Adventure Magazine Cover — page 75: what you’re looking at

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

The Bullet and the Blast peculiar fashion. Accordingly the Govern- ment did not actively object to the presence of the blind pigs. They wanted the rail- road built. That was the prime consider- ation to which all other matters were made subservient. Therefore Dalton was not particularly concerned with the existence of the es- tablishment run by Papa Dupré on Lake Shabogama. The ethics of his profession, however, demanded a deeper probe into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the pedler, Gaspard Beauchamps. While this man had been a murderer and while Dalton could as easily have written the end of his chapter as he had scribbled the head-board for his grave—nevertheless Dalton’s professional procedure was a deal- ing in principles rather than in facts. He might pare the rough surface of a fact to fit a principle, but he would never subordinate a principle to a fact. There- fore, while it would have been easier to give official dismissal to the matter by reporting that Gaspard Beauchamps had met death by accident due to blasting operations on the right of way, than to pursue a strange and inexplicable circum- stance that might lead him through a maze of fruitless investigation, Dalton adopted the more difficult and dangerous of the two courses and resolved that the obscure features of the case must, in the interest of justice, be illuminated. On the following morning Dalton re- paired at an early hour to Papa Dupré’s log resort on the shores of Lake Shabogama. Two cockney laborers lounged therein, indulging in Whitechapel gossip, with a . bottle of white wheat on the table between them. Dalton was not particularly in- terested in these men. One glance told him that they were not men of the woods. They were shovelmen, brought by _their calling into an environment quite strange to them. The type of man Dalton sought was far different. “Ave a little drop, matey?’* was the generous invitation of one of the Londoners, to whose short-sighted eyes Dalton’s khaki overalls immediately indicated membership in the universal lodge of labor. “Don’t mind if I do, old top,” returned Dalton in amiable acquiescence, helping himself to a small tot of the liquor. Papa Dupré, with his eyes alternately measuring the gradual decline of the > 69 liquor in the bottle and the growing archi- tecture of a pair of snow-shoes that he was laboriously fabricating for use during the coming Winter, was less communicative than usual. “Hear about the fellow who got killed at Carmichael’s yesterday?”’ asked Dalton with studied casualness. Dupré lifted his eyes from the intricacies of his task and looked interested. | “Bli’ me! That’s nothink new—eh, wot? ’Owdid’e get it, mate?” “Hit by a kiute,”’ said Dalton, “at the big rock cut.” ‘“We’re from McDonald’s. Mac ain’t doing any blawsting, ’e ain’t. Nothink but sand. Jolly good thing for us blokes.” “This man was a pedler,”’ continued Dalton, leaning comfortably back against the log wall of the shack and glancing at Dupré through half-closed eves. Frenchman,” he added. Dupré at once joined in the conversa- tion. ‘‘Sacré!”’ he interrupted suddenly, “Beeg mans wit’ beard?”’ ‘The same,” agreed Dalton. ‘‘Name was Beauchamps.”’ “Canatllel” exclaimed the French-Can- adian hotly. ‘She insult’ ma leetle Jacque- line—she geet keel’?”’ “Dead,” said Dalton. ‘Hit by a blast.” Dupré piously crossed himself, shrugged his shoulders and seemed to dismiss the subject from his mind; but Dalton fancied that he detected a look of relief in the deep- set, faded old eyes. “Bli? me! but those pedlah chawps are nothink but a lot of blooming robbahs. Now in Lunnon ‘ Fhe Londoners drank steadily and con- tinued contrasting their home institutions. “ with those of the savage*country of their — adoption, through which unscrupulous ven- dors were permitted to roam at will and mulct honest working-people out of their hard-earned savings. Dalton glanced through the open door- way and admired the still, mysterious waters of Lake Shabogama stretching upward through the granite-hilled and forested solitudes of the ‘Height of Land.” As he looked, in quiet contemplation of the scene’s primitive beauties, an Indian-made bark canoe hove into sight from beyond a tiny headland and approached the shore at a point near the blind pig. COMMICLOO© (E@