Adventure, August 3, 1919 — page 118: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

108 Adventure ae ~~ ee and went alone toward the boarding- house. ' Not long afterward the commissary crowd began to thin out. At closing time only Ashford and Billy Allison, the clerk, were there, And Ashford watched young Allison keenly as he took the day’s gleanings from the money-drawer and placed them in the small iron safe. The Morgan-Haley Company’s commis- sary banked but once each month, and these deposits ran anywhere from four to eight hundred dollars. we] WHEN Lonesome Bentley went ‘ee toward the boarding-house, Howling Jim followed him. Bentley did not even look around until he had reached the up-stairs sleeping-quarters of the crew, in which a big hanging oil lamp burned dimly. He gave Baskin a glance that was part scowl, undressed without a word to his former great crony and crept silently under his blankets. Baskin followed suit, and for five minutes the two big man lay so still there in their narrow beds, within six feet of each other, that they seemed to be hardly breathing. Then Howling Jim put the soft pedal on his fog-horn voice and spoke. “Lonesome!” No answer. “Lonesome,” Baskin pursued, ‘‘what is it that’s come between you and me?” “Neyer mind,” Bentley said sharply. And not another word could Howling Jim get out of him that night. Howling Jim found slumber forsaking him. As for Lonesome, neither did he go to sleep readily. His thoughts wouldn’t let him sleep. Those thoughts would have been highly enlightening to Baskin if only he could have read them! A week before Lonesome Bentley and old Nathan Kirkland’s daughter, who lived with her parents in a big hewn-log cabin a mile down Big Brother Creek, had quar- reled bitterly—so bitterly, in fact, that Nancy had snapped off her engagement to Bentley as if it had been of no more importance than a pie-crust! Lonesome didn’t know what they had quarreled about and Nancy didn’t remember. That is how it goes when young human beings set other young human beings up on pedestals as models of perfection to worship them. The fault was humanity’s, rather than either her home, and by the merest chance he had come upon a scene that distressed him sorely. Nancy and Howling Jim were silting together under a big poplar; Baskin was holding her hand in his, and she was smiling at him in her very best way! Then Lonesome Bentley had stolen back to the camp with red-hot iron in his soul. It seemed doubly hard to bear, following, as it did, on the heels of news to the effect that the Morgan-Haley Company looked upon him—Lonesome Bentley, as the very best logger in the outfit. Bentley, for all of his taciturnity, was an ambitious young man. 7p THOUGH they had lost some sleep, 4, - Zag Bentley and Baskin sprang from their beds at the first ringing blow on the railroad iron triangle-gong which hung just outside the kitchen door. Neither had anything to say. Lonesome was the first to get his clothing on. He snatched up his hat and hastened down to the dimly- lighted back porch to bathe his face and his hands. He had no more than finished his washing when Howling Jim addressed him from the open doorway behind him: . “The super wants to see ye, Lonesome. In his office. Said for me to tell ye. By grab! That’s good luck, Lonesome!” It was a fine bid for talk; however, Lonesome failed to nibble. Without a single word Bentley threw. the icy-cold towel to its peg on the wall and went toward Superintendent Bradshaw’s little office on the first floor. He wondered just what the good luck was. A raise in wages, maybe. The high light of the Morgan-Haley camp was a big and bronzed elderly man, and he now sat before a small sheet-iron stove, which was glowing hot. ‘ “Sit down, Bentley,” he said, pointing toward a cheap straight-back. Lonesome dropped into the chair, and Bradshaw went on: “Nobody knows loggin’ better than you know it, Bentley, and I’ve recom- mended. you for the super’s job here. I'm a) B < etn. Mom St __ = ay "_ comicbooks. com