Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

68 “The men of Black-beard are coming,”’ he cried to the drowsy camp. ‘The sign of the fire flashed through the night to me. . They will be here with the winged dawn. I, Waseyawin, have spoke it. Ae, and I go to tell the Factor.” Like wraiths the Hudson’s Bay men arose from wherever they lay, from bough beds on the ground, from the canopy of the bushes, from the tents spread in desperation to keep off the plague of mosquitoes. They stepped forth shadowy, vague, thronging like ghosts in the dark that would soon break to show the stern, bronzed faces of Northmen sculptured by the chisel of daring. Among them the chief trader Galt moved his heavily-built body, ordering, directing, posting them in their allotted positions. “‘Go across the valley, Eugene,”’ he begged Drummond, “‘and let them know what we know. It is good to be ready when the Factor comes.” Amid the low, musical, night-roar of the waters flowing under the boom and the spaced thud of ice cakes smiting the logs, Drummond’s moccasins pat-patted across on the wet bark. He gave the word to the polers as he passed, and in a few minutes more ghostly forms were thronging in the bivouac at the other end of the boom. Waseyawin waited for none of these things. He ran as the deer run, the tang of the dank night air and the smell of the young earth throbbing in his nostrils and setting his primitive blood a-leap, making straight for Cumberland House. Up the trampled shore he sped and through the sleeping city of teepees, setting the curs to howling and stirring the tribes from their dreaming of forest dreams. They cried out to him to know if he was Maunobosho or Nenaubosho - stalking through the night, but he heeded them not. Through the open gate of the palisades he darted and across the dark stockade ground. He knew there was no use in going to the Factor’s house, for he had seen that only Wayne, his daughter and Father Andrews were sleeping there. The Factor’s bed was in the trading-room, and, dispens- ing with all custom in the urgency of the moment, Waseyawin sprang up the steps and opened the door. Carlisle lay upon the temporary bed be- hind his desk, sunk in a deep sleep after the long day’s toil. He did not hear the almost Adventure soundless feet of his bowsman, did not wake till he felt the Indian fingers laid softly and respectfully upon his cheek. “Koos koos kwa, Factor!’ cried Wase- yawin. ‘Wakeup! The eyes of fire winked through the dark to me, and after the eyes will the sun flash upon the paddles of the men of the French Company.” “Tt is well, Waseyawin,” spoke Carlisle in Cree, mentally alert the moment he was awake. ‘Go among your people in their teepees and gather the hunters. Take them with you to the Devil’s Elbow to strengthen my men. I will not be far behind you.” CHAPTER XIII A SKIN FOR A SKIN Wie G ready his weapons as he went, Carlisle ran forth from the trad- ing-room. The stars were gone as he glanced upward. The sky was graying, and above the eastern forest-line the lemon forelights of the dawn were gleaming. Outside the stockade the Indian teepees buzzed like a vast colony of bees. Wasey- awin had already hurried the hunters away, but their womenkind were hissing the news of impending trouble about and scurrying off to the slope above the Devil’s Elbow where they might see their lords give battle. Carlisle’s swift feet passed many of them on the way, and as he came to the steep of the benchland, the vivid picture of the valley below spread sharp and clear before his eyes. Through the great gut of greening hills, along their scarred earth faces, rocky out- crops and scrubby slopes rolled the slum- brous sheet of golden-colored water. Its vagrant floes had found the gouged earth an easy place to lodge, and there shimmer- ing acres of ice were stranded, ghostly white in the growing light. Above hung the furry buds and opened leaves of the willows, the lacy, climbing birches and over all the regal, scornful spruce pricking stiffly into the lemon sky. Clusters of tents marked the ends of the boom, drawn like a black triple cable across the golden flood and fretting it into a snarl- ing line of foam where the flow plunged under. ’Round the tents and _ scattered across the long boom he marked his wait- ing forces, all the swarthy hunters Wasey- awin had marshaled, all the Hudson’s Bay white men, half-breeds and resident Indians COnniclooo S (©