Adventure, July 1, 1928 — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

THE ICE GOES OUT flood waters lifted the ice bodily and carried it toward the sea. Here it strand- ed on bars and piled cake on cake until a dam had been formed. There it broke through the banks and relieved for a moment of pressure, while the country was flooded. They crossed the bend in the river and, instead of the smooth surface they had desired, a churning, ice dotted flood filled * the course to the banks. They ran madly, taking turns at trail breaking; helping one another over the bad places. Min- utes counted. It was a tossup whether they could cross the flat country ahead before the water flooded it. They cut across to the stream once more and followed along the bank. Here the river had broken through a low moun- tain range after ages of effort. Walls were of granite, scraped by the ice of thousands of years. A panting deputy cried out with excitement— ‘Look at that!” CE HAD choked the gorge and the river was climbing the sheer walls. But in the midst, leaping from cake to cake, were two figures. They seemed tiny, when compared with the vastness of the breakup. They moved with desperation; falling, fighting, each for himself, but working toward the jam. One man looked up and saw the posse, but a greater danger confronted him. Ice cakes were being sucked into a vortex that poured through an opening in the jam. He judged his situation carefully, leaped at the right moment and was on the jam proper. He did not look back at his com- panion, but climbed upwards, knowing that if he gained the top and the smooth ice: beyond, the posse had no chance; knowing too, that if he failed, the river would demand its toll. No word passed among the posse as it watched. They. knew the ice, these men; knew that the might of the river was 61 exerting tremendous pressure to overturn the jam; knew that in the end the river would succeed. One of the men gained the top; the other was halfway up. For an instant the leading man was outlined sharply. He waved his hand in defiance and far be- neath a cake of ice weighing tons groaned in agony, then burst. A man in the posse cried out at the drama. The river had won. The whole jam was moving. Cakes and blocks shifted and the tiny figure of a man was hurled into the stream an instant before the jam overturned. Another dot, a thing of arms and legs, fighting a river, remained on top of the shifting ice a moment, clawed for a niche on the bank - and then fell back. The river, with its burden of ice moved on toward the sea. The youngest member of the posse stood where the jam had once held the flood waters of an empire in check. “Do you suppose . . . ?” he ventured. “No,” the marshal answered, pointing to a spruce log three feet through at the butt. It was a sound timber from heart to bark but it was now a pulpy mass being destroyed by the ice. “The only thing that’ll ever be found, son, is the gold nug- gets. And maybe the river will keep even them. The rest will be destroyed. Well, boys, let’s go back and report. Some- body’s out twenty-five thousand dollars.” Eagerness to learn who won the pool spurred them on, long after muscles cried for relief. Near camp, a supply party met them. “Got the crooks?” one of them in- quired, slipping a pack from his broad shoulders. “No. They’ve gone down with the ice. Say, who won this year?” “Kind of an empty victory,” the packer replied. “According to Con Welsh’s book it was a feller named Leach.” In the distance the ice ground its way to the sea. comicloooks.com