Adventure Magazine Cover — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

~ "me. a enter one byone. The colonel began to hold Kangaroo Court. and as fast as one burned down he lighted another on the stump of the old one. * Men came to report injustices, ask advice, all manner of things; some were sent for to tell the why, how, and where of something. Also women came for many reasons and some of them, also, were sent for. The colonel heard each and every one fully. On and on the line filed by te grow- ‘ing shorter. Finally a lanky blond man stood before the large mahogany desk twirling a new hat rather sneep any: in his ~ hands. “A gum-shoe man came down to Colon and told me you wanted to see me.’ . ““What’s .the matter you’re quitting?” “Just because, I reckon. . Been down here five hitches with no vacation. Thought I’d like to work in the States for a while.” “JY asked you why you were quitting? ‘Don’t you like the job you have, the pay, quarters, your engineer? Men in good health don’t quit down here, and you don’t look as if you have missed too many boats. They don’t even quit in bad health. We watch for the ones that are breaking down and ship them out. When we don’t notice they stay on and on and they go crazy from the sun or they go to pieces and we ship them back as wrecks.. Men in Panama feel the parts they are playing. They are sym- bolizing a race, an ideal, a spirit of their forefathers, a grim-jawed race of fighting pioneers. There are no flags flying over this work, but these men are fighters for their country. Has it ever occurred to you, Dave?’ . “Tt has colonel, many times.” The colonel’s lean finger pointed straight in front of Dave Roach’s shifting eyes. “Then why in are you quitting? Are you a deserter, a traitor? Haven’t you got the guts to stand the gaff?”’ Roach’s face flamed red with anger. half-rose from his chair and started to blurt out a denial. Colonel Goethals lighted a new cigaret. Roach’s heavy face set, and his shifting eyes grew steady and they burned squarely into those of the colonel’s. “‘T don’t like to tell it, colonel, but you’ve dared me. They say your ‘gum- -shoes’ know everything. They do know many things, but they don’t know it all. Now about my name wasn’t David Roach? It ain’t. 7 ‘The Spirit of the C. Z. He was smoking cigarets He What would you think if I told you. 97° It’s Charles Redford. DUve worked here five years and never got called on it. I was third officer on a Pacific Mail Steamer and I came over here-and logked at the work. I wanted a job from the first time I watched the work. I never went back to my ship. I deserted her. I got a job of craning a shovel. . Never had craned one. I ‘put the sticks’ out of the first shovek I craned. Tied up the shovel for an. hour and a half getting them back in. I learned, though. And nobody has ever said a word about my assumed name. I never done any crime except desert my ship and change my name.’ He paused and turned his hat around and around. . ‘Well, if you were innocent of crime and merely changed your name to desert your ship and it has gone along all right for five years why quit now?” “T have got to get married. My girl has been waiting all this time and I have been stalling. Down here I’m Dave Roach, champion craneman. Up there in Oregon I’m Charlie Redford. I’m getting old. + el ATS at Lo Fag = “9 ey ay 40 Ts) ie Dyes AY tm 4s ot ee * . 7 ee er ve iy) $ i J s f ~ 4 4 * r f ay Pre e ae oy Me aera e eve Pig NTS Lt ts Last month I was twenty-eight. Louise is re. twenty-one. There’s another feller who ~~ would marry her in a minute. He’s got oe her on the fence right now. She has hinted that she would like to live in the tropics. That wouldn’t do. She wouldn’t under- | stand why I changed my name. Further, I couldn’t marry her down here as Charles Redford. Awfulmixup. I’ve worried over it for months. The only thing I could see was to quit and go back up there and be who IT am.” When he stopped the colonel reached into a drawer and brought out a personal record file, a bulky package of papers culled from many sources. He handed this over to the craneman and asked him to look it over. He noted his original application and the references which had denied knowledge of him. Reports of his clumsiness at work were followed by papers from the Pacific Mail Steamship Company claiming he was working in Culebra Cut. Gum-shoe res © ports placed him exactly. Other reports followed about his improvement in work. A copy of a letter from the colonel to the steamship company telling them to let the man alone for the present. Full, complete, almost:day by day a record had been kept of him. Other men had gaped with sur- prize as this craneman now gaped. Other COMMICG DOOKS