Adventure Magazine Cover, February 3, 1921 — page 138: what you’re looking at

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

132 CHAPTER XIV THE SURPRIZE "THE sun, lifting over the rim of the world, sptayed its rays through the window and splashed with gold the face of Racey Dawson. He awoke, and much to the profane disgust of Swing Tunstall, shook that worthy awake immediately. “Aw, lemme sleep, will yuh?” begged Swing with suspicious meekness, reaching surreptitiously for a boot. “You lemme alone, that’s a good feller.” “Get up,” commanded Racey. ‘Get up. It’s the early worm catches the most fish. Rise an’ shine, Swing. Never let the sun catch you snorin’. Besides, I can’t sleep no more myself. I s Wham!l Swing’s flung boot shaved Ra- cey’s surprized ear and smashed against the partition. “You'll wake up that Starlight proprie- tor,’ Racey said calmly, as he picked up the boot and dropped it out of the window. “Good dog,” he continued, presumably ad- dressing a canine friend without, “leave Swing’s nice new boot alone, will yuh? Don’t go gnawin’ at it thataway. ‘It ain’t no bone.’ Swing, pulling on his pants, left the room, hopping physically and mentally. Racey rested both elbows on the sill and waited happily for his comrade to appear beneath him “Shucks,” he said in a tone of great sur- prize when Swing shot round the corner of the hotel, “I shore thought there was a dog there a-teasin’ that boot. I could have took my Bible oath there was a great big, black, curly-haired feller with lots o’ teeth down there. I seen him, Swing. Shore thought I did. Must ’a’ been mistaken. An’ you went an’ believed me, an’ got splin- ters in yore feet ’cause you was in such a hurry. Ne’mine, here’s the other one.” He jerked the boot in question at Swing’s head and sat down on his cot to complete his own dressing. Came then the sound of a prodigious yawn from the room next door occupied by Jack Harpe. A cot creaked. A boot was scraped along the floor. “Shore must be a sound sleeper,’’. said Racey Dawson to himself, “if he really did just wake up.” He buckled on his gun-belt, set his hat _ that he had found the door ajar. Adventure a-tilt on one ear and went down to wash his face and hands in the common basin on the wash-bench outside the kitchen door. Swing Tunstall was before him, and was disposed to make an issue of the dropped boots. Only by his superior agility was Racey enabled to dodge all save a few drops of a full bucket of water. “Dyjever get left? Dyever get left?” sing- songed Racey from the corner of the build- ing and set the thumb of one hand to his nose and twiddled opprobrious fingers at his comrade. “You wanna be a li’] bit quicker when you go to souse me, Swing. Yo’re too slow, a lot too slow. Yep. Now I wouldn’t go for to fling that pail at me, Swing. You might bust it, an’ yore care- lessness thataway has already cost yuh ten dollars an’ six bits.” This was too much for the ruffled Swing. Waving the pail, he pursued his tormentor round the hotel and into the front doorway. Racey fled up the stairs. At the stair foot Swing gave over the chase and returned to the wash-bench to resume his face-washing. Racey went on into their room. There were in it several articles belonging to Swing that he intended to throw out of the window et once. = | But when he had entered the room and the door was closed behind him he did not touch any of Swing’s belongings. Instead he remained standing in the middle of the room, looking thoughtfully at the floor. What had given him pause was the fact And he knew with absolute certainty that he had closed the door tightly before he went down- stairs. It is the vagrant straw that shows the © wind’s direction, and since the attempt to bushwhack him Racey was not overlooking any straws. The door had been ajar. Why? There was no closet and from where he stood he could see under both cots. No one lay concealed in the room. The bedclothes on Swing’s cot had not been touched. At least they were in precisely the position in which they had been landed when thrown back by Swing’s careless hand. Racey did not believe that his own had been touched either. But the saddle-bags and cantenas lying on the floor at the head of his cot had certainly been moved. He recalled dis- tinctly having, the previous evening, piled his canienas on top of the saddle-bags. CORMICGLOO© S (C@