Adventure Magazine Cover — page 151: what you’re looking at

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

Till the Wolves Come Home in the place was a menace. Never had the one who ministered to the wants of the patrons of the Miners’ Home seen a man’s eyes gleam like that. He almost shuddered as he caught sight of them when he handed the Giant the bottle he had demanded. He watched as the hulking frame of the big miner disappeared through the doorway leading to the entrance. Then he beckoned to another man playing at a table near the lower end of the bar. “‘“George, where’s Charley?” asked the bartender. “Gone down to our cabin,” replied Char- ley’s partner. “Why you want to know?”’ “Because I don’t like the look on the Giant’s face,’ said the bartender earnestly. ‘“‘He’s hating Charley a heap for winning at cards this mornin’ an’ he’s dynamite when he gits it in for a man—you know that.”’ ‘“‘Where’s he at?” asked George, looking about the room. ‘Just went out with a pint of white stuff, but——”’ “Drunk?” demanded George. “No! That man don’t get drunk. He just absorbs that stuff in his gorilla body and nods his head for more. But his eyes are bad, George; there’s something in ’em besides liquor an’ Charley ought to be care- ful.” “T’ll be goin’ down to eat in a few min- utes an’ I'll put him wise,” said George. ‘“‘An’ if that fool brute ever makes a move toward Charley when I’m aroun’ I'l] put six lead pills in his hide quicker’n it takes to tell by a whole lot.” The bartender nodded in approval. ‘““Get down there soon as you can, George,”’ he pleaded as the other turned back to his table. Outside Giant Hooper strode rapidly down the left side of the gulch to his cabin under the lee of a rock outcropping, screened by a growth of young firs above the road that wound down toward the railroad town of Wrightsville. The ore from the Big Mountain mines was transported to Wrightsville by motor-trucks. On the steep slopes of the gulch to either side of the road were the cabins of the min- ers who preferred baching to living in the boarding and bunk-houses farther up near the mines. The cabin occupied by Charley Rand and his partner was almost directly across the gulch from Hooper’s abode. Through an 141 opening in the tops of the pines and firs that clothed the slopes Hooper could see Rand’s cabin. Only once did he look that way after he had reached home. He saw Charley in the rear of his place throwing out a pan of wa- ter. The Giant assumed that it was the water left from washing the noon-meal dishes that Rand was throwing away. He was alone; the Giant knew that for he had seen George in the Miners’ Home before he came away. Yes, Rand was alone; and soon he would be returning to the card-tables, doubtless. The Giant ground and gnashed his teeth in a wolfish rage. From a shelf near his bunk—the Giant lived alone for obvious reasons—he took down a bottle partly filled with moonshine and drained it. Rand would be going back to play his— the Giant’s—money. The man could not bear the thought of being penniless until pay-day. He was accustomed to having money. He was not used to losing money. Wise men had laid down the better hand in numerous pots against him. Rand had treated him no differently than if he had been any one of the two hundred or more men in the camp. Giant Hooper went out and from under the end logs of the down-gulch side of his cabin he retrieved a number of stout sticks. These sticks were peculiar in construction, pointed at the ends, notched on the sides, with some buckskin thongs attached. They were tied together so they were easily car- ried. The Giant returned with them to his cabin, took down a rifle and bound the sticks to the barrel and stock so that rifle and sticks could be carried in one hand. He put meat and bread in paper packages and crammed them into the side pockets of a mackinaw which hung on a peg above the bunk. The full pint bottle of liquor he had obtained before leaving the. Miners’ Home he thrust into his left hip pocket. Into the right he crammed the sheath, affixed to his belt, which held his six-gun. The rifle, with the sticks bound tightly to it, he placed on the bunk with the macki- naw beside it. A moment later the cabin. It was mid-afternoon when Rand’s part- ner cashed in his checks and quit the game to go down to the cabin he shared with Giant left his cCOmiclbooks ©