Adventure Magazine Cover — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

6 7 Adventure “I’m not, hey? I can dangle one foot, can’t I? Besides, what good can I do here?” There was some logic in the plan and Tom realized it. He feared that the injury might be more dangerous than he thought. A ride like this over sun-blistered moun- tains and plains would kill an ordinary citizen; but for a tough old desert prospec- tor it was just another hardship. Tom considered. “T wouldn’t want you to htve a touch of fever on the way.” Old Pete dived under his blankets and produced a bottle. Upon its label stared the wood-cut of a dignified bearded gentle- man, and the wording proclaimed that this was Jones’ Infallible Elixir of Life and Health, the Greatest Discovery of the Age. “I don’t fear no fever as long as old Jonesy’s with me,” retorted Pete. ‘I’ve packed this here e-lixir ten years and I’ve never had a sick day, come rain or shine. Old Jonesy’ll cure anything.” -He read from the label: ‘“‘Rheumatism, dyspepsia, diabetes, head- aches, coughs, colds, chilblains, sciatica, lumbago, fevers, boils, rashes, fainting- spells, and all ailments of the throat, ton- sils, lungs, kidney, liver, heart, back, and intestines. See—it says fever, too.’” “It cures everything except bandits and rattlesnakes,” agreed Tom, smiling. He had heard the praises of Jones sung before. * Pete snorted. | Without reply to the scof- fer he came to his feet stiffly and started filling canteens. words. Tom took the hobbles off their one remaining burro and made some kind of seat out of its pack-saddle, helping his bulky partner aboard. The burro, laden with water, food and Pete, looked topheavy but undismayed. “Keep your eye out,” warned Pete, gath- ering the halter-rope.. “‘If you see any one keep out of his way.” “Tl watch out. heal that foot.” “Veh. I will. Geraldine.”’ And the senior partner started on his forty-mile journey to the nearest settle- ment. Tom watched the grotesque figure drop from sight behind a knoll. Then he buckled ,on a gun, picked up tools and some lunch, Take your time and So long. Hike along, There were no further — -“Dorado, the sixth gully to the northward. swung a canteen over his shoulder and struck out through the mesquite eastward toward the mine. Striding along in the cool of the morning with the sun throwing long shadows from every sagebush and tingeing the near-by hills with copper and turquoise and gold and purple, he began to whistle happily while keeping a sharp eye for chance en- counters. He felt like a knight who had found the Holy Grail. The long months of fruitless prospecting were over. He had come upon something tangible. He and his partner were lucky. In a few months they had found what many other prospectors had sought for years and never found. Even the heat of Summer was passing. It was coming October. The air seemed to have a cooler tang. He crossed a dry plain and a drier lake without sign of vegetation. He entered a gully through a small range of cut-up hills. He climbed the shoulder of a brown granite mountain and descended upon a mesa which he traveled for half a mile. His eyes appraised the irregular land be- low him where the cataclysms of all the ages had rippled the earth with bald yellow ‘hills and purple gulches that ran in every direction toward a faraway range of bluish mountain$. The country was cruel, repellent, inhos- pitable; yet within this domain lay a thing which would satisfy all the desires of a man. It was as if a pearl lay in the throat of a tarantula. Tom’s eye picked the gateway to his El He swung down from the mesa and plodded into the cafion. From above it looked small. Once within it, the sheer walls of a precipice arose on either side as if an earthquake had once cleft the hills and he were walking on the shadowed bottom of the crevasse. For half a mile he plodded along the lonely, quiet cafon where his footfalls echoed loudly. Far above flew a buzzard. Otherwise the overpowering solitude of the place was unbroken. It had been that way for ages and eons. He came to a turn where the cafion wi- dened and a streak of sunlight tinged its upper walls. He reached another turn where the gorge became merely a small gulch between rounded brown-yellow hills. COmiclbook CO