Adventure Magazine Cover, August 18, 1921 — page 176: what you’re looking at

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

170 a race of warrior chieftains into the Hall of the Chief of Chieftains—that day by Point of Rocks. The same pipes; but not the same skilled touch. For nimble had been Young Roy’s fingers upon the wild grace-notes. Never had a Highland love-song lilted so sweetly as when he played it. Yet the tunes that now came to the hearing of Fergus were neither sweet nor martial. They were as the cryings of some per- turbed soul shrieking for vengeance—wild, sullen, fierce, implacable ghost-pipes. IV FERGUS started alert. A mere breath of air fanned his gray temples. But it gave him the exact direction adown which drifted the faint, droning sound. “Aye, aye, maister,’”’ he muttered. hear ye. To the west there, bearin’ a wee north. Just breathe on the chanter a bit mair, lad, till I hae my e’e on the heathen. Just breathe on the chanter!”’ He stole around the base of the bluff and found himself in a moonlit lane. On the other side of it rose more of the rock “Islands” peculiar to the region. The one nearest him was not so precipitious, al- though higher. He could claw his way up the face of it and from the summit, the sound-waves less obstructed, place the ex- act location of the game. Already as he cleared the first ‘“‘island” the voice of the pipes came more clearly. When he reached the top of the second bluff he lay flat on his belly, his hair bristling beneath his broad sombrero. Yet nothing could he see that denoted a savage presence. Before him stretched the familiar vista of bare sand-patches, areas of cactus, grease- wood, mesquite, catclaw and sagebrush, masses of broken boulders, and then again the misshapen grotesquerie of bluff, pin- nacle and gashed or eroded chasm. Yet the pipes came to his mind’s ears more distinctly than ever they had done out of the ghostland of his thirty-odd years’ hallucination. He found it hard to believe in that moment that they were not real pipes of ebony, leather and silver, gay with tartan streamers and played by fingers of living flesh and bone. “‘Ye play wi’ an urgent touch the nicht,”’ ga | Adventure he whispered. “I hear ye, sir. But eh, lad, ye’re sair oot o’ practise. Whaur be the fine grace-notes? An’ hae ye forgot the auld tunes? I’d ken ye better, maister, if ye played ‘Airlie’ or ‘Nae Luck aboot the Hoose.’ Will ye hae forgot ‘Cock o’ the North’?” The desert breeze blew again, this time stronger, though still fitful. The drone of the pipes swelled angrily, with a note of summons more peremptory than usual. Down from the bluff the sinewy old Scot wormed, muttering in his beard. As straight as the nature of the land permitted he headed westward, bearing a point north. And as he went, ever the drone of the ghost-pipes became louder and more in- sistent. HE CAME upon his quarry quite suddenly. After traveling about a : mile and coming out on top of a bare rock-ridge, he looked down into a canon which, hemmed in by precipitous bluffs, formed a roomy cul-de-sac with but space enough at the mouth for two mounted warriors to ride abreast through a bending tunnel under a rock-arch. It was a natural corral, a hiding-place where half a regiment might have rested in roomy security unless it happened to be dis- covered unknown to its occupants. There- upon it would become the very opposite—a death-trap. Fergus’ trained eye took it all in at a glance. That part of him which was scout absorbed the situation involuntarily. That part of him which was Scot boiled in a fer- ment at what he saw. His scalp crept; his beard bristled; his eyes widened and blazed with fury; and through his teeth came gritting sounds of rage. Despite all this the old insanity left him on the instant, as if a fog had lifted from his darkened understanding—lifted, never to return. Now he cursed the bloodthirsty desire of vengeance which had ever clouded his mind when it came to a choice of killing or mak- ing a prisoner who might give information of his tribe’s plans and movements. Many a time he had stood by and sneered when Leacock or Ringer, or any of the other scouts, had brought in a brave and tried to coerce him into speech. Fergus had needed no help from any Indian to destroy other Indians! (© CloOOOLKKS CO