Adventure, July 1, 1928 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

4 THOMSON BURTIS private ends, as it were. At that, in a town like Verona we're liable to run across stuff that’d interest the Govern- ment a good deal. Let’s go see the cap. I hadn’t figured on going until tomorrow until right this minute.” MOMENT later they were facing stocky, spike pompadoured little Captain Kennard. “Say, Cap,” grinned the big South- ener, “anything the matter with our shoving off this afternoon to help out my poor old father?” Kennard’s raucous laughter filled the room. “Go ahead,” he chuckled. “You wouldn’t sleep a wink tonight if you didn’t, and there’d be no use of having you around the place. Excitement is a disease with you, young man.” Which it was, almost, Daly reflected. The Texan seemed to have some per- ennial hunger within him which nothing but dangerous emergencies could assuage. A week of monotony, and he was a brooding, temperamental recluse, seeking liquor to deaden his senses. The Duke knew what that feeling was—something always beckoning him from around the corner—and the invariable disillusion- ment when one found that it was never so attractive as it seemed. But his own rest- lessness and discontent beat itself against the hard shell he had built around his real self, and the world rarely knew. As they went out of the office. an orderly ran toward the hangars to give orders for their ship. They walked toward the row of tents which were the living quarters for the dozen officers of the patrol. MacDowell, momentarily serious, stopped and faced Daly. “Listen, Duke,” he drawled. ‘“What’s on your mind about this trip? Anything that I don’t know about? I know you were around the Border as a—a gambler, and might have enemies. Id like to know, so that—you know.” The commonplace words, said with a touch of shyness by the Texan, con- veyed the same feeling to Daly which MacDowell had aroused years before. The same spirit shone through which had made Tex the first and only friend the emotionally. starved Daly had ever had. Five years of want, fighting among the dregs of life, years in which he had lived his mental life alone and displayed to the world he Jived in and despised a shell which the blows of fate had thick- ened, had brought to Daly what he had thought to be a total self-sufficiency. In MacDowell he had found the first under- standing friend he had ever had. Ina brutal effort to test him, to discover the basis of his apparent liking for the aloof stranger, the Duke had thrown his past in the big fellow’s face—hobo, professional gambler, denizen of the underworld be- cause he had been made so at fifteen. He had spared nothing, as though trying to repel the famous flyer whose friendship he really wanted so desperately. And Tex had met the test. It had not been Daly’s present position of respecta- bility, even a certain eminence, which had attracted him. For what he had been, an outcast, or might be again, meant not a single, solitary damn to MacDowell. The inference in his words now sent the unaccustomed warm glow through Duke Daly, and momentarily his eyes were soft. Tex wanted to have all the facts, so he could fight at Daly’s right hand if necessary. “You know,” Daly said without emo- tion. “Remember the case of Jim Fitz- patrick, an old coon he shot—and so forth?” MacDowell’s eyes widened. “And that was within fifteen miles!” he said very slowly. “I don’t think it'll mean a thing, Duke. If I did I wouldn’t bring you there, Not a soul will connect you with it—and if they do you were right.” “Haven’t the Fitzpatricks any friends left since old Dave is in jail?” ‘Some—but they’re damn’ quiet. I don’t think there’s a thing to worry about there.” - As it turned out, there was nothing for the Duke to worry about—there. As he comicloooks.com