Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 6: what you’re looking at

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

4. _ Adventure priest was dressed somberly, cowled and cas- socked in black after the fashion of Jesuit missionaries, with canvas gauntlets upon his hands and a mosquito veil covering his face, but rich as the robe they both reclined upon was the young man’s every garment, fastid- ious, distinctive, elegant, at once suiting a personality of superior tastes and fitting his rank as an overlord of the mighty company. Upon abnormally heavy shoulders he wore a blanket-cloth coat of a rare fawn color. Across his wide chest the coat was thrown open to the sweeping lake breeze, and, under- neath, a low-collared shirt of fine flannel, also unbuttoned, fluttered and crinkled and bellied, revealing his huge deltoids and the - great muscled ridges extending from neck to shoulder. His lower limbs were clothed in short trousers of creamy deerskin tanned soft and pliable as chamois and meeting Sum- mer moccasins of the same material, high-cut above the calf like Winter shoe-packs. A massive frame he possessed and possessed it proudly. Rugged like theneck was the head that rose above it, the clean-shaven, well- rounded jaw hollowed above the chin, the mouth full and firm, nose straight and spa- ciously nostriled for the big lungs, cheek- bones high and well-fleshed, hollowing the face again in front of the small close-set ears. Hair short-cropped and clean of scalp, his head was covered with a cap of soft amber leather, the visor peak of which shaded his gray eyes from the sun. Calm, self-reliant, determined, yet with the flash of the youthful spirit in them tempered by a wealth of ex- perience, the eyes looked ahead over Su- perior’s rollers toward the rock-ramparted, spruce-sentineled shore, and his voice when he spoke belied nothing of the masterfulness of his frame, his face or his eye. It was a deep voice, strong and resonant, thrilling with a peculiar timbre which be- trayed the fact that he was accustomed to read aloud from books or perhaps make oration to gatherings of traders and tribes. It was the voice of one in authority, one who supremely commands, decrees the law. “Look, Father Andrews,” he exulted, ex- tending a powerful brown, mobile hand, “yonder is our island. It hides the bay be- hind. Eugene Drummond will meet us in Grande Portage to-night, and to-morrow we shall be well on our way to our new district.” “But are you sure your voyageur will not fail you, Carlisle?” hazarded Father Andrews. “Eugene never fails me,” declared Carlisle with a shake of hishead. ‘“‘Last Fall when I got news of my transfer this Summer from Moose Factory to Cumberland House and sent him in to spy out the land, I gave him especial warning to be at Grande Portage not later than July the ninth. I told him I would reach there today, the ninth, on my way to Cumberland House, and he was under orders to lead the brigade on. No, he will not fail!” With a swing of his body he twisted his head and nodded to his Ojibway steersman. “The channel, Missowa!”’ he directed in the Ojibway dialect. “Ae, Factor,” returned Missowa who was standing up to his work in the high-curved stern. And in a different, guttural tone he added the laconic word—‘“‘Canoe!” “So?” demanded Carlisle, sitting erect to stare under his hand. “Maybe it’s the Iro- quois Indian who passed without seeing us as we ate dinner down the shore.”’ “No Iroquois,” decided the Ojibway steers- man. “NoIndian. Whiteman. A man of the French Company.” “A Northwest Fur Company man, eh? Yes, Missowa, yes—I believe you are right.” For now he saw it was indeed the North- west Fur Company’s livery that the approach- ing paddler wore, a Northwest canoe he paddled out through the molten wash of gold that the westering sun spilled over the high wooded mainland ridge where the Pigeon River brawled down to Superior. Like a Northwest voyageur passing out of Grande Portage Bay upon the customary evening fishing excursion the canoeman drift- ed, his slender paddle stirring the golden wash and gilding itself therein, his glistening yellow craft slanting like a shaft of sunshine from roller crest to roller trough and back again. But once outside the channel where the tree-crowned island which hid the bay screened him from sight of any one on shore, Carlisle noted a change in his attitude. From the casual pose of a fisherman he sud- denly threw himself into the pose of one who runs a race, and paddling viciously, bore like a surf-rider down upon the Factor’s craft. Every time he retrieved his paddle after the plunge he caused it to touch the lake sur- face with a vicious forward poke which sent the spray spattering like shot against his canoe bow where the letters N. W. were smeared in black pitch. The smear seemed to annoy him, and at every splash the Factor could hear him growl low in his throat. GOMIIGIOO SS (C@