Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 194: what you’re looking at

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

192 shack was in the shadow of the hill behind it; he didn’t see that at all. Swinging to the left he paddled over to the quiet water along the shore and kept on up the Porcupine. Sound asleep in the shack Sum Crab lay on her bunk with the box for a pillow. Up on the high bank of the Big Black a mangy gray fox lifted his head and smelled of the wind, then with his ragged tail between his legs he limped away from the water, with many backward glances toward ‘the east and the coming of the breeze. A MONTH later, sober, disgusted, discouraged, Sandy came back. Day ’ after day and far into the night he paddled with the current. Every morning he tested the shell-ice on the quiet pools and noted with renewed alarm its increas- ing thickness. His worn Summer clothes were all he had, and he had seen one man brought in from the long white trail. Only an Indian he had been, but he looked very human as he lay there in the snow with his staring eyes and rigid arms and legs and unholy color. That was twenty years ago, a long time in a wasted life; but Sandy had not forgot- ten it. Right there, too, it had been found, in that very section. Would he be found that way? He drove his paddle into the black water and swung around a bend. He wished he had taken old Whiskers’ advice and waited till Spring. He had gained nothing by go- ing. He would have to face the old man and the other two empty-handed. It was beginning to get dark when Sandy ran into the junction of the two rivers, and for a few minutes he could not persuade himself that that tributary was the Big Black. Then he saw the shack. Twenty years, twenty long ill-used years lifted themselves from the river and the hills and the old log shack that he had helped, very unwillingly, to build. One swift glance of the two decades he got, then the hovering darkness dropped down and blotted out the landscape. Up on the side of the hill the weary gray fox turned a puz- zled glance down to the drifting smoke from the shack chimney and tottered away. Sandy drifted down past the mouth of the Big Black and a hundred yards beyond. “Twenty years ago,” he muttered. *‘What have I been doing all that time?” Adventure He pulled the canoe up on the bank and sat down on its prow. “Twenty years of lost time!’ he snarled. “Twenty years of fighting rough-necks and booze, and not a thing to show for it but a busted face, a busted pocket, and a bald head!’’ 3 He arose and walked back till he could see the smoke against the stars. “Tt don’t seem like twenty years since I made smoke come out of that same old chimney myself,’”’ he mused half angrily. “It don’t seem all that time since I sat in there and—and tried to teach a puppy- faced squaw to be human. Bah! Indians! IT wonder where the little fool is now? Tot- ing wood and water for some lousy yellow- face and a dozen snarling puppies, I sup- pose; and a face-on her like an Egyptian mummy. Huh!” He turned and started back, then with an oath he stopped short and dropped to his knees behind a bush. ‘“‘A box of gold-dust that weighs two hun- dred!” he breathed. “And only an old squaw watching it!” He felt for the gun in his belt. He, too, had heard Bull Morgan’s story. “Sandy,” he asserted authoritatively, “vou will go through Fort Yukon without stopping, and at Christmas you’ll be drunk- er than a boiled owl in Chicago—on cham- pagne!”’ Three hours later Sandy crept around to the door of the shack and listened. Above the hill behind a single snow-flake drifted down and settled on the mangy tail of the old gray fox. Sandy smiled. He didn’t intend to kill her unless With his breath caught in his throat he put his shoulder against the door.and pushed it steadily inward. The shack was vacant. That room was very familiar to him. There was the stone fireplace and the old log seats and the row of bunks along the wall; there were the squaw’s blankets and —there was the box. He crossed the room in a few rapid strides and stopped. The firelight cast weird shadows in the corners and the door had swung shut. Where was the squaw? He shook his nervousness off and reached for the box. And then—then something struck him in the back. Something hot and long bit into him be- tween his shoulders and sent a paralyzing thrill down his spine and into his legs— COMmicoooks (©