Adventure Magazine Cover, December 10, 1922 — page 139: what you’re looking at

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

Tameless Days He pulled the latch-string, and as the door swung open he leaped back and awk- wardly fumbled for his revolver. He laughed aloud in great relief as he discov- ered that the explanation of the stealthy pattering sound he had heard was only a fat squirrel. He regretted the little ani- mal’s departure, which it, took through a hole under the bottom log. 3 He soon had the supplies housed and had removed the wooden shutters from the one window-pane. The latter was a miracle in itself because it had withstood more than five hundred miles of rough travel before covering the gulch road around the foot of a mountain. There was fuel in the cabin; and, thinking to make it more homelike, he started a-fire on the hearth before going outside to investigate the other buildings. Near the foot of the slope behind the cabin the raw stumps told of the coming of the circular saw, but as yet the mill had not eaten deeply enough into the -melancholy growth of spruce to be noticeable. It was the blacksmith’s Shop that gave him his first intimation of his employer’s difficul- ties and the resourcefulness which had overcome them. The bellows were made out of rubber coats and whipsawed lumber. There was a pit of charcoal by the door, and for an anvil there was a broad-ax driven deep into a convenient stump. Leaving the shop, he proceeded to the mill. The sixteen-foot overshot wheel im- pressed him as being a supreme triumph of engineering, for it had been fashioned on the spot, as necessarily was the long flume also. Wagon-axles had been made into shafting. The log-carriage, lacking track irons, worked by a “rope feed,”’ was origi- nated by Holter in his dilemma to supply what his outfit was supposed to have in- cluded, but much of which it had lacked. “Lord! Think of getting all this stuff down here and then making enough more to go with it so he could put up a mill,” muttered Beach as he stole back to the cabin. It was not until he noticed the blue smoke rising in a straight line from the chimney that he realized there was no point to his practising stealth. Already his smoke had announced his presence to any one in the gulch or on the surrounding ridges. To prove to himself that he was not suf- fering from “nerves” he raised a loud yell. = 133 It was thrown back at him from the rough walls of the gulch manifold. The echoes startled him, as he had not expected them. — There had been no echoes on the vegetable farm. He wandered to the corral and closed the entrance, although he had no fear that the animals would forsake the gulch and the large pile of cured’ grass that supplemented the long strip of grazing. But unconsciously he was viewing his surroundings from the farm viewpoint, where lowered bars invited the stock to wander: Then he fell to wondering if he would be less lonely if isolated in the midst of a large plains area. Would he be surreptitiously searching the distant horizons and expect- ing to behold a moving dot of something? Or was the atmosphere of waiting for the unknown to happen down in this little wrinkle of the hills, where there would be no preliminary warning of danger’s approach, more disquieting? Still arguing the ques- tion, he entered the cabin, overhauled the supplies and proceeded to prepare a supper of bacon, beans and coffee, to which he added bread bought by Beidler at Kessler’s. He was chagrined with himself to find he could not endure to have the cabin door closed while he was preparing the meal. Already it was twilight in the gulch, and when he paused to listen he could hear the wind whispering ancient secrets to the ever- greens. He wanted the door open. He knew it was whimsical and foolish, and yet he could not fight against the desire. At first he tried keeping it closed and in- stantly discovered that he had peopled the gulch with nameless trespassers. They pressed close to the door and the four walls and murmured confidences to each other. By opening the door and occasionally glanc- ing out he found that his visual sense re- moved these ghostly intruders beyond the first skyline; which was much better than: having them loitering just outside the - building. While the bacon and beans were simmer- ing and the coffee was boiling he dug out the Henry rifle and a box of forty-four rim- fire cartridges. It was a weak, short-range cartridge, carrying twenty-eight grains of powder; yet the weapor was accurate and fast to shoot. He familiarized himself with the mechanism and practised stuffing the cartridge through the trap of the magazine tube, which, unlike the Sharps, extended Gomichboo <S (aley