Adventure Magazine Cover — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

“Aha!” he es “Aha!” he ejaculated again, his two red eyes snapping like two sticks in a fire. “Send that prisoner up here at once! “So we meet again, my bucko,”’ he growled, when the Merchant and Kamerad stood before him. “Sergeant, take this man away and put him in solitary confine- ment until I can attend to his case!” The sergeant stepped forward. . “Just a minute,” interposed Captain Bellinger. ‘‘What’s it all about?” He was there-that day to investigate complaints of just such arbitrary conduct. “This man is one of the hardest cases in the A. E. F.,” said the marshal briskly. “Let’s lose no time onhim. Sergeant a! “Let us hear his latest anyhow,” said the captain decidedly. “What’s your name, young man?” “Scallan, sir. The captain remembers seeing me that day in Apremont?”’ ‘Vou were in Apremont?” “T was a runner then, and I brought the Twenty-Eighth a message ordering them to withdraw. Igaveit to Lieutenant Bellinger. The air was so full of iron you couldn’t get a mouthful with a soup-strainer, and the lieutenant took the order and tore it up and says: “The First Division never re- treats! Tell that to whoever sent you.’ ” “T don’t exactly recall the episode, young man,” admitted the pleased officer, “but that’s Gospel truth about the First Divi- sion!” “IT was sent to the captain again at Lavoye,” said the Merchant impudently. “At the crossing of the river, sir. The engineers were throwing a bridge, and the river was full of them floating down. ‘Bellinger?’ says the sergeant I spoke to. ‘Don’t look for ‘‘Close-Quarters” Bellinger here, boy! You'll never find him more than bayonet-length from the Jerries!’”’ “TI got my wound there,” said the cap- tain with a cough. He had no memory of these occasions but was very grateful to the rascal before him for reciting them, all the same. “Well,” he smiled, “those were other days. And what’s your trouble now, my lad?” “May I tell my story?” asked the Mer- chant, giving back glance for glance to the provost marshal. “Most assuredly! No American soldier _js condemned without a hearing. 2 = ee = b ~ nt tre le en in, ae” hate es woods. It was getting dark and we de- cided to lay down there for the night, so that we wouldn’t wander out of bounds. And then we heard a voice in the forest — calling down curses and swearing in a way to make your blood run cold. Andwe looked under the trees and there was a man sitting in a thorn-bush, where his horse had throwed him.”’ “What kind of man was he?” “Stick to the point!’ interrupted the ° marshal with a face like a thunder-cloud. “And this man in the bush wouldn’t let us go by and about our business as we ‘wanted to do, but kept nagging at me to pull him out, promising to keep me in France for the rest of my natural life and feed me on hardtack and water. We got to arguing. “One word brouglit on another, bad to worse, and finally we made a bargain. And I told him if he would take Kamerad here, who is bothered by fleas, and would pick them fleas off of him, one and all, that I’d pull him out of the bush.” The Merchant stopped to draw breath and glanced blandly at the marskal, who was turning green, being nearly stifled with rage. ‘He was a reasonable enough man and said right away that one hand washed the other and that one soldier should help an- other, and so he set to work and done what L asked. And I pulled him out of the bush. But the thorns were strong and the bush held on to him like his skin, and when I finally drew him out he left half his clothes behind. At that I gave him the blouse off my back to cover him and he gave me a silver thingumbob off of his cap for a souvenir.” ? The Merchant felt in his pockets. “What kind of man was he?” repeated the captain with a grin. “Was he a Frenchman? An American? That’s the queerest bargain I’ve ever heard tell of.” But at that there came a strange sound, like the last howl of a man being strangled 3 by robbers. The Merchant looked up from his quest, and Kamerad looked up, and the guards and prisoners and attendants looked up, one and a she terrible » nn iG absence, sir, and. I was hoe ES * back to the company, me and — Kamerad here, when we lost our way in a. = ib book | ; « > “at ih ele alt ee ee ——