Adventure Magazine Cover — page 157: what you’re looking at

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

The Dragon’s Claw reached the foreign quarter of that city, they could not reckon themselves safe. “Possibly not then,”’ meditated McNeill, watching the opposite sky-line. There was no trail on the face of the other cliff, so he covered the ledge on their own side and was on guard against surprize. At the end of the straight tunnel Remsden and Helen lay resting, if not asleep. Ling and the rest were tucked in a niche, none too comfortably, and McNeill himself had tied the soaked hide-strips that fettered them. “T wonder,” he went on in thought, ‘‘just what the old boy did back there at the temple. He was hobnobbing with that sleek rat, Fung-Ti, who got beaten out for high-priest at the last Hoang Lung election. Remsden’s got his own ambitions. He’d rather be head of the Museum of Philologi- cal Research than anything in this world, or the next for that matter. He’d barter all he has for that, his stepdaughter included. When it comes down to his own ends he’s a devil of selfishness. A-ha!’ He cuddled up his rifle lightly, leaning forward from the ledge. There was more than a hint of moonrise across the ravine, and his ears had caught the clink of metal— not hoof on stone, since few horses were shod in that region, but blade or point against stirrup. Then, silhouetted against the radiance of the eastern sky, back so far from the edge that only the upper parts of their bodies showed, there came a file of horsemen. The riders wore queer, pointed caps and flowing robes. He could see spears and guns aslant their shoulders. They rode fast, and he counted over fifty. There was a slight shuffle beside him. Ling, bound as he was, had wriggled his way to the front of the cave. His clothes had caught on something, and the force he had summoned to break free had betrayed him, even as he raised his face and opened his mouth to shout to the dark riders across the canon. With a sidelong sweep McNeill brought the butt of his gun down on the base of the Mongol’s skull, and the cry died in his throat. But it wasaclose call, and McNeill patrolled the cave to the niche where he inspected his prisoners and gagged them with dirty strips from their own clothes, threatening them with a knife if they made the tiniest sound. Then he went back to where he had left Ling. 143 The ledge was empty. “Came to and rolled himself over,’”’ Mc- Neill decided. “Now I wonder just why.” The answer came to him almost imme- diately. The riders were coming back again, and McNeill could see two of them dismount and peer down into the black gulf, evidently suspicious of the sound they had heard—the slump of Ling into the cafion. He could have picked them off easily, but to remain hidden was of paramount impor- tance. They had but a small supply of water. Besieged in the cave, they must soon give in. No other sound came from the fallen Ling who had sacrificed himself in vain to serve the fierce priests of Hoang Lung. The smashing drop of a quarter of a thou- sand feet had beaten the life out of him. “They'll stay till morning,’ McNeill told himself, “and then they’ll find him, un- less = He went back to the end of the tunnel where the natural rift narrowed and went up in a narrow, irregular ramp. Under this McNeill paused. Once he wetted his finger and held it up in the darkness. He thought he could detect a faint stirring of the air. From the pocket of the coat he wore, for the night air was chill, he fished out an electric torch and slipped the switch. The beam fell on the sleeping face of Helen Remsden, as she was styled, having adopted the name of her stepparent. McNeill’s jaw hardened as he gazed at the beauty that even the cruel forcing of the last two days’ flight could not eradicate. From an angle to the right where the tunnel side-pocketed came the faint stamping of horses and the reek of their bodies. Then he shifted the ray to Remsden’s pufly countenance and, stooping, shook him by the shoulder. “Eh, whate” Ssh!” cautioned McNeill. ‘‘Come with me to the cave mouth. I want a talk with you.” His tone was imperative and Remsden yielded to it without further grumbling. By this time the-moon had topped the further wall and was whitening the ledge outside. By and by its light would steal down into the depths and, perhaps, reveal the body of Ling, sure sign that the white men were beleaguered near by. McNeill thought of climbing down and either bringing back the body or hiding it Eomichbooks.¢o nm