Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

48 not the slightest fear of Wayne’s nor Ma- son’s weapons. He reached out and plucked Wayne by the arm, drawing him midway into the entrance and pointing to a big door in the mess building that faced the gate. The door had just opened wide to admit two Northwesters rolling in a keg of liquor, and it revealed a long, candle-lighted table inside, loaded with food and lined with feasting men. “Ciel, see them!’ Richelieu urged ma- liciously. “Hunger is a great chastener, Ralph Wayne. They were tempted, and they fell. There they are, yours and mine together. I am not holding yours. Go and take them.” With a growl Wayne shook off the hand on his arm and darted for the door. “Mason, stay at the gate with Joan,” he flung over his shoulder, ‘‘and put a bul- let through that laughing devil if he so much as moves!” Joan did not obey as her father expected she would. Instead, she inserted her hand within her capote, felt in the pocket of her blanket coat to assure herself that her pis- tol was there and followed her father up to the door of the mess building. Inside reigned bedlam, pandemonium, drunken Northwesters and Free-Traders all mingled together, gorging themselves at the table, laughing, singing, shouting, smit- ing each other’s backs at ribald stories and hammering the board with their liquor mugs. As wild a revel as ever he glimpsed, Wayne saw under the candle-light, and the sight sent him up the steps in a single jump. In a whirl of passion he jammed between the two Northwesters who were rolling in the liquor keg, put sole upon the keg itself on the top step and sprang into the mess room with his rifle clubbed. ‘You condemned traitors! You treach- erous sneaks!” he denounced furiously, his gloomy face ablaze, his mustaches quiver- ing, his rifle-butt swaying every second as if to crash down upon the nearest head. “You steal off into the woods and devour like dogs what these dirty Northwesters throw you, while my own daughter starves for a bit of good food. Get up! Get up on your drunken legs and out of this!” They were too far gone in liquor for shame. Just a moment of bewildered star- ing, and a wave of laughter and jeering drowned his rage. They guffawed in his face, Northwester and Free-Trader alike, Adventure pounding the table more violently and making the room shake with their incoher- ent cries. While from the head of the feast one Harris, a Mississippi river-man and wood boss of the men that day, rose up tee- tering on his toes. “Come’n’ have a drink, Wayne,” he in- vited, “’n’ I'll sing ye a li’ song. Lissen- ere——”’ “By the Doom, you were responsible, Harris!” Wayne roared in interruption. ‘“‘And youw’re responsible still. Get the men out. Call them out, you, every staggering son of them, or as sure as you’re drunk your- self, you’ll never sing again!” Wayne’s rifle-butt poised over Harris’s head, but without warning the two shrewd Northwesters in the doorway shot their rolling keg into Wayne’s legs from behind. Wayne went down backward, flat on the floor, his rifle flying from his hands. The two Northwesters were upon him like cats, clutching and grappling, preventing his hands from securing the weapon again. Joan gave a cry as she saw her father go down and groped in her coat for her pistol. Mason had also seen from the gate, and he sprang forward, his rifle outflung. With the lightning-like sighting of the woodsman he took a snap shot in the doorway, but he had bargained without Richelieu. The lat- ter reached the step as quick as Mason, struck up the Missourian’s rifle-barrel, send- ing the shot wild, and wrestled for the pos- session of the weapon. Joan had her own weapon out, but both her father and Mason whirled in such a tangle of bodies that she dared not shoot for fear of injuring them. She hovered on the step of the mess-room doorway, scream- ing for aid through the frosty night. “Murdock, Murdock!” she _ entreated frenziedly. ‘My father—here! Bring all the other men, quick!’’ Tearing forward abreast the four broke through the gateway, but Richelieu had not been there alone. Back in the shadows of the stockade he had others lurking silently, waiting for such a rush. As Murdock and his three companions surged through, a dozen Northwesters leaped bodily upon them, bearing them down, smothering their spitting rifles in the snow. “Tiens, Mademoiselle Joan,’ gloated Richelieu, emerging from the fighting group that overpowered Mason, “you are the only one left and you I will take myself!” COnniclo@ol< (C@