Adventure Magazine Cover — page 85: what you’re looking at

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

, | Pay Gravel “T wish it hadn’t happened,” he said gravely as they left. ‘‘You’ve made a dangerous enemy in el (ST a ake Dinsdale’s entrance to the life of Deadwood City seemed destined to be stormy. Later in the day he intervened in a barroom brawl to save a man called “Scissors” from bully Allen.. Scissors, a harmless fellow who was considered weak-minded since his escape from the Indians, amused the crowd and made a. living by cutting clever-silhouettes out of aper. : As Dinsdale forced the bully toward the door at the point of his six-gun he knew that he had made another and more dangerous enemy. ; “Tl go around to San Juan Joe’s and gamble a bit,” he decided a moment later. “I have cer- tainly busted into Deadwood society with a bang.” AS THE ‘days passed Dinsdale established him- self in the opinion of the town as a bad-man. No scrape was too wild for him to be involved in. At one sitting he lost three thousand dollars to “French Curly” and another time offered to cut a deck of cards for a thousand dollars a cut. In a saloon fight he shot a man’s gun along the floor. As he always paid his losses in greenbacks in a town where “‘dust”’ was common currency, suspicion was soon aroused. San Juan Joe told him frankly: “You'd better get out of town for a while. People think you are the robber who pulled the Ogalala hold-up.” Dinsdale refused, but San Juan protested: _ CHAPTER VIL SAN JUAN SENDS WORD HEY arrived at Castle Creek, the south fork of the Rapid, above the eight-mile cafion and near where gold was discovered in June of the preceding year. Within two or three miles of where the Custer trail leaves the valley they halted for dinner. The spot was a small bar and, despite his haste to leave the band on the divide far behind him, Pyrites took time to wash out several pans of gravel. He said the bar would pay two cents to a pan in fine gold. Dinsdale was not impressed and declared it would not pay for a man’s tobacco. There were two acres of the gravel, and the work already done on it in the Summer of Seventy-five showed it to be five feet deep. Pyrites insisted that with ground-sluicing it could be made to yield very satisfactorily. If it were not for the year-old excavations one would ‘never imagine that within the space of fourteen. months this section of the creek had beén the scene of great activity on the part of a hundred old Montana miners. The veterans had worked in units and had methodically accomplished prodi- warned Pyrites when he had rejoined him. . z ; 79 “T’ve had a confidential report that Jim Omaha, the famous railroad detective, is on his way here. If there were any questions I didn’t care to answer I’dclear out. That’s my advice; take it or leave it.” Dinsdale was shaken. “Perhaps I’d better go,” he muttered. About this time several mysterious men, known to each other only as One, Two, Three, Four and Six, were meeting in the darkened back room of a Chinese wash-house, discussing in guarded tones their plans for a new hold-up; more spectacular than any before. Five, who had proved unreliable, must be replaced, and the chief assured them that he thought he knew the right man. In the meanwhile Kitty the Schemer, incensed because Dinsdale had spurned her, and more dangerous than any man, was inciting the town against him. The first result was that he was obliged to kill ““Bandy” Allen in self-defense, in a running fight. That night Dinsdale fled from the sown with Iron Pyrites, a prospector, fearing mob- w. While they were prospecting through the hills; Dinsdale stumbled on an abandoned cabin and, exploring it, found that it was the rendezvous of horse-thieves.. Trapped in the cellar, he was obliged to stun one of the returning men with his revolver-butt in order to make his escape. “We'll have to make tracks for Rapid City,” “Tf eee us we'll hang, if they don’t shoot us down SE? gies of preliminary labor. There was a bed- rock drain, from three to nine feet deep and a quarter of a mile long, built to run off the water from a wet gravel-flat. Dinsdale’s contempt diminished when Pyrites tested this flat and found it to yield fifteen cents-toa pan. A second pan, luckily catching several small nuggets, he said would weigh six dollars. Besides the several pits near their halting-place they also visited pits and drifts in clayey gravel and soft bed-rock. Of all that company of resolute men, however, there was none at work now. Fear of the Indians had scat- tered them, or new diggings, such as those in Deadwood gulch, had drawn them away. When they resumed their journey Pyrites bewailed their need of haste and was in- clined to blame his companion for what was in fact.a flight.’ Dinsdale irrelevantly con- tended he must be in Rapid City as soon as possible even if the escapade on the divide had not. supplied an impetus. The way to the junction of Castle and North Fork was down a deep valley, narrow in places, and winding through a broken, mountainous ’ country. For the full eight miles each side © gulch and blind cafion was a temptation to the prospector. Continually was he for Ebooks aD ie Sy, SF, ry oo ‘e oa - ; ) eee. = oe ae No tie, Ae é * 2 = eee pees 4 » “ ef = > oe ae. ka >. ee ae a = pe a if ®