Adventure Magazine Cover — page 120: what you’re looking at

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

ee ee see Da ane oe a ana 114 Lys camp bright an’ early. An’ he’s mighty subdued an’ meek-lookin’. He’s as quiet an’ gentle as a Spring dawn. Somethin’s wrong with us, too. We load up an’ mush without hardly no reference to the night’s activities. There’s a kind of warnin’ hoverin’ about—somethin’ depres- sin’ an’ gloomy seems to be in the air. That night we make camp in a gilch, that, accordin’. to Ole, is jes’ one good day’s mush from our Seventy-Mile bar. We bed down at the edge of a patch of timber that faces a big meadow where there’s feed enough to satisfy a hundred Fagans. Every- thing’s fine. After supper we set around the smudge, talkin’ an’ makin’ plans, happy an’ friendly as a lot of bull-pups. It’s maybe ten o’clock an’ jes’ about as dusk as it’s goin’ to get. Ole’s got the floor. He’s voicin’ his plans concernin’ the dust he expects to get. “Yes, sir,’ he affirms, “I’m sure goin’ to have one fiyu time. I’m goin’ to buy me a whole keg of sweet pickles an’ one of them big buckets of mixed candy. An’ after I consume them delicacies ’m goin’ to fill up on canned sauerkraut. I ain’t never had my fill of sweet stuff in my whole life, an’ here’s where I get saturated—once any- way.” “You try to pull off any such heathen orgy anywheres near where I’m stayin’ at,” Michael threatens, “an’— Sh-s-s-s,” he breaks off, a warnin’ finger in his lips. Then, quicker’n a cat, he picks up his rifle, whirls around, settin’, an’ cuts loose. “Got him!” he exults, soon as the roar has died away. - He’s sure got him. There certainly is a mighty thrashin’ round about fifty yards back in the timber. _“Mloose-meat for breakfast!” he whoops as we run for the scene of slaughter. _He’s ahead an’ runnin’ like a sprinter when all to once he pulls up short—stops with a jerk. We're right behind an’ comin’. fast; but when we get up to where the _ Irishman’s planted, me an’ the Swede like- wise slams the breaks on—hard. I want to say, we right away lose all desire for-fresh meat. For there lays Fagan, quiet an’ peaceful, a gapin’ hole where Michael’s forty-eighty-two has done bored him, square between the eyes! “Why, you poor, witherin’ mush-head,” Ole whispers, slow an’ deliberate. NEXT mornin’ F agan appears in. ba a Os ee "’ eS whe Ky os 2 Fae “he ee - ee i we ge re = em) x Ae * I gi ra Se a ee oe A Ta . Adventure There’s a flood of contempt in his words big enough to swamp a nation. “You poor miserable hunk of nothin’ at all! So this here is your brilliant idea of gettin’ even.- Why, you rotten hunk of rancid putty, why didn’t you cut loose on somethin’ that could fight back? Answer me, durn you, or I’ll tear your fool head off!” Michael j jes’ stares. *Pears to me he don’t see nothin’, at that. “T wouldn’t ’a’ done it for a thousand ounces,” he finally says, a big sob in his voice. “I thought he was a moose. I heard him come a-sneakin’ through the brush an’ I thought— I wouldn’t ’a’ done it for anything you fellers could name. Poor, lonesome, misformed » he re- peats, pattin’ Fagan’ shead. “TI guess may- be I ain’t even got no right to talk to you— now,’ he says, twistin’ Fagan’s mane through his fingers; “but if it will square my rotten, fool play jes’ one little bit, ’m wishin’ hard that you’re somewheres where you can know that I’m sure feelin’ like ——.” “Come on—let’s go back to camp,” the Swede says, soft an’ low, as he takes me by the arm. Pea WE DON’T make the bar next day. 1 qs Fagan’s absence makes it necessary | 3 for us to do some double-trippin’. But when we do reach our destination I’m tellin’ you that we done arrived some- where! That bar was jes’ nacher’ly about three times as rich as any of us hoped for. We work her out in four weeks; an’ when we had sent the last of the pay through the rocker we estimate that we’ve got a little better than two hundred ounces apiece! A little later, at Forty-Mile, Jack’s scales proved that we hadn’t placered for years jes’ for fun. We sure guessed mighty close to right. But the little creek, which Michael an’ Ole had held in such high esteem as a pos- sible producer, turned out to be nothin’ more’n a goose-egg. While me an’ Michael works out the bar, Ole prospects an’ sam- ples that pup from top to bottom an’ from rim to rim; an’ he never no time gets more’n a few colors. The pay on that bar come from ’way up-stream maybe; or maybe she come from somewheres else; anyway she proves once more that pay is jes’ “phere. But we ain’t kickin’. We mush back to Forty-Mile richer by near thirty-five hun- dred apiece for our four weeks’ work. We’re oo. GComichbooks