Adventure Magazine Cover — page 144: what you’re looking at

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

138 crossed his legs. The breakfast had pulled him round somewhat. A foot swung and he pondered deeply, a clever smile lighting up his ruddy face. “Tf it’s so clear let’s follow it and hunt the beast, Jimmie,” he suggested. ‘‘More sense than perching up in that darned tree and waiting for it.”’ In just as deep thought mime shook his head. “Vou follow it, Bertie=sfollow it alone. Do you good. Walk some of that whisky out of you.’ “Go on, Jimmie, you take a hand, too,” Bertie ‘persisted. “Be a pal. Come ‘long. We might have to follow the thing for miles. - Might have to track it all day.” “Rubbish, Bertie. You’re lazy,’’ Jimmie teased. ‘You hunt the beast up. It’ll be. the first thing you’ve done worth while in all your two whole years in Africa. And think how proud your people’ll be to hear they have a lion-hunter in the family.” In an instant Bertie’s face clouded over. The swinging foot came to a halt, and the foot bumped down. “Tion-hunter, Jimmie? Family? Africa?” he said disgustedly. ‘‘My family doesn’t care if I’m in Africa or Iceland, so far as that goes. And what’s more they don’t know, either.” With shaky anger Bertie rose from the packing-case table and went into his hut. A moment later he reappeared with a rifle and made his way to the ramshackle bar. “A good stiff ’un before I go, Jimmie,” he said, with troubled seriousness. ‘‘And a little drop in the bottle for lunch.” “Going to have a shot at it after all, Bertie?”’ Jimmie laughed tauntingly. “Dunno about a shot, Jimmie. Mightn’t have the luck. But I’m not-goin’ let any flaming old lion make a fool of me more than three nights running and live to growl the story.” Grinning broadly Jimmie pushed the bot- tle over again. _ “May as well give the other one a pal, Berie.”-~ Whimsically Bertie poured and held the glass high above him, then, with one eye cocked, Tooked smilingly through the liquid. “Here’s to the lion, Jimmie, and the bit of salt P’ll put on his tail.” The glass came down and Bertie’s face went suddenly deeply meditative—puck- ered and smiled and puckered. I FS Ege mph ae a ie : . Adventure “Funny, ain’t it, Jimmie, my turning the tables?”’ he queried. “What’s funny? Turning what tables?” “What’s funny? Why I and the lion ’m going to bag.” Slowly Jimmie’s head worked from side to side in puzzlement. ‘“‘Too deep for me, Bertie.” “Too deep, Jimmie? You're dull. Why, I’m going to be an original. I’m going to be the first and only.” “First and only what?” “One to turn the tables, Jimmie. First and only one to turn the tables the way I’m going to do it. Did you ever before hear of a Black Sheep chasing a lion?” Jimmie’s forehead knotted — knotted tightly. Slowly one by one the knots went out. Admiringly Jimmie smiled. 1 BERTIE lay on his side and-rested rs his head on an arm. The fire had — long since died down, yet now it blazed cheerily again. And Bertie hadn’t touched it. With an intense effort at concentration Bertie tried to puzzle it all out. All day long he’d followed that spoor. The whole blooming, sizzling day. Not that the spoor had been unusually hard to follow. Not at all. Far from it. So far as he could count there’d been exactly six hundred and forty-seven separate sets of spoor, and by keeping approximately to the middle one he’d done pretty well—wonderfully well when he came to think of it—so well that he’d eventually lost it on a bed of flat rock in the hills. And incidentally lost himself along. Yes, he remembered dizzily, when the moon rose he’d lighted a fire and gone to sleep by it. Gone to sleep and slept like alog. But that fire was dead long ago. - And the fire before him blazed merrily away! His head pounded and for a while his eyes closed and he gave up thinking, deter- mined to let things go however they were. It was all too much trouble and didn’t amount to anything in any way in the long run. Drowsily his eyes opened again and stared into the leaping blaze. Dreamily his eyes went over it and past it and to the moonlight on beyond. And Bertie’s blood froze solid. On the far side the fire and just beyond Se ea Ae COPMIC OOO KS (@) (EO) mn