Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

Ambush frankly, I’m glad that I’ve seen but few!” Joan flushed at his patent warmth. “But it’s for my father to say,” she evaded in confusion. “Tt’s Cumberland House,” cut in Wayne suddenly finding speech and taking Car- lisle’s option as if he had heard nothing that intervened. ‘‘Condemnation! Why should we rot in the Kaministiquia post? We will go back to our own district, Joan, the district they would wrest from us, and there, by the Doom, they’ll see who does the wresting!”’ “Vou’ll give parole?’ asked the Factor, ignoring the threat. “No,” thundered Wayne. “Put a guard on us and keep us if you can!” “Very well,” nodded Carlisle grimly, ‘‘my eyes will be guard enough.” He took a step aside to where Father Andrews waited silently on the bank. “A strange, violent man, Father—yes, and bitter as gall against the Hudson’s Bay!” he whispered. “If it were not for the girl’s sake, I would give him back some of his own medicine. She interests me greatly. So will you pair amidships with Wayne, then? The girl and I will sit be- hind you.” “As you like Paul,” agreed the priest, taking the indicated place. “I am glad you have your temper under control. There is no gain in letting it slip.”’ Carlisle gave Joan his hand as she stepped in, but when he motioned the Free- Trader to follow, the latter drew back de- flantly. “T ride in the next,” he growled. “T will not ride with you. Though you’ve put me under the code, my hands still itch for the Ojibways’ knives.” “All right, if you feel like that,’’ assented the Factor. He waved Wayne aboard Drummond’s craft. “Eugene,” he enjoined, ‘‘he is under your eye!”’ Then he stepped into his own canoe, meeting with a good-humored laugh Joan’s deprecatory face. Rendered ashamed, as -well as alarmed, by her father’s fresh defi- ance, she had remained standing, perturbed, uncertain as to the outcome of the verbal clash. Now quite naturally they sat down together upon the rich ermine robe, and the brigade shot up the Kaministiquia. In the wake of La Verendrye whose prow 19 had first cut these waters in 1731 they went, and as the silence of the forest en- veloped them Eugene Drummond’s clear tenor struck up an air to time the paddles of his canoemen. : All day and half the night the fleet wound up the rock-walled, spruce-hedged Kamin- istiqua to its source, Lake Shebandowan, across golden Shebandowan, over jeweled Lake Kashaboyes toward the range of gran- ite which hurled the Western waters back to Winnipeg. The setting sun did not drop behind the gray crags of the range till nine in the even- ing, and then the orange-rose afterglow burned its witch-light for an hour more. But abruptly as the orange-rose turned saffron stalked the jealous dark, and night and the brigade camped together upon the crest of the Superior Divide. At morning they left the Height of Land behind them, and like the flash of their pad- dles the days went by as they plunged down the western slope of the watershed through Lac des Mille Isles, the Seine River, Rainy Lake, Rainy River and Lake of the Woods. All the way by paddle, pole and portage Eugene Drummond pitched the canoe song for his gay-souled voyageurs. Ralph Wayne’s glowering hate grew darker as he hit upon no opportunity to escape, and the strangely-begun intimacy between Joan and Carlisle blossomed and thrived at a pace that set her father to brooding. Stately figures upon the vast tapestry of forest verdure they passed with no untoward incident until after leaving Lake of the Woods. THEN as they rounded a bend of the Winnipeg River some miles above Lac du Bonnet, Waseyawin uttered a cry of warning from the bow of the Factor’s flying canoe. Instantly Mis- sowa and the middlemen caught it. Their blades back-watered with a gurgling roar, and the prow of the craft brought up within ten feet of a chaos of dead tamarack trunks which choked the stream. ‘“‘A windfall, eh?” cried Father Andrews. “That was a close thing, Paul.” “No—no windfall!’ declared Carlisle, standing up to see better. ‘Look at the ax marks on the butts. It’s a barricade. Missowa, Waseyawin—back! Back, Drum- mond—quick!”’ But hard on his words and before the GomiGcidoo S (C@