Sloan and Scattergun

By HYPE IGOE.

NEW YORK, Dec. 25—(INS)—
Tod Sloan died and one of the milestones in
my life crumbled!
When he was clucking his way over the turf on English race
courses, making our own riding stars see red with his wizardry
he saddle, I was holding down a modest berth as an artist on the
San Francisco Examiner. The city by the "Golden Gate' I
woke up one morning to find that the great Tod Sloan had arrived
from New York, fresh from his saddle and social triumphs in England
Jack Doyle tells me that the tiny jockey had a cool $1,110,000 at that
time, well over 30 years ago. That he was "up in the chips" was quite
evident for he had chartered a private car with Its chefs, waiters,
barber, cocktail mixer, all attached to the overland filer.
No single individual ever crossed this continent In greater splendor,
'the trunks, the shoe chests, the hat boxcs, the swagger sticks Western
gay-dogs little dreamed that one man could surround himself with
such royal what-nots.

Sloan told the 20 or more interviewers that he was pleasure bent
only and that one of his reasons for comlng was to enter a live-pigeon
shoot, before the traps, at the fashoniable Ingleside gun club.
Tod had swept everything before him at trap shooting In England
and Monte Carlo and his guns, the most expensive makes in the world,
were as numerous as his walking stcks.
His "armory men," and there were two of them, did nothing but give care
to Tod's shotguns when he wasn't at the traps. •
They danced lavish attendance upon him. Always, Sloan's career had fasinatcd
me. He seemed to be riding skyrockets In my youthful Imagination.
I sat at my drawing table ink rcindering If the day would come
when I'd see him ride.

Suddenly an office boy broke in upon my dreaming. "Managing editor wants to see
you." he said with a snap. The managing editor was Andre
Lawrence. What had I done now' Was it the gate?
Andy Lawrence had a pugnacious jaw which would have carried him
far into Fistiana if ever he had taken up larruping instead of letters.
"Igoe." said Lawrence, "Tod Sloan Is going to join some of the
society bugs out at Ingleside in a
live pigeon shoot this afternoon. I want you to hop out there and do a
funny picture about it. It ought to be quite humorous."
That was all. but it seemed like doom—a sentence to the gallows
for me. I never had drawn a comic picture, a cartoon or a caricature
for publication In all my life. I fumbled around and got a sketch
pad. somehow. Without a word, I went out of thc art room, feeling In
my bones that I was leaving the beloved "den" forever.
I fancied that I was again in the old Mission strcct office, the day
that I had first gone to work. In a dream, It seemed, all came back.
I saw Davenport, Miss Partington, the genius of the pen and ink portraits; picturesque Nappcnbach, the German artist: Hayden Jones, poet of the pen; Jules Pages, who had had a painting hung In the French
salon; the gentle Joe Rafael, brother of Hynie the sportsman, and Frank
the fighter.

Again I saw handsome Wyatt Earp, then Andy Lawrence's bodyguard,
telling me stories of the bad. bad West, of his brothers and himself,
shooting It out with Bat Mastcrson and his brothers, until only
Bat and he remained. Those first days with Wee Willie
Britt on the staff, a daredevil reporter. Harrison Fisher, his superb
pen and Ink sketches. Joe Quail. the editor, ordering me
to the Baldwin hotel to "please ask
Mr. Swinnerton if he won't come
down to work!" "Swin" had married the Treadwell
girl of many millions and came to work only on invitation, wearing n
minstrelman's coat and a silk topper. This weird kaleidoscope still was
Whirling in my brain as I stepped out the car at its terminal and
walked toward the Ingleside shooting lodge.

The shotguns were booming as I rounded the clubhouse
portico. The first object which met my eyes was Tod Sloan, standing
in his place among the other crack shots, swinging a big double-barreled
shotgun Into line at fluttering pigons which seldom got far In
their frantic flights for freedom! Instantly Tod's shotgun loomed
up in tremendous contrast to the tiny man who was doing the shooting.
The barrels on that firing piece looked like the huge guns which
protrude from the turrets of a battleship. I began to laugh to myself.
"Gee, Hint's a funny picture. I'll make the barrels of the gun big and
tod Sloan a speck!" That was the thought which went
into the cartoon In the art room a few hours later. The gang laughed
at It. Could It be that good. "Take It down to Lawrence yourself
Hype," said Charley Tebs, the art director.
I went down the winding stairs and gingerly submitted my first cartoon.
Andy Lawrence laughed to split his side and I still think he
was kidding me. But that caricature
Tod Sloan was my first effort.
Years later, In Jack Doyle's billiard
parlor, Tod and I laughed over that cartoon.