Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

54 He ran outside the palisades with Galt, Drummond and others and came back bearing long trunks of young spruce that had been drawn up from the woods for fuel. These were five or six inches through and stripped of their branches, of a fit size to be handled as battering rams. The mess building was all a-roar, throb- bing on the night like the fire-pit of some gigantic engine, belching flame through windows and door and the roof that was commencing to sag. ’ The heat was terrific, lance-like, unbear- able upon the uncovered flesh, but with the hoods of their capotes puckered tight to shield their faces from the flames, Carlisle and his men crept up to the buildings with the long spruce trunks in their gauntleted hands. With swing and prod, swing and prod they battered off the already burning roof troughs of the fur room, exposing the top logs which they began to rattle down tier by tier, but the fire was quicker than they. It caught on the walls and beams and the pelts that hung thereon, and the flare of the greasy fats shot fifty feet in the air. “What a waste!” deplored Joan, as Carlisle and the men were forced to fall back from the geyser of flame. “What a waste of splendid fur!” “Yes, but it couldn’t be otherwise,”’ ob- served Carlisle. ‘‘We couldn’t have saved it even if we had wanted to. The heat’s enough to shrivel one!” Still it was with a qualm of regret that he gazed over his shoulder as he rushed in again toward the store. Mink, marten, otter, ermine, costly, beautiful, blazed and wrinkled before his eyes; rare silver and black-fox skins singed and smouldered, the silky fur curling up like downy feathers to the licking flame. He saw it as desecration, as profanation, as a crime against the en- during wild—and all the handiwork of the panic-stricken Dentaire! The roof of the store he got off before the fire reached it. The wall logs thundered down amid clanking showers of cooking utensils, knives, axes and other trade-stuff from the shelves, his own trade-stuff that Richelieu had captured in his York boats. Piled upon the floor, standing revealed un- der the fire’s glare, showed his own food supplies captured at the same time along with the trade-stuff. - “There were greases in the supplies, Adventure Galt,”’ he told his chief-trader, “pork and such, and some kegs of powder that might be dangerous. Pass the kegs along as I shove them out.” One by one with his pole butt he rolled the barrels and kegs off the floor, and they were prodded far back into the snow beyond the fire zone. Then he pushed down the top tier of the flour bags, stacked in layers of four. Three of the sacks fell with solid, dusty thuds. The fourth struck lightly and bounced to the feet of Galt. ‘“‘What’s that, Henry?” asked Carlisle. “Not heavy enough for flour, is it?” The chief-trader stooped and scrutinized it by the brilliant light, discerning a canvas dunnage bag with drawstrings in its mouth. It bore the customary marking H. B. C., and as Galt turned it over with his pole the name ‘‘Cotameg”’ stared him in the face. “By Nenaubosho (the Cree _ Evil Spirit)!’ he exclaimed. “It’s the Chippe- wa’s gear-bag, Factor. Piled in by mistake among the flour sacks when they captured your boats!’ “By Jove, Galt, is that so?” cried Carlisle, coming over to look. “Unlucky Cotameg! You buried him without his gear, eh?” ‘“‘We had to,” declared Galt. “We couldn’t find his gear, and I guess it was here allsthe time.” With a thud of his pole he broke the drawstrings in the mouth of the bag, thrust the end of the pole into the open mouth and shook it. Out rolled worn moc- casins, soiled trousers of buckskin, frowsy parfleches of a filthiness unimaginable. ‘Shades of bold Rupert!’ blurted Car- lisle. “I didn’t know he was as dirty as all that. Is that the only gear he owned?” But Galt’s eyes were brighter than Car- lisle had ever seen eyes of Cree shading. His face was more violently astounded than Carlisle had ever beheld a face of Creecasting. “It’s—it’s not Cotameg’s,”’ he stammered, even his voice losing the unemotional timbre of his mother’s tongue. “It’s old White Loon’s and his family’s—the smallpox Indians I stopped from coming in to Cum- berland House!’’ “By heavens, Galt, are you sure?” bellowed Carlisle. “Sure? Didn’t I stand and see them strip it off at my orders? There are five moc- casins, all of different sizes. White Loon had two sons, a nephew and a cousin with him, you remember! . Gomiciook (C@