Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 32: what you’re looking at

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

30 she commanded peremptorily. ‘It’s Joan. I want my father. These men are friends. Open quickly.” Like a man who sees the dead arise the gatekeeper obeyed, and Joan _ brushed rapidly past him, rushing at the head of the others, leading them through the yard toward the dwelling-house. The rough benches upon the long veranda across the house front were empty, but the door stood opén, a yellow square of lamp- light eddied through and through with blue tobacco smoke, and in the frame of the door- way as in a painted picture they could see a group of men inside, Wayne, Mason and others lounging in chairs about a big table, confefring over papers, smoking long black pipes. | Joan sprang over the veranda and framed herself in the doorway. Carlisle at her shoulder saw the faces of the men inside distorted by a colossal amaze- - ment, incredulity, and darkened by the sud- den shadow of superstition which their wil- derness natures could never wholly flout. He saw Mason’s_ brown-bearded, long- jawed face tilted back, the cigar poised in his hand, his yellowed teeth jarred apart, not in triumphant grin as he had seen it once before but in speechless gape. Wayne himself, his cigar dropping on to the table, had risen from his chair to his great height, his features as impassive as carved mahogany but his fawn-green eyes blazing like molten disks. Such a look in any liv- ing eyes Carlisle had never seen. It ap- proached most nearly the vision of the seer, the prophet, the vision that seems to pierce the gray rime of earthly things and behold the secret realms of another world. “Verna! Verna!’’ he articulated in a whisper. “No, no, father, I am not my mother’s ghost!” declared Joan, crying full-voiced, leaping full-blooded across the floor. “T am Joan, and I am not at the bottom of Rapide des Boisfranc. Oh, my dear—my dear, I’m sorry I’ve made you grieve!” | She was in his arms, impulsive, palpitant, moving, her wheaten hair mingled with his brown curls, her cheek pressing his like a rose petal lying upon an Autumn-browned leaf. Abruptly Wayne’s grim strength went from him. He trembled like the slim poplars on the w.nd-blown Saskatchewan hills and sagged back into his chair, his daughter on his knee. Adventure “By the Doom, girl—by—the—Doom!”’ was all he could mutter. ‘See, I’m a prisoner of war, father!’ she laughed gaily. “And I’ve come for ex- change. You’re to give Paul his twenty- five men in place of me. Am TI not worth it? Besides, I’ve promised him you would.”’ ‘“‘Paul—Paul,” stammered Wayne in be- wilderment, ‘“‘who——”’ ce laughing ones to rest upon Carlisle Mt gazing down the table length upon him. Though the Factor and the rest had THEN his eyes followed Joan’s . entered on Joan’s heels, Wayne saw him for the first time. He had seen nothing before but the femi- nine vision of his dead, living again in his daughter’s image, and now he leaped vio- lently to his feet once more, pushing Joan aside into his chair as he leaped. Carlisle saw that his eyes had their earthly focus back, bitter, implacable, savage, and in them he faced the terrible, lightning- like blaze of passion he knew so well. “You, Carlisle,’ choked Wayne, ‘‘you dragged my girl by the brink of hell through those rapids and you dare to come and stand in my post afterward—you cursed spit of your drunken English father!” “Stop right there, Wayne!” warned Car- lisle, a wave of red anger surging over his own face. “For your daughter’s sake I’ve taken a good deal of defiance from you. For her sake maybe [’ll take a lot more. I can’t say. But don’t touch my father’s honor with that reckless tongue of yours!’’ “Touch his honor? Tl touch his very bones in his grave and make them writhe in shame! You saw her there in the doorway —Joan? That was Verna—her mother— all rose and golden. “That was how I saw her last the day of Major Butler’s raid on the Wyoming. The day his Rangers—the cursed lusting hounds —came by, under Captain Charles Carlisle and Carlisle—the vilest hound of them all— struck her down in my own house while I was away!” “You lie, Wayne! You lie abominably, devilishly! None but armed men were killed in that raid.” ‘So the ignorant tale-makers tell, but we who went through the fire and slaughter know better. We who lost our homes and our loved ones have memories that nothing can efface!”’ Gomicbook (C@