Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

20 brigade had time to swing about came the chug-chug of axes behind them. A score of dead birches swayed out from the bushy margin and crashed into the river in an impassable tangle of crossed trunks and in- terwoven branches. And out upon the barricades before and behind poured over one hundred Northwesters, the choppers with their bright-bladed axes still in hand, the others with long-barreled rifles trained on the Hudson’s Bay brigade. Carlisle recognized on the instant James and Roderick McKenzie, McLeod and Mc- Dougall with their returning Athabasca brigades, and Richelieu with his Sturgeon Lake brigade, all apparently bound into the Pays d’en Haut. “Mon Dieu, Carlisle, but I have you trapped now!” roared Richelieu. “You and Ralph Wayne and mademoiselle and your renegade priest!’ “Ves, Carlisle,” guffawed Roderick Mc- Kenzie. “I had thought you too good a woodsman to put your head into a deadfall like that!’’ ‘Never mind your tongue play, you two,” the impetuous McLeod cut in on them. “Take these men prisoners, lift their arms, clear yon barricade and let’s be on our “In my own good time, McLeod,” bul- lied Richelieu. ‘Neither you nor any other man can hurry me. You see, Carlisle, you’ve tried the patience of McLeod and the others. The Pigeon River route into the Lake of the Woods is faster than the Kaministiquia route and, par Dieu, we’ve waited for you here longer than we’ve liked. Comprenez-vous? Do you — surrender quietly?” Carlisle, sweating in the sun-heat off the river which seemed suddenly to have grown more intense, cast swift, calculating glances to right, to left, and behind. “Surrender?” he echoed, trying to gain time by parleying and all the while seeking for some means of apparently impossible escape. “What under heaven do you Northwesters set yourselves up to be? Even though your claim to Grande Portage holds good—and I tell you bluntly that it doesn’t—this is not Grande Portage. This is the Winnipeg—the West, and I want to ask you by what right you stop any traveler on Winnipeg waters?” “By the right of might, m’siew’,” an- swered Richelieu insolently. ‘We have our Acventure secret service also, and we know your mis- sion into the Saskatchewan. Ciel, do you think I am fool enough to let you go on to Sturgeon Lake when I have the chance to cut you off here? It was my plan to take you at Grande Portage, but there was a slip. I lost track of you for a little—until the courier Bertand exposed you. “Diable, I have not forgotten your mas- querade, nor the biow you gave me. For everything you will answer toute suite, Car- lisle—ouz, and mademoiselle will come back where she belongs.” Through every word of Richelieu’s tirade, Carlisle felt his face fairly crisping with the increasing heat. He put his feeling down to the well-nigh unbearable suspense of the mornent and to the fact that they lay mo- tionless upon the sun-refracting water in windless air held stagnant by the forested shores. But as Richelieu finished his bold prophecy, a sharp tang, permeating the heat wave, stung Carlisle’s sensitive nostrils. “Smoke!” he exclaimed hoarsely to the others in the canoe. “Is that another trick of these curs?” McDougall, up on the loftiest log of the barricade, caught the tang at the same mo- ment. He whirled suddenly to face down- stream. “Holy Dog-Ribs,” he shouted. ‘‘Look— Richelieu, look! The whole forest’s on fire!”’ McDougall pointed aghast where, not over five hundred yards away, as far ’round the river bend as he could see, a black pall rolled up above the tamarack tops along both banks and shooting flames darted like red, horned devils between the dark trunks. “Diablement,” Richelieu swore. ‘Some of your careless whelps have dropped match or pipe, McDougall! Run, everybody, run! In canoes and up-stream! And, mon Dieu, paddle for your cursed lives!’ He himself led the rout before the charg- ing flames, plunging headlong from the bar- ricade into the thicket of green where they had hidden their canoes when they arranged the ambuscade. Like madmen the hundred of them ripped and tore through the growth, bending, chopping, trampling down ob- structing saplings and shoving their crafts afloat above the upper barricade. “Name of a name, come on,’ yelled Richelieu, as the paddles foamed away. “Carlisle — Wayne — Joan chére—all you there, ola! Follow us. It’s your only chance.” COnnicloookxs (C@