Adventure Magazine Cover — page 101: what you’re looking at

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

Desert Breed on his belt. He lifted the battered sombrero and shoved it to the back of his head. “Dog-gone if you ain’t a wonder,” Mickey Fortune said in a puzzled tone, “but where in the did you come from out here? This ain’t no place for your kind to be rambling alone. Musta strayed outa some camp.” The dog arose weakly and staggered as it steadied on all fours. Then it turned, stumbling, and headed for the end of the coulée. Mickey Fortune clambered up the side and grasped the halter of the burro, leading it around to where the dog must emerge. But the dog did not come and he _ looked down. There he saw a white spot in the semidarkness. A few strides and he was at the dog’s side where it rested on its haunches, panting, with tongue lolling out. This time he paid no heed to the dog’s silent snarl. He pieked it up as gently as possible.and scrambled up from the coulée. Then he put the dog down and scratched his own head. What to do with it now— he had no water and his own tongue was swollen for the want of a drink. The terrier panted quietly a moment, then steadied to all fours again and wavered on at a slow walk with the man leading the burro a few yards behind, an eager thought dawning on him. Frequently the dog halted and sagged to his haunches, with head drooping be- tween his forelegs, and then Mickey For- tune halted also and waited, only to resume when the terrier struggled up and on. A dark break appeared in front where an arroyo dropped away from the desert flat, and into this the dog stumbled and fell. The burro’s ears came up and forward eagerly, and Mickey Fortune knew that a water-hole was hidden there in the arroyo. His swollen tongue came from between parched lips and he dragged the burro in haste down the steep sides of the arroyo. There lay the dog with front feet hanging in the water, lapping it with the slowness of exhaustion. A yard away Mickey Fortune threw himself on the sand and buried his whole face in the water, bathing it while he drank; and almost over him the burro with feet wide apart, stuck its muzzle deep. Then Mickey Fortune made camp and sat cross-legged at the side of the water- hole in the dim light from the desert sky. Beside him the terrier rested quietly, all 95 his fear forgotten as the man cleansed those awful wounds, purging them with the last drops of whisky in the emergency flask. Near by the burro chewed at a stray tuft of dry desert grass that grew beside the water. THE flaming disk of morning found Mickey Fortune up and prepared to fill the water-bottles for the start on the last stages of the journey to the edge of the desert as soon as dusk should fall again. But now he halted. Here were the unmistakable indications of an old camp, the tins half buried in the sand, odds and ends thrown carelessly aside by Joe Silva. The other had failed and gone on—Mickey laughed. Ten years of the same thing had taught him to laugh. He sought the place where Silva had dug, and frowned. The other had been a fool or did not know his game. He had picked the easiest way and dug from the top. Mickey Fortune scraped up some of the particles from the rock-ledge that jutted through the sand at the side of the arroyo and examined them carefully. His jaws tightened, his breath came faster and his eyes widened. Among the bits of rock was the red drift of copper. He ran back to where the packs from the burro lay near the small tent and grabbed ' one of the picks, returning to the ledge on the run despite the heat. Steadily he dug at the ledge as the sun rose higher and the perspiration streamed down his body. At last he stopped and gathered the broken rock into a big pile from which he picked numerous bits. He returned to the tent. There lay the terrier, stretched out and panting in the shadow, while the burro drooped in the shade of the arroyo’s side. As Mickey Fortune saw the dog he stopped. Memories of those ten years of futile search, of the incident of the night before when the lobo had died, of the wounded terrier’s leading him to the water- hole when his own thirst was almost un- bearable, and now of the ledge with its copper vein, chased each other through his thoughts. And in the heart beneath Mickey Fortune’s rough exterior a great softness came. ‘The food he prepared for himself he shared with the dog and cleansed the wounds again. There was no indication of resentment, no silent drawing back of lips now. The dog accepted it all stoically. A week passed, two weeks and Mickey cCoOnmmiclboooks C@