Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 49: what you’re looking at

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

Ambush the skins of the whole crowd! are left in the Fort?” “You, me, Murdock, and three more.’ “Well, tell Murdock and the three to stand keen watch. You and I'll go out and find them.” “Oh! Don’t leave me here alone, father,” pleaded Joan, sliding off the couch and glancing apprehensively at the Winter dark on the window-pane, at the somber shad- ows of the room. ‘Take me with you. I don’t know what’s the matter with me, but I’m all nerves, and I can’t stay here alone.” “All right, Joan,’? he humored her. “Tt’s not very far. Put on something warm and come with us.” Over her blanket-cloth suit she slipped her warmest capote, beautifully cased in ermine with the edge of the hood fringed with tails of the silver fox. She thrust her moccasined toes into the loops of her tas- seled snowshoes and passed out between her father and Mason over the soft snows into the woods. Shuffling without a sound they went, Wayne and Mason on their broad bear’s-paw shoes, their rifles thrown across their left arms in readiness. Around them crept the eeriness of the Winter night, deep shadow in the under- brush, a half twilight in the open aisles, the snow’s refraction of the starlight filtering through the festooned branches. The forest was a fairyland filled with fan- tastic shapes, a strange cathedral packed with voiceless worshipers standing white- robed, huddled upon their knees or lying prone upon their hidden faces, and over all like the shroud of the dead spread the ever- lasting snow, cloaked on the tree boles, bossed on the stumps, draped from the in- terwoven branches, plumed on the spruce tops overhead. From the roofed aisles they stepped out into the slashed clearing where the Free- Trading men had been at work. There lay the trampled, chip-littered crust, the felled trees, the sawn log lengths, the chopped stove wood, all just as it had been left. The very axes were still sunk in the scored blocks. A few ghostly hares at play about the piles vanished as the snowshoes began to clatter on the chips. Wayne stooped abruptly to examine something on the sur- face of the padded area. “By the Doom—look!” he commanded harshly. Joan and Mason stared speechless. pe many Even 47 in the poor light they recognized the litter Wayne pointed out, frozen bread crusts, rinds of bacon, the chocolate blotch of tea- leaves, a forgotten rum jug lying empty on the snow. ‘Condemnation!’ Wayne blazed in ter- rific wrath. ‘‘You’re sure it’s our chopping ground, Mason?” ‘“Tarnation sure!” avowed Mason. “Didn’t I set them to work here and leave them workin’? And they ain’t shifted sence, fer them’s our axes.” “The cursed curs! There’s only one place they could get that stuff to eat!’ Wayne was off as hespoke, running ’round the edge of the clearing, searching for the trail of the intruders. “Here are their tracks!’ he shouted. “Dozens of them, coming from the direc- tion of Richelieu’s post. The Northwesters wear longer-tailed snowshoes than ours, and there are the marks of both kinds going back. By Heaven, Richelieu has drawn them olf! Come on, Mason. Come on, Joan.” At a great speed he lurched out of the woods again over the snows toward Fort Wayne, Joan and Mason running in the path he broke. “Murdock, Murdock!” he yelled to the gatekeeper. “Send out your three. You yourself stand in the entrance with rifle ready. My men have been eating and drinking with the Northwesters.” DROPPING one armed man every hundred yards or so to form a line of communication with Murdock in = open gateway of his own fort, Wayne led on to Richelieu’s post. Mason he kept by him, and Joan, in spite of his entreaties to stay back on this line of communica- tion, followed persistently upon their heels. The gateway of the Northwest post stood open as they ran up, and in the yellow glow that flooded from the lighted windows out across the trampled yard they could see Richelieu himself, a heavy military coat partially covering his resplendent uniform, standing in the entrance, waiting as if he had expected such a visit. “Comment?” he chuckled when he saw their faces. “What do you want now?” “My men—curse you!” exploded Wayne, his rifle threatening from the hip. ‘“They’re here. J want them quick!” Richelieu was unarmed, but he showed CoOnniclooo SS (C@