Adventure Magazine Cover — page 157: what you’re looking at

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

4 The Rabbit Years Before the Mast.’ Why, man, it hap- pened right about here, too. That’s Dana’s Head sticking out there before your eyes— this side of Capistrano Bay—place where Dana tossed the hides down to the drogher’s boats. “Don’t you remember how Dana went cutting, firewood—right about here, Curzon —right about here—and bumped into a nest of rattlers? Don’t you remember zow what he wrote about ’em? Think, man, think! What the natives told him? ‘So long as they’re rattling they’re moving—probably away from you. They don’t want trouble if they can avoid it. It’s when they’re some- where about, and séz//, that they’re danger- ous.’ That was it! Of course, you remém- ber. Funny you should remember that so clearly now. You haven’t thought of it since you read the book when you were a boy, back home. “Welle . . . Keep still!” <-<~~| FOR an hour he stood there, almost St motionless, the empty pistol in his hand, the sweat rolling from his face, his damp clothing sticking to his skin, his lips and tongue hot and dry, for the breeze had petered out and the sun beat mercilessly upon him. ‘The glare, struck up from the limestone rocks, had drawn salt tears that blinded his eyes. The soles of his shoes burned his feet like hot metal plates. Long since the two rattlesnakes—the only two he had actually seen to shoot at—had ceased to move. They lay there sprawled in ungainly lines, red- and gray-scaled, dia- mond-marked horrors with bellies banded with a smooth-worn, bony “‘corduroy”’ of a sickly yellow. For about twenty minutes he had not heard a warning whirr. But before he took a step from the stance he had held so long, he cautiously stooped, and picking up a few loose pieces of rock pitched them here and there into the low brush between him and the rock where the cartridge-box weighted down the paper. No high-pitched note of a warning rattle- snake responded, They had gone to cover. Still carefully he picked a path back to the rock, beyond which lay clearer ground and the trail by which he had come from the coast highway below.” Only when he reached that comparatively clear spot by the rock did tension relax. He sat down, I5I wiped his damp face and neck with a ker- chief, and breathed deeply. But presently he stood up again. From the higher elevation of the rock he looked down upon the spot, not fiye yards beyond the edge of the low brush where adventure had held him through one long hour of inferno. Among the little green bushes he could see the dead rabbit—the rabbit which had been the first actor on the stage; the rabbit which he had quite forgotten in the meantime. Beyond it, and also on this side of it, two ir- regular grayish-red streaks among the brush told him he had not been the victim of a hideous day-dream. A thrill of victory’s satisfaction ran through him. He was still utterly forgetful of what had brought him to this hilltop in the first place. Now that the all-absorbing thought of self-preservation had left him, pride of prowess succeeded. He would have a great tale to tell these fellows at the club whose horizon was bounded by the city’s limits and business in- terests. He would take back the dead rat- tlesnakes to prove his veracity. Chuckling to himself he cast around un- til he found a fair length of brush-stick. Armed with this he returned to the scene of his adventure. In a gingerly manner he fished out the reptiles’ tarcasses. His delight and pride were great when he calculated that the larger serpent was five feet long, more or less, as thick around the middle of its body as his forearm, and car- ried fourteen rattles! The smaller was at least four feet long, as thick around as his wrist and carried nine rattles. “Good work!’ chuckled the subconscious voice. ‘‘You’re no rabbit! You don’t take things lying down!” Then, as Leders arranged his matters for — departure from that hellish spot, his gaze fell on the paper weighted down by the box of shells. For a moment he stared at the thing unbelievingly. Which was real? The ad- venture with the rattlesnakes—or that? As the memory of the purpose that had brought him here rushed back upon his temporarily diverted mind, a sickness of shame de- scended upon him. Slowly he detached the paper and read again what he had written. It was grave matter couched in cynical terms. ~ It was to the effect that should any ever find “the, COMMICLOOOKS (E@)