Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 7: what you’re looking at

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

Ambush 5 A} “Certainement,” he reiterated, “I change you soon. I change you soon!” EW] TWENTY feet away, and_ still wet} in mid-career, he whirled his prow ~ with one flick of his paddle on to the nose of a cross-sea, and there he poised spec- tacularly, balancing with superb skill the while he threw the tasseled cap from his head into the canoe-bottom and followed it with the red shirt stripped from his Lody. Naked to the waist around which buckskin trousers were loosely belted, he stood silhouetted against the flaming disk of the sun, his short, squat, powerful body, tanned to a smoky bronze, shining dull-red. All the time his expressive hands gesticu- lated. His volatile face, tanned like his body, creased itself in a cunning grin so that the milk-white teeth gleamed, the thin nos- trils quivered, the cold-black eyes danced. The grin became a chuckle, and he tossed his head from side to side, streaming his raven hair this way and that in wild disorder on the whistling wind. “Eh, w’at you tink, camarades?”’ he salut- ed as he stamped upon the discarded shirt. “Drummond!” ejaculated Carlisle and Missowa in one breath. “Oui,” laughed the voyageur, “‘an’ glad to be rid of dat disguise! Once I scrape dat diable pitch off ma bows an’ paint dem wit’ de crimson star, I feel happy again.” Carlisle glanced aside at the priest with a quiet smile of vindication. “I told you, Father, that Eugene would not fail me,” he reminded. “Aye, Paul,” nodded Andrews, “and may all your subjects always be as faithful!” The Factor turned back to Eugene Drum- mond. 7 “But why did you not wait in Grande Portage as I ordered?” he demanded. ‘Why are you in that disguise and why have you come down the lake to meet me?” “De Nor’westaires close Grande Portage,” announced Drummond, with a dramatic sweep of his arm. ‘Nobody goes troo— Hudson’s Bay men, Free-Traders, nor any- body else.” Something like an imprecation rumbled in Carlisle’s throat. A wave of anger suffused and darkened the sun-bronze of his face, and his gray eyes widened, glinting hard. “They would try that?” he blurted in a voice so heavy that it was almost a bellow. “They would dare?” “Dey have dared,” assured the voyageur. “Dey claim her as Nor’west ground. Ba gar, Factor, dis beeg fight dat t’reatens so long, she’s come at last. All troo de Sas- katchewan w’ere you sent me spyin’ I be see de signs.” “What about our trade on the Saskatche- wan now?” “It’s wan long report, an’ I’m have to geeve you de figures ashore, but to spik her brief, I’m find de Nor’westaires be winnin’ our trade. Oui, and dere’s anodder winnin’ more dan us or de Nor’westaires.” “A Free-Trader, eh?” “Certainement, wan American frontiers- man named Ralph Wayne.” . The six-fathom canoe gave a violent lurch. Father Andrews had started suddenly, and even as Carlisle gazed at him in mild surprise the priest viciously smote the palm of his left gauntlet down the back of his right. ‘“‘A mosquito under your glove, eh, Father?” the Factor bantered, angry gravity disap- pearing from his face under the impulse of whimsical laughter. “It takes more than canvas to stop those whining bloodsuckers.” The priest answered nothing, but while he rubbed his hand Eugene Drummond gazed keenly at him across the twenty-foot water gap. For Andrews had been a mystery to Drummond ever since the first time he had set eyes on him. That was twenty-one years before when the priest had drifted up Lake Huron into Fort Michillimackinac in charge of the nine-year-old boy, Paul Carlisle. The boy’s father, so Andrews gave it out, was an English officer, Captain Charles Carlisle of Butler’s Rangers, stationed at Niagara, who had been killed in Butler’s raid upon the Wyoming Valley and who, being a widower, had left the boy in his charge. That was all Eugene Drummond knew of the history of either of the two, and the passing of twenty-one years had not increased his knowledge very much. ‘True, he had seen young Paul schooled, given entrance as a clerk into the service of the great company, advanc- ed little by little, transferred for a period to England where he managed the London fur sales and at the same time dipped into the higher learning, and finally made Factor of the important James Bay post of Moose Factory whence he was now moved to be lord of Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan. Although Andrews was his companion and guardian through it all, and Eugene Drum- mond was in almost constant contact with GoOmicidooks (C@)