Adventure Magazine Cover — page 61: what you’re looking at

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

sir Galahad and the Badger more insubordinate than his little relatives. Coming up from babyhood without a father, idolatrously regarded by his mother, eyed, advised, supervised by his uncles, great-uncles, with an assortment of austere aunts—all this, combined with the feeling of predestined deviltry, put the boy in the right way and mood to become a worthless and dangerous fellow. He was rebellious as Lucifer, so they put him to work on the family ranch, where he wasted his time exploding shells at tin cans and prairie-dogs. _ At the first crack of war in Europe he had tried to get across, though he was only sixteen. : For that matter, families all over America were kept busy snatching back their scurry- ing offspring that tried to hurry away into the war. 7 Later, when the United States did belatedly awaken to the inevitable, Jackson went as if shot from a springboard into the Army. He said that he was twenty-one, which was wrong of him, though nobody in his family, not even his adoring mother, denied it. The irony of it was that Jackson’s outfit was ordered to Honolulu—and kept there. The young fire-eater was set down in a lotus-grove. Guitars tinkled in the twi- light. Ukeleles thummed and strummed their monotonously wistful melodies while fat brown ladies sighed forsthe soldier’s love and dollars. Jack Richmond did his best to raise the devil. He used what money he could get cabling to the senator. But his very first message, though edited rigorously by the cable company,’ painfully offended the senator, who liked formality. Jack appealed to others of his family. But the Richmonds believed in advance- ment by what they called “merit” and did not approve of wire-pulling. Jack threat- ened to desert, but the only chance to get off the island undetected was to swim; and the sharks would have acted decidedly pro-German even if San Francisco had not been a week away by steamer. He tried to fool the doctors and pretended to be sick, hoping for a transfer. He ate soap and cultivated the appearance of anemia. The medicine-men got on to him and he was tried for malingering. The colonel who sentenced him made some scathing remarks about a soldier feigning 5!1 illness in time of war; and Jack blew up. He in turn made some remarks, and neither rappings nor shouts for silence closed his mouth before he had inquired if the colonel thought kissing nigger ladies and fighting booze was war. He further stated that he had not thought he was hooking up with the Y. M. C. A. when he joined the outfit he was in. He concluded with a shout that he wanted to be a sol- dier and not a —— policeman. So Jack got an extra thirty days’ bread and water, which he richly deserved for his disrespect to the fat colonel. For malinger- ing he got three months in the guard- house. He never got overseas. When the war ended Jack came home with no pride in himself. His war record was bad, disgraceful. He had cousins and uncles who had done all that he wanted to do. Some had medals and many had wounds. There was even a thin girlish cousin of prim manners who had got into the dispatches and had won from his fellow soldiers the name of “Reckless Richmond.” Jack was in no mood to accept the pater- nal meddling the family fathers began on the youngsters. He quarreled with his elders and became sullen. He outraged the family by declaring that he was tired of being a Richmond. His mother often felt the same way, but she did not ac- knowledge the feeling: Jack felt cheated about the war, too. He said that when he was in trouble and had appealed to the whole tribe for help not one among them had so much as wig- gled a little finger to help him get to France. His mother, of course, felt that this was due to her earnest though silent prayers. Jack’s money was tied up so he could not touch anything excepting the interest until he was twenty-five; but a few days after he was twenty-one he plundered all the interest money he could get hold of— the elderly Richmonds were always re-° investing it for him—and bolted. He left a vague but affectionate note for his mother. She need not worry about him. He could take care of himself. He would get along. When he got settled he would drop a line to let her know how he was coming along. He did not intimate whether he had gone to China or the moon. Such is the heartlessness of youth. cComicbhook C©