Adventure Magazine Cover, December 10, 1922 — page 141: what you’re looking at

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

Tameless Days behind. But to his surprize what had been most exhilarating now became prosaic. The first day’s labors had found weak spots in his anatomy, unused muscles that pro- tested against a continuation of the unac- customed labor. He persevered, however, and near the noon hour was rewarded by a score of flat, coarse scales, which made a pronounced addition to the contents of the bottle. And now he was acquiring the knack of cleaning the specks and scales before bot- tling them. With no means of weighing the gold, he still was confident that he was liberally adding to his daily wage, and felt a new sense of independence. As he had not thought to bring any food with him, and as he wished to save time, he worked until late afternoon before calling it a day. That night he practised with his guns, and although he was stiff and sore from the day’s labor he believed he was making im- provement. He noted that it was very sel- dom that a hand failed to drop with pre- cision on the butt of a forty-four. This dis- covery surprized him, as his last efforts in the morning had been filled with faults. It was much as if a second self had remained at the cabin to keep up the practise while his physical body was up the gulch twirling the heavy pan of pay-gravel. With the gun- play finished he began re-reading the novel and found much that his first eager perusal had missed. After a week of this isolation he devel- oped a liking for his rugged environment and felt a kinship with it. The furrowed ridges emanated friendliness. The stiff spruces were excellent companions and much more congenial than their martinet appearance had indicated. Work and re- flection had permitted him to humanize the wild spot, and the outside world seemed to be immeasurably removed. It did not seem possible that a brisk ride along the divide would take him into the turmoil and shifting excitement of Virginia. City. That was all behind him and in an- other existence. Only a short ride over the divide were human beings, but he had no desire to seek them. Biven’s Gulch, like Alder Creek, was very far away. In fact, he now considered both bustling places to be a state of mind. He had cured his mind; therefore neither existed for him. Each day he went through the formality of looking over the mill and the smithy. This was about all he could do in return for the wages his employer was to pay him. He read his story-book until he knew much of it by heart. He practised shooting with the Henry rifle and was much pleased with the speed he acquired in releasing a string of shots. He was not satisfied, however, except in spots, with his progress in draw- ing and firing his hand guns. And each day he panned out more gravel and added to his little stock of gold. At the beginning he had had dreams of uncovering a rich pocket and scooping up several quarts of fat nuggets; but as the back-breaking work failed to reveal any such accumulation of treasure he stuck to it in the same spirit a man whipsaws lumber or works in a ditch. He had not hitherto taken time to cross the creek and mount the well-wooded ridge. 135 = But now one day he took his rifle and ~ jumped from rock to rock over the creek and climbed the slope to prowl about. He had not expected to find anything of inter- est; and when he blundered into what he took to be an old Indian path and ob- served that it ran parallel to the creek, he followed it more for the sake of filling in the time than because of any interest. the: head of the gulch it turned abruptly to disappear over the top of the limestone for- mation. As he had no desire to follow it over the wall he turned back toward the cabin. He moved leisurely, pausing at every opening to stare across at the ridge behind the mill and cabin. He remembered that it was the first day he had missed washing gravel, and he took credit to himself for abandoning private gain that he might familiarize him- self with both sides of the creek. On reaching a point where through a break in the growth he could look down on the mill, almost beneath him, he was aston- ished to glimpse a figure stealing along the foot of the opposite ridge. Had the new- comer been mounted and moving up the gulch instead of down Beach would have assumed that he was Holter or Beidler. But Holter would be bringing men with him, and Beidler would have approached from the ox-road below the corral. ‘““Must be a miner from Biven’s gulch,” Beach told himself, feeling no pleasure in the thought. He did not fear that the man would be tempted by his diggings even if the other Near Lo “comicbooks, “t cor