Adventure Magazine, Mid-September 1917 — page 66: what you’re looking at

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

64 unsoldered and the contents emptied on the ground. A division was made and each man’s share was carefully hefted to see that the weights were equal, for the packs were to be heavy—for with the guns and revolvers and heavy belts each man would have about a hundred pounds. Then each one began to make up his blanket-roll after the fashion he had learned in the past. Gibbs’s cameras and photographic sup- plies were distributed around and he was given his part of the supplies and ammuni- tion. There were ten twenty-five pound shot-bags of thirty-thirty cartridges and ten half-bags of twenty-twos. The con- tents of the tenth bag and a half was counted and a strict division made. Jack Brewer rolled Hughie Gibbs’s bundle for him and made a packing rig for him out of a pair of old overalls. He placed the rolled and tied blanket- bundle, which was about the size of a man’s body, in the top of the overalls as a man would put them on. Then he buckled a belt tightly around them at the middle: The legs were of course empty and he doubled these back to the opposite end of the roll and tied them there. This formed a bundle that a man could put on as he would a vest, giving the bearer the broad flat legs of the overalls as pack straps. Harte and James made a harness for themselves from rawhide which they had brought along for the purpose. Murdock and Willis slung their packs high on their backs with ropes and over their foreheads slipped broad head straps after the fashion of some Indian packers. Bibb rolled an overalls pack and when Brewer had Gibbs’s pack ready he rolled one for himself. The sun had not yet peeped over the crest of the Andes when they were under way. Gibbs quickly trotted to the front and set off in the lead. The others grinned and strung out behind. On the outside of each pack hung a small sheet iron pan for testing the sands and gravel of the creeks and valleys and a di- minutive short-handled miner’s pick. Each man had his thirty-thirty carbine slung from his neck by its strap and in the crook of one arm carried the cut-down twenty-two ready at any moment to fire on whatever small game or bird looked good for eating. In addition in an open holster at the front of each man’s belt hung a single action fron- tier-model forty-four Colt pistol and to Adventure the rear either a small ax or machete as the personal taste of the bearer dictated. In the pockets safely wrapped in neat packages were hooks and lines, flints, mag- nifying-glasses, watertight match-safes and small vials of medicine for fevers and snake-bites. They had everything they needed for the trip down to the last detail from salt to needles and thread. Each man had extra shoes, besides the heavy hob- nailed ones he wore and a bundle of half- soles cut to the right size to be nailed on. They were thoroughly outfitted. The heads of the eight had been bent together for several weeks in New Orleans making a list. Other times each of them had gone into the wilds of some place or other short some small article that had caused undue hardship and they had combined to see that this did not happen on this trip. IV BEFORE noon Hughie Gibbs was complaining about the weight of his pack and dropped behind the last man. This caused many wary winks and grins to be passed around. At last he claimed that he was packing more weight than any one else. Harte quickly threw off his pack and offered to trade with him. Harte’s shoulders were hard and calloused so that the rawhide straps did not bother him, and his back was like a piece of sole leather but he secretly admired Brewer’s way of throwing a pack together and was curious to see how it set upon the back. Gibbs and Harte made the exchange. Hughie gave Brewer a bitter look. It seemed as if Harte’s pack were lighter. This was caused by the shifting of the center of gravity. The pack sat high on his shoul- ders and rested him for the first half-hour but soon the rawhide thongs began to bite into the flesh of his breast and shoulders and he begged Harte to trade with him again. They had traveled all morning at a swing- ing pace, first one and then the other to the fore and by noon they had left the Bamba twenty miles to the rear. They came to a small stream and stopped for lunch. They had killed no game so they made a meal of dried beef, flapjacks, warmed-over beans and coffee. Dinner over they looked to the care of their feet. They wore the heaviest of yarn socks and after soaking their feet in the cold water 4 m= Ys CoOMmiclsoo (©