealousy. That's always good stuff for a heavy, but it doesn't make enough use of the white camel. Why not have Buck a sort of a desert thief? He owns this white camel, see? The brute has a peculiar influence over other camels—they follow him the same as if they're hypnotized. ”

“ You haven't any right to ask an actor to take a chance with a savage brute like that. Suppose he disfigures some one for life?"
"But he won't bite you," soothed Montague.
"That camel will bite anybody!" snapped the leading man. "I'll quit the company before I'll work in a scene with him. I don't want to get my chin bit off, Jim."
"But, confound it, we've got to use him!" stormed Montague. "He's the bull-cow of the herd. They'll all follow him!"
"They will, eh?" La Rue stopped and tossed the hood of his burnoose back over his shoulders. "Wait a second, I've got an idea." ”

“ We can ship a couple of carloads of camels to one of the little desert towns, hop out and make the stuff and be back inside of three days. It won't cost much, but we'll get a desert picture that will have atmosphere and color and—all that stuff. By the way, Ben, where are you going to get those camels? From Ward's circus!"
"Sure thing. Billy Ward has got a whole slew of camels—more camels than anything else. Did you ever see that big white dromedary that leads the bunch in the street parade? That's old Aladdin, and take it from me he's some camel."
"A white camel!" exclaimed Montague. ”

“ Buck shot him!" yelled Ben Leslie, starting to run.
The population of Daggett surged forward like a wave.
"Out of the picture! Keep out of the picture!" bellowed Montague.
"Too late," said the imperturbable Dupree. "Ben spilled the beans. He cut across in front just as the camels started to scatter." ”

“ A lion don't like you at no time whatever and you don't expect nothing from him, but a camel now, he's different. A camel has got a bad heart and a breath that would knock you down. I reckon I honeyed round that brute of a Sharkey for pretty near a month, feeding him and rubbing his nose and trying to make myself solid with him. ”

“ When invention fails and imagination flags, the Sunday Munchausens have recourse to the stock stories of the trade. These have been written and rewritten until they are as threadbare as a schoolmaster's coat, but like the coat they are always ready for one more public appearance after the high lights and gray shadows have been freshly touched with ink. ”

“ He wouldn't hurt a fly, but he likes to talk."
The string of camels grew small in the distance, turned at a right angle and swung up the ridge, the white leader plodding along at a sedate pace.
"That's the stuff!" said Montague. "They ought to be moving a little faster than that though. Why doesn't he hurry 'em up a little?"
Evidently the same idea occurred to Buck, for he was seen to flap his elbows and kick Aladdin violently in the ribs. The white neck curved backward in protest and at the same instant the camel made a mighty leap, lurched in his stride and fell headlong. ”

“ If it was up to me, Jim, I'd put the best rider in the company on Aladdin."
"How about Buck?" asked Montague.
"That's the man I'd pick," said the treacherous Leslie.
"I'll fix it up," said the director, eager to be at work upon the new scenario. "You go and make arrangements with Billy Ward. We'll pay him anything in reason, but we must have that white camel. If he wants to send his own animal man along he can. Better dig up a few camel saddles while you're about it, and if Ward has got any Arab costumes, grab 'em."
"They're as good as grabbed," said Ben. "I'm off." ”

“ That feller ain't ever real happy unless he's cranking up trouble for us poor actors."
"Poor is the right word," said Leslie sarcastically, "though I don't know as I'd go so far as to say actor. If they make 'em any poorer than you are, Buck, I never saw any. Too darned bad about you overworked Thespians! You lead a dog's life for a fact; nothing to do but lay around in the sun and get fat. ”

“ No man has ever seen them save with the eye of faith, yet at regular intervals they gallop through the pages of our Sabbath literature, invariably disappearing in a cloud of dust, for these camels are swift as well as wild. ”

“ Acting is one thing, but being cannibalized by a camel is another. I declare myself right now, and it goes too. If that brute bites me I'll get him!"
"You better not hurt that camel," warned Leslie.
"Huh!" grunted Buck. "Put it the other way round. That camel better not hurt me."
V An hour later a strange procession passed down the single street and out into the desert, headed by James Montague and Jack La Rue, the former in his shirtsleeves and the latter in a flowing white burnoose and sandals. ”

“ No one knows what fertile brain sired these animals and gave them sanctuary upon the western boundary of Utah; it is enough to say that the wild camels, existing at first in the wilder imagination of some nameless genius of the press and nurtured by scores of imitators, are now very real to those who believe that everything in a newspaper is true. ”

“ Don't you reckon we better go hobble them jacks so they won't get stampeded! Yes, sir, let's go do that very thing! Camels on the desert! Seems to me the Gover'ment had some of 'em down in Arizony once. Maybe it's the same bunch, but how in thunder did they get across the Colorado River! Hey? S'pose they do come hiking along, are we a-going to lay still like a hoptoad and let a white camel tromp the eternal gizzard out of us? Not if we see him first, we ain't. That would be a fine finish, wouldn't it? The coyotes would get us for sure, then, wouldn't they, Jimmy? ”

“ He began to read, spelling out the long words, and a puzzled frown nested between his bushy eyebrows.
"This is coming pretty close home, Jimmy," he muttered. "Yes, sir, pretty close home. 'Thomas Smith, better known as Honest Tom, an aged desert prospector.' Honest Tom—we don't know no such feller as that, do we? There's Shorty Smith and Baldy Smith—— Hold on! ”

“ That'll give us a chance to ring in a big stretch of desert for a foreground. Stain the film for a sunset glow and that'll be poor, eh?"
"It ought to make a swell picture," said Ben, "but there's one thing you mustn't overlook. Somebody has got to ride Aladdin, and you'd better pick the right man for the job. Jack La Rue is all right on a horse, but he's pretty rough with livestock, and a camel won't stand to be yanked round the way Jack yanks a horse. Billy Ward was telling me about Aladdin; he's awful touchy, and they have to handle him just so or he gets peeved and won^t work. ”

“ Baldy's dead. And ole Zack Smith; we know all them, Jimmy, but Honest Tom No, he 's surely a new one on us! And it says he's been here forty years! Well, ain't that sing'lar! If we hadn't seen it in the paper we never would have believed it, would we, Jimmy? No, I reckon not. We thought we knew all the old-timers too. Just goes to show what a mighty big place this desert is. Room enough for all. Oh, well, maybe he hung out up round Moharvey."
A few moments later Uncle Jimmy grunted aloud and moved closer to the fire. This is what he read:
How long Mr. ”