Adventure Magazine Cover, December 18, 1919 — page 36: what you’re looking at

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

22 - Ranch Number Ten men had gone about - their work. Steve and Bill Royce, riding side by side, had mounted one of the flat, treeless hills in the upper valley and were now sitting silent while Royce fumbled with his pipe and Steve sent a long eager look down across the open meadow-lands dotted with grazing cattle. - Suddenly their two horses and the other horses browsing in a lower field jerked up their heads, all ears pricked forward. And yet Steve had heard no sound to mar the perfect serenity of the young day. He turned his head a little, listening. Then, from some remote distance, there floated to him a sound strangely incongru- ous here in the early stillness, a subdued screech or scream, a wild, clamorous, shrieking noise which for the life of him he could not catalog. = It was faint because it. came across so great a distance, and yet it was clear; it was not the throbbing cry of a mountain-lion, not the scream of a horse stricken with its death, nothing that he had ever heard, and yet it suggested both of these sounds. “Bill!” he began. “T heard it,” Royce muttered. ‘An’ I’ve heard it before! In a minute——” Royce broke off. The sound, stilled a second, came again, seeming already much closer and more hideous. Steve’s horse snorted and plunged: some of the colts in the pasture flung up, their heels and fled with streaming manes and tails. Royce calmly filled and lighted his pipe. Stillmess again for perhaps ten or twenty seconds, Steve, about to demand an ex- planation from his companion, stared as once more came the shrieking noise. “You can hear the blame thing ten miles,” grunted Royce. “It’s only about half that far away now. Keep your eye glued on the road across the valley where it comes out’n Bird Cafion.”’ And then Steve understood. Into the clear air across the valley rose a growing cloud of dust; through it, out of the cafion’s shadows and into the sunlight, shot a glistening automobile, hardly more than a bright streak as it sped along the curving down-grade, “Terry Temple?” gasped young Packard. Royce merely grunted again. “Jus’ you watch,” was all he said. And, needing no invitation, Packard watched. The motor-car’s siren—he had Adventure never heard another like it, knew that such a thing would not be tolerated in any of the world’s traffic centers—sounded again a long wailing note which went across the val- ley in billowing echoes. Then it grew silent as, with the last of the dangerous curves behind it, the long-bodied roadster swung into the valley. Pagkard, an experienced driver himself with his own share of reckless blood, opened his mouth and stared. It was hard to believe that the big, spin- ning wheels were on the ground at all; the machine seemed more like an aeroplane content with skimming the earth but hun- gry for speed. Only the way in which it plunged and lurched and swerved and plunged again testified to highly inflated tires battling with ruts and chuck-holes. “The fool!’ he cried as the car negoti- ated a turn on two wheels with never a sign of lessened speed. ‘‘He’ll turn turtle. He’s doing sixty miles an hour right now. And on these roads E ‘““More likely doin’ seventy-five,” grunted Royce. “Can do ten better’n that. Out on the highway he’s done a clean hundred. That car, my boy “He’s going into the ditch!” exclaimed Steve excitedly. The car, racing on, was already near enough for Steve to make out its two passen- gers, a man bent over the steering-wheel, another man, or boy, for the figure was small, clinging wildly to his place on the running-board, seeming always in imminent danger of being thrown off. ‘‘He’s drunk!” snapped Packard angrily. “Of all blind idiots!” Another strident blast from the horn that sent staid old cows scurrying this way and that to get out of the way, and the car swerved from the road and took to the open field, headed straight toward the hill where the two horsemen were. Jerking his horse about, Steve rode down to meet the new arrivals. And then “My ——! It’s my grandfather! gone mad, Bill Royce!”’ “No madder’n usual,’”’ was Royce’s com- ment. But Steve did not hear him. The car had come to a sudden stop. The man.on the running-board—he had a man’s face, keen and sharp-eyed and eager, and the body of a slight boy—jumped down from his place and in a flash had disappeared un- der the engine. The man at the wheel He’s EComicbook