Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1913 — A Telling Shot [ARTICLE]

A Telling Shot

Bradford had three weaknesses at Lennox that summer, each one exeellent in its way, but combined —they combined against him. There’s no harm in a camera, except to a pocketbook; there’s no harm in a bicycle; there’s no harm in a girt But the girl had said, “Do you know, Mr. Bradford, you look uncommonly well on a wheel.” That was why Bradford had been busy for two days with his best instantaneous shutter and a very long string. He chose an* old road, little frequented by riders and drivers, where he would not be liable to interruption, and spent a great deal of time In choosing the best point of view and fixing the tripod firmly.—■—— The focussing was again a matter for the nicest judgment. Then he set the shutter lightly across the road and fastened the string's end to a little bush in such a way that the pressure of the wheel across it would set the shutter off without parring the camera. Then he gave a few touches to his hair, mounted his wheel and took a short run through the trees, coming back and passing neatly across the string. He had scowled at the camera ! ”I’ll try again,” said Bradford, setting the shutter and putting in another plate. “I’ll keep my mind on her, and then I won’t worry about the Shutter so much.” He thought of her as. he wheeled off to take another start, and in thinking he leaned forward and passed the brown string at a scorching gait. “And she hates scoring,” he murmured, dlscouragedly. He set the camera once more. "It’s the last time I can try to-day,” he mused, glancing at the long shadows and the fading sky. “I'll take a good long run and come back easily in a graceful position with my face neither turned to the lens nor quite away from it, and I won’t do any thinking, and in that way I may get a telling shot.” But as Bradford came along he saw a little basket phaeton in front of him pass slowly across the brown string in the roadway and disappear among the shadows of the woods. And Bradford spoke about it feelingly. “I’ll just see what I’ve got,” he remarked to the m'An as he went into the dark room after dinner, “because I promised one to a friend, but a carriage came along and spoiled my only good chance. Say, you want to come in with me? Well.” And he and an idler entered the stuffy little closet. “They’re just as I expected,” he continued, as the first two exposures came up swiftly out of the mysterious fog. “The first has a beastly expression? you’ll see, and the second is John Gilpln’s ride to Ware. The third isa little slower In coming because the light got so thin, and I don’t care about it anyway. It’s a wonder that horse cleared the string. He might have tangled the string about his foot and brought the camera down smash. People oughtn’t to go driving carelessly like that along an unfrequented road. “Ah, here it comes! Gad, but it’s to be a pretty negative? As soft as velvet; focus was a little too sharp on those others; and here they’ve had the brass to come along and* take my plate. It’s a man and a girl, of course.” The disdain increased in Bradford’s tone. “I might have known it was a man and a girl. He's got his arm around her, too. Bah! Gad! I believe he’s kissing her.” Bradford smote the table in delight. “If it’s only someone round here, won't it be a treasure! Yes; I’ll take it out of my hypo in a minute. Just pour the developer back into the big bottle on your left —that’s it.” The sound of the bath, poured from the tray into the graduate, and from the graduate into the bottle, was the only sound in the dark room, except the little drip of hypo into the tray as Bradford finally lifted the plate full to the red light. It was a beautiful picture—the best one he had ever taken. He gazed at it an instant, and then, as he recognized the girl’s features, he let it fall shivering on the hard stone floor. “That’s the end of it,” he mumbled, as the idler gave an exclamation of dismay, spilling developer over his flannels as he turned “What a pity,” said the idler, “and yor hadn't found out who they were! Well, you have your own pictures—the ones you promlsod--anyhow." “That’s so; I have my pictures,” and as the idler led the way out of the dark room, Bradford’s heel ground into atoms all that was left of the telling shot.