Adventure Magazine Cover, August 18, 1921 — page 172: what you’re looking at

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

166 though I don’t sabe the animile nohow. “Oh, he was the gay-clad young thing, that ol’ fossil ye see now, when we picks him up on the prairie over thirty year ago. Silver on his war-bunnet, too, with some sort of design an’ outlandish words worked in the ore—an’ a red-an’-green shawl fast- ened with a big yaller topaz on his left shoulder. The buttons of his coat is like- wise silver, with that same design cut in ’em. “We takes him f’r at least a prince or a duke. But after, when he’s able to talk an’ no more afeared uv his own shadder, he tells us—Bill Comstock, Dick Curtis an’ some of us that have been trappin’ up on Medicine Bow and brung our pelts down to the river—tells us he ain’t nothin’ like that, but a plain sarvint, or valet, or butler, or what ye've a mind to. “It seems he’s all that’s left of a caravan that comes out from the Missouri for Santa Fe some months before—fifty-three or fifty-four—I disremembers exackly now. “Tt ain’t no Gov’mint train, but it has an escort; four or five traders j’inin’ up in one Caravan an’ gettin’ a small comp’ny of soldiers to pertect the whole outfit. There’s maybe five or six wagons in the train, be- sides a couple score of mules loaded in pack. ‘Travelin’ with one of the traders in preference to the stage-coach—which has been on the trail four or five years now— is this Scotch sezor who seems to have been some /rombre if we believes what the Gila tells us afterward. This gran sefor’s name is Young, or Roy, or Arden-Keppel, or MeAulay. “T never could get it straight, excep’ thet the Gila most always speaks of him as Young Roy of Arden-Keppel. I reck’n he’s some young blood full of dissatisfaction an’ divil an’ hankerin’ after adventure. An’ by the great horn spoon he gets it! “Tt seems he’d ruther travel with the traders’ caravan so he c’n get a crack at buff‘ler an’ the like when there’s no smell of red in the air. ’Cordin’ to Fergus—mean- in’ the Gila—Young Roy takes his place with the rest when it comes to fightin’ off the varmints, an’ when that young feller draws a bead, somethin’ drops. “Fergus, in the days when ye could be- lieve him at least half the time—that’s be- fore he gets noises in his cabesa—says how this Young Roy is over six feet in his boots, strong as a young buff’ler an’ handsome as a blooded colt. Adventure 4im an’ his servant Fergus is seekin’ fortune in the West, hopin’ to make Cali- fornia and the diggin’ sin time. They has all their goods an’ chattels with them; which ain’t much more ’n the clo’ es they has on—the skirts an’ feathers an’ things, like’s if maybe the young feller has a row with the duke, his father, an’ comes away in a hurry. “But if they don’t have no civilized raiment, sech as britches an’ the like, Young Roy has along his guns an’ an old sword, which the Gila says is called a ‘claimer, ** an’ a set of them ungodly skir- lers they calls bagpipes. “The young master is some hand with the pipes hisself, but he us’ally leaves the play- in’ of them ‘to F ergus. Seems this air the custom an’ part of the servant’s chores. Every time the caravan makes camp an’ everything’s corralled for the night an’ the fires goin’ an’ the buff’ler or venison turnin’ on the spit, Fergus gets out his pipes and blows a piece on them. Never could see much tune in them myself, but I admit they makes a man want to get up an’ do some- thing vi’lent. “WELL,” Ringer continued, for- ge getting the Irishman in his own ae——M> interest in story - telling, “Fergus useter play them pipes out in the prairies an’ canons. It must ha’ scared the buff’ler stiff. Maybe they didn’t have to hunt b’ar. Reck’n the critters jest laid down in their tracks an’ give up. What it done to them Injuns is right queer by all accounts. ‘“‘They comes up on the gallop one day jest as Fergus is gettin’ the windbag blowed up. Them reds stops their ponies dead an’ sits there starin’ while Young Roy’s servant plays one of them tuneless tunes that makes yer scalp feel ’s if there was a Kiowa knife makin’ the magic circle. Then them In- juns turns tail an’ makes a hole in the near- est sky-line. Reck’n they thinks it’s medi- cine—big, paleface medicine, though ye never c’n tell what an Injun thinks about anything. Leastways, it ain’t a safe guess. ‘Anyway the pipes seems to draw them, even if they is scared. They follows the caravan in the us’al way. Young Roy of Arden-Keppel laughs an’ says it’s the bag- pipes they wants to hear. Maybe he’s right. Leastways, it gets to be the reg’lar thing for Fergus to get out his pipes an’ * Author's Note—Claymore? MICLOOOKS 5}