Adventure Magazine Cover, February 3, 1921 — page 142: what you’re looking at

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

136 how I'd left my saddle-blanket out all night an’ then goin’ out in the corral for the same? [I said it so s Jack could hear me. He did hear me an’ he watched me go. He seen me go out round the corral, an’ he seen me come back without the saddle-blanket. Now anybody would know I wouldn’t leave my saddle-blanket out behind the corral, would [?” “Not likely ”’ “But a feller who’d just found a knife with blood on it in his war-bags might go out back of the corral to lose the knife, mightn’t he?” “He might.” “Well, that’s what I done. Naturally, havin’ already lost the knife down through the knot-hole, I couldn’t lose heragain. But I done the best Icould. I dug in the ground with a sharp stick, an’ I made a li’l hole like, an’ I filled her in again an’ tromped her all down flat, an’ sort of half-smoothed down the roughed-up ground like I was tryin’ to hide my tracks an’ what I’d been doin’, Then I come away “Now I’m bettin’ that if Jack Harpe is the lad who tucked away that knife in my war-bags he’ll go skirmishin’ out behind the corral to see what I was really doin’.” “Maybe.” Doubtfully. “There ain’t no maybe if he’s the man done it. An’ from where we’re a-layin’ un- der this wagon we can see the back of the corral plain as—There he comes now.” The posts of the corral were less than a hundred yards from where Racey and Swing lay beneath a pole-propped freight wagon. From the wagon, which was standing be- yond the stage company’s corral, the ground sloped gently to the hotel corral. Racey had taken the precaution to mask their posi- tion with a cedar-bush. Hatless, he peered through the branches at the man quartering the ground behind the hotel corral. “He’s gettin’ close to where I made that hole,” he told Swing. ‘Now he’s found it,”’ he resumed as the man dropped on his knees. “Jack Harpe all along. Ain’t he the hu- morsome codger?” “He shore couldn’t ’a’ dug up that hole,” declared Swing when Jack Harpe jumped to his feet after a sojourn on his knees of pos- sibly thirty seconds’ duration. “No,” assented Racey, puzzled. “He couldn’t. There’s an odd number,” he added, as Jack Harpe pelted back at a brisk Adventure trot over the way he had come. “Le’s not go just yet, Swing. I got a feelin’.” He was glad of this feeling when ten min- utes later Jack Harpe returned with Jake Rule and Kansas Casey. ‘The latter carried a shovel. The three men clustered round the spot where Racey had dug his hole. Kansas Casey set his foot on the shovel and drove it into the ground. Racey chuckled at the pleasant sight. What must inevi- tably follow would be even pleasanter. The deputy sheriff made the dirt fly for six minutes. ‘Then he threw down the shovel, pushed back his hat and wiped is face on his sleeve He spoke, but his language was un- intelligible. Jack Harpe said something and picked up the shoyel. He began to dig. He cast the earth abdéut for possibly five minutes. “Ain’t he the prairie-dog, huh?” Racey demanded, jabbing his comrade in the ribs with stiffened thumb. ‘Just watch him scratch gravel.”’ Suddenly Jake Rule and Kansas Casey turned their backs on the frantically labor- ing Jack Harpe and walked away. Jack Harpe watched them, threw up a few more half-hearted shovelfuls and then slammed the implement to earth with a clatter, hitched up his pants and strode hurriedly after the officers. “That proves it, I guess,”’ said Swing. “Naturally She’s enough for us anyhow. — it to r “Whatsamatter?” inquired Swing, sur- prized at his friend’s vehemence. “Whatsamatter? Whatsamatter? Every- thin’s the matter. I just happened to think that now Bull won’t be able to tell me what he was goin’ to tonight.” “That’s so. Can’t yuh ask the girl?” “T can, but I ain’t shore it’ll do any good. Marie ain’t the kind that blats all she knows just to hear herself talk. If she wants to tell me she will. If she don’t want to, she won’t. Bull was my one best bet.” “What’s that?” cried Swing, raising him- self on an elbow. | “That” was the noise of a tumult in Fare- well Main Street. There were shouts and yells and screams. Above all, screams. Racey amd Swing hurried to the street. When they reached it the shouts and yells had subsided, but the screams had not. If anything they were louder than before. They issued from the mouth of Marie, whom Jake Rule, Kansas Casey and four other COMMICLOOOkKS (C@