Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 61: what you’re looking at

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

Ambush For him, too, her magic was potent. He was a little boy again in the post of Niagara; his was the boyish vision of its pageants and alarms; and his was the boyish memory of his father, tall, straight, handsome in the dashing uniform of a captain of the Rangers —all in that old day before his mother died. When the music ceased they did not know it till they saw Joan slipping off the stool and coming toward them through the haze. “Isn’t it time to start.their dance, Paul?” she smiled. ‘You know I want to take my father his own New Year’s dinner very soon.” “Yes, yes,’ assented Carlisle, returning from his childhood’s vision and dropping his pipe ashes into the birch logs, “‘we’ll go right over and set things going and then see about the dinner.” He helped her on with the beautiful ermine capote, its hood fringed with tails of the silver fox, and they followed the men across to the store buildings and into the trading-room. : The trading-room was full of whites, breeds and Indians of both sexes waiting expectantly. They, like Carlisle’s officers, had feasted to the full, and now they were ready for the merriment. The room was cleared for the occasion, benches ranged ’round the sides, and the walls and ceiling lined with bright red calico and hung with the New Year’s decorations of evergreens and scarlet swamp _ berries. Upon Galt’s counter were placed three chairs for the musicians, high up under the burning candles upon the shelves. One of these chairs Galt took himself with his violin. Drummond and Jarvis climbed up on either side of him with bass viol and piccolo. The: crowd upon the floor at Carlisle’s direction resolved itself into coup- les, forming a Circassian circle ’round the room, and to the vamping of the violin strings the dance was on. Buoyantly, madly, they danced, all their spirits congealed through long, lonely months melting instantly in the warmth of human companionship and_ effervescing in flourish, laughter and shout. Though Carlisle and Joan withdrew after the first dance, the gaiety did not pause. They had given it the necessary impetus. ‘The feet of joyous abandon were loosed. While they watched a little, the square dances, string dances and round dances shuttled in quick succession. The musi- J o9 clans changed, the instruments changed, violin, viol and piccolo giving way to man- dolin, tambourine or bagpipes, but the tide of music and restless muscles flowed per- petually. One moment it was Galt leading the Feather Dance of the tribes, the next Drum- mond banging the tambourine he had learn- ed from his Spanish neighbors and reeling a Spanish whirl, or, again, Lewis strutting the length of the room, his droning bag under his arm, skirling away on the pipes to the Highland steps. fc. een £ROM that carnival of color and | @ = movement Carlisle and Joan were ~ never missed when they stole unos- tentatiously back to the Factor’s house. The Cree maids had cleared the table, but according to Joan’s instructions they had reserved a choice portion of each course, enough for Wayne and Andrews and Mason if he should have the heart to taste the soup or nibble a ptarmigan breast. It was packed in a large lidded basket woven of willow by the Cree weavers, all ready to be warmed up and eaten, and Carlisle, adding a bottle of wine and a canister of tobacco, hung the basket over his shoulder by its leather thong. - The sound of the dance echoed forth from the trading-room as they passed by and on along the fringe of trees toward the camp- fires of the Crees. Here in the shelter of the forest all those in from the trap-lines had made open bivouac, snow-walled quadran- gles scraped to earth, floored with spruce boughs and warmed by abundant fires. A few old squaws, too old to care for the revelry in the post, were tending the fires, while’round the blaze sprawled many groups of wolf-dogs, stick-tied to prevent them wandering or fighting, lying with feet out- stretched to the heat or worming forward luxuriously upon their bellies. Each team relaxed by themselves, snarl- ing defiance at any inquisitive encroacher from a strange outfit and baring fangs in meteor-like leap and retreat at the end of their leashes. On one side of the fire in the end quadrangle which they skirted, an especially large five-dog team lay by an up- ended cariole, and Carlisle pointed them out to Joan. “Those big Hudson’s Bays are Soaring Eagle’s dogs,” he informed her. ‘‘Aren’t they splendid brutes? They weigh one hun- GOmiiGcidoo SS (C@