Adventure Magazine Cover — page 130: what you’re looking at

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

124 “Youre lucky. You'll bring luck to me,” babbled Pyrites. “We'll find a fat vein of it. We’ll then find a silver ledge. I’m glad you and not San Juan is in with me.”’ Dinsdale abandoned the pan and sug- gested: “Let’s eat. Then you try out a few pans and work back and forth on this level while I go higher up. This must have washed down from some rich placer above.”’ “But you’ll miss the signs. You’re sure to overlook them. Better stay here and let me go up.” ‘If I miss anything you can check me up. I’ll open up a few holes and if you get tired of this level you can follow me and examine what I’ve dug up.” This-plan pleased Pyrites and the break- fast was soon cooked and eaten. Taking their pans they hurried up the slope to where Dinsdale had made his rich find. Pyrites mumbled under his breath and began to examine the bar. Dinsdale’s “good-by’? was unheeded. He carried a pick and pan and depended upon his hand- guns for weapons. A short distance above his companion he halted and dug down a foot and carefully examined the dirt. Without water he could not determine what he had uncovered, but by rolling some of the dirt between his fingers he was rewarded with a small scale of coarse gold. He was convinced it would pan out even richer than that below. He stuck a branch in the dirt to attract Pyrites’s attention and mounted higher. Arriving at a slight depression, thick with short grass and suggesting seepage he indus- triously accumulated another mound of dirt and again had no trouble in finding several small particles of gold. ‘‘And horse-thieves are losing all this for the sake of running off a few nags,” he murmured as he placed another branch. Digging out samples at short intervals and finding specks of gold in each he used up much of the morning. Pyrites was nowhere in sight. The sun was nearly overhead as he filled his pan from the top- most mound. Instead of hurrying down the ridge, however, he squared his shoul- ders to get the kinks out of his back and glanced curiously about the panorama of hills and ridges and melancholy woods. Then staring down at the fresh mound he muttered— Adventure “Tf you were all pure gold, friend dirt, I’d swap you in a second just to know what Jim Omaha looks like; just to know if he has reached Deadwood City yet.” Gray squirrels vied with red in racing through the pines and chattering various bits of gossip about the silent figure. A skunk walked boldly across the grass patch and a timber wolf peeped from the growth ‘and sniffed the air and turned back. A mule-deer, strayed from his feeding on Elk- horn Prairie, crashed along the slope until catching the man-scent, then wheeled and sped silently over his back track. Families of long-tail chickadees boasted and bragged of their food discoveries in the boughs above Dinsdale’s head. A _ white-winged snowbird, fresh from its breeding-place near Harney’s Peak, lighted among the chickadees and gave a quick, dull, rolling cry, and its fledglings vanished behind stones and deadwood. It was the persis- tence of this anxious mother to distract the man’s attention from the streaked babies he had not seen that finally aroused Dinsdale from his meditations. “T won’t hurt them, wherever they’re hidden,” he gravely assured the mother. “And don’t take them wandering around so promiscus, little lady.” He mounted the ridge to where it was clear of trees. The sun had conquered the mists and the heavens shone blue. Dinsdale removed his hat and stared out over the ancient medicine-land of the Sioux, of the Crow before the Sioux. To all appearance it was a dead land. No smokes were to be seen, no habitations, no sounds of human voices. And yet there were Indians lurking in the deep gulches and, rumor persisted, there were organized horse-thieves with rendezvous on the divide, while possibly other lone prospectors, like. Pyrites, were seeking their fortune in the winding depths below. Overhead two birds streaked into view, both flying with astounding velocity. For half of Dinsdale’s field of vision the one in the lead tried direct flight, then began darting and twisting from side to side, and shooting sharply upward only to drop in a long perpendicular fall. bird seemed to anticipate every move and followed as if one brain were thinking for the two of them. A peregrine falcon and a passenger-pigeon, and the flight and pur- suit had commenced over the plains at the CORNICGLOO S The larger- (C@