Adventure Magazine Cover — page 147: what you’re looking at

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

The Leg of Moose Bill “You got no use for that blunderbuss,”’ he declared, “‘and you’ll need every ounce of strength you got to keep your legs moving before we hit camp tonight.” But Shorty kept his gun. The moment the two men emerged on to the river a flock of ravens swept up from a clump of spruce and followed them, circling back and forth above their heads with a swish of wings, and their strange, sepulchral croak sounding like the gurgle of water poured from a bottle. For three hours the birds hovered above them, now sweeping down to almost within arm’s reach and then mounting high in the air, their black bodies but faintly discernible against the somber sky. And ever the air rang with their melancholy cries. The ravens got on Shorty’s nerves; he began to curse them soundly and tried to frighten them away by brandishing his gun when they swept down close. Once he threw the weapon to his shoulder intending to shoot; but Bill stopped him with a quick command. “Cut that out, chechalker!” he ordered. ‘Don’t you know better’n to shoot at them birds? It’s bad luck to killa raven. They are the souls of dead trappers.” Shorty laughed derisively at Bill’s super- stition. “T don’t care a hang whose souls they are,” he declared, ‘‘the next one that tries to knock my cap off will get blowed to smithereens.” They took a short cut through a neck of woods and came out on a back-water slough. The croaking birds, following over the tree- tops, once more swept low to the men. Shorty threw up his gun and fired. “Ha, ha! There’s one of your black souls!” he laughed as one of the birds plumped like a stone to the ice. He ran out to one side to examine it. Bill trudged on straight ahead until a mo- ment later a distant, muffled cry caused him to turn quickly. Shorty was nowhere in sight. Again the muffled cry, and Bill ran back in the direction from whence it came. Shorty’s shotgun lay in the snow across a round, black hole in the ice, and the screams of Shorty emanated from below. Bill looked down and saw him. The slough was dry. The crust of ice had frozen in the Fall, and the water beneath had seeped away, and Shorty was buried to his waist in the mud and slime on the bottom. 139 By the help of a slender pole Bill rescued him from the mud, carried him to the timber and kindled a fire. Shorty howled with pain, declaring that his leg was broken. Bill determined, however, that his only injury was a sprained ankle, the result of his impact with the frozen surface of the mud on the bottom. But at any rate Shorty was unable to walk and was wet from his waist down. An hour was spent in drying clothes, and by that time it had commenced to snow again. Bill knew they were in a bad mess. He was faced by the prodigious task of carrying the contemptible Shorty to camp or leaving him there to die. They could not remain there, for they had no food; and every hour of delay added to the difficulty of travel. They must go at once. But Shorty’s moccasins were not yet dry. For another half-hour Bill held them before the fire. When the steam no longer rose from the damp moosehide he decided they would do; he would take a chance. He took off his own dry moccasins and threw them in Shorty’s face. “You ornery, boneheaded skunk,” he growled, “I ought to leave you here—for the birds to feed on your dirty carcass. Get into those moccasins.” Shorty, cowering in the folds of his big overcoat, meekly complied, and Bill put on the damp footgear. When their feet were dressed he threw Shorty across his back as he might have shouldered a quarter of meat, and set off once more up the river. In a very short while the moccasin on his right foot was as stiff as a wooden shoe. “Huh,” he muttered, “was afraid of that.” He did not pause but kept on, wriggling his toes vigorously. The foot in the frozen moccasin began to pain him. Darkness fell, and he still trudged on. Shorty put up a pitiful plea to stop—he was freezing to death—the pain in his ankle was killing him—but Bill was deaf to his pleading, for his own mind was tortured by a great un- certainty. His right foot had been cold, very cold, but now it no longer hurt. Had it warmed up, or was it numb? Somehow it did not feel like the other. Was that heavy, dead feeling the result of his tremendous exertion or was it—— He forced the horrible thought from his mind and staggered on in the darkness. The man on his back GOMIIGooo S C@