Adventure Magazine Cover — page 43: what you’re looking at

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

The Flies in Amber “And this old white man,” he went on, picking out the picture of an old miner with gray hair, “seems like an old-timer.” And then, quite forgetting himself. “He was a squaw-man, eh?”’ he asked her. “He was my father,” she answered him steadily, catching his eyes. Gail came to and hated himself, trem- bling and all hot. He thought he might as well have struck her. He was clean out of his skin, but all he could say was: “My father runs the store at Hope City. I never seen my mother, but she was white and decent.” Gail says that never in his life had he spoken her name beforew You know his kind—their mothers are the only straight women they know. They’d as soon cut off their hands as speak of them ordinarily. But he had injured the girl’s own flesh and blood, so it was up to him to lay his own as bare, by way of what you might call pen- ance. “What—is—a—squaw-man?”’ she asked him slowly, seeing his eyes wet. ‘I only came North this Spring.”’ Gail thought a minute, then turned his back to look at the pictures. Hesaid: “A monster, a leper ”” But he didn’t finish. He’d said enough. He heard the cabin door close. Turning around, he saw that she was gone. He ran after her, she stumbling like a shadow through the gravel hills of the mo- raine where the ice ends. You know the sort of place—as if it were a piece of the world made by God with His left hand, and so ugly He abandoned it. Like one of these big crocodiles of before the flood, only more gigantic, all sunk in and shriveled as if by sickness, with boulders big as a house breaking through the coarse skin. And soon they were swallowed up by cliffs of dirty ice, where gravels rattle down into round blue ponds as they would if shot from a rifle. She led him to the pot-hole where the river was born, spouting up from under the ice-foot the color of coffee, fighting against boulders all polished and white, that would seem to crash down when you looked at them. And there she stopped in a little fringe of dead grass. She stooped, and leaned out over the hole. “You want to drown yourself?” Gail shouted over the roar, grabbing her arm and dragging her back as she was losing balance. 607 She muttered something; Gail didn’t ex- actly hear, but it was like some person’s not mattering who or what, but she loved him, loved him. Then, more distinctly, “Yes, drown myself!” “You don’t mean that!” he said, and took her in his arms, and stumbled up through the cones away from the pot-hole. ‘Forgive me, in the name of God, forgive me!” begged Gail, setting her down, ‘for driving you to it, for what I said about your father.” But she said: ‘‘No, no, not drown my- self. It’s not for father. I—I—only wanted to see where they’d come out in March. Wasn’t that the place?”’ ‘“Yes,’’ said he, relieved. ‘But you won’t never see their bodies, with us hitting for the Tanana over the first snow. You know we have no guns, and that means scurvy.” “Scurvy!” she muttered. “T’ll risk that. I’ve told you I’ll wait for them till I die— more than ever now.” He thought a minute. “TI can’t leave you here alone,” he said. “You got to sled it out with me, whether you want to or not. Hear me?’”’ She hid her head in her hands and shiv- ered. ‘‘You’ve got me at your mercy,” she answered. ‘“‘Spare me! Spare me in the name of the dead!”’ “The dead is dead for good,” he told her, all at once feeling strong and dizzy about his heart. Then, ‘‘ Girl,’’ he whispered, tak- ing her hand in his, ‘‘I love you a’ready. You saved my life from starving; now I save yourn!”’ She struggled from him. ‘ You’re cursed with the hard thoughts of this land!” she cried. ‘Once dead, always dead, you think, and the body doesn’t matter. J don’t believe He looked her in the eye. ‘ You’ve never Wintered alone in the North, hev you?” he asked. “It’s hell. Men get a worse thing than scurvy!” “T will never love you!’ shesaid. “Leave me. Go out alone!” You see, never having loved before, Gail had never been thrown down. The sting of it was new to him, and he felt the smart; so he said between his teeth: ‘Alone in here, God in His heaven can’t keep us apart!” She cried out that she loathed him—for Gail to leave her there. comlicbooks.co