Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 152: what you’re looking at

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

142 meant it was frightened, though it did not appear so. It was the arctic fox who was the sur- prized beast, though, for the thing was black—or at least if it wasn’t black it looked like it. Asa matter of fact it was a sort of blue-black from nose-tip to tail-point, and if anything it was wrapped to the eyes in even more fur than the arctic fox. Black things were unusual in that white place, and for a reason. It wasn’t healthy to be arrayed in black. Black showed up miles off, and advertised the wearer too much to the hungry. _ The arctic fox had not seen a living black creature, bird or beast, since, the snow came nearly half a year ago, and he nearly fell over himself with astonishment. Also he snarled and snapped, being frightened, too. Then the snarl and snap were echped in his ear; and he was aware, via a sharp, burn- ing pain in his back, that in watching the first apparition out of the storm he had committed a blunder. He had allowed the second to fall over him as well. He rolled over twice, snapping about six times in the process, and was up on to his feet, all in less than half a second; but the wind blew him flat again, and he crouched, staring at the second black one. His eyes, however, opened wide; and he stretched forward, bristling and snarling and wicked to behold. The wind whipped the snarl from his jaws again; but the other, who had calmly pounced upon the ptar- migan, knew what he meant by his looks, for it darted clear, and the arctic fox dropped on his prey, facing the strangers, and, worse luck, the storm. ° He could just see his assailants, two dark shapes in the restless, hurrying white, half- crouched, up to their bellies in snow, and their eyes gleaming. He saw the flash of their fangs and he knew that they snarled. But it was the light in their eyes that held him. If ever he knew starvation he saw it in those eyes. Those beasts had reached that point when they held their lives for sale in exchange for a mouthful of food. They were desperate—m4d. They would stop at nothing. es And the little, round, muffled, spotless arctic fox, watching them narrowly, weighed his chances and did not find them rosy. Two to one is long odds in the wild. The first rush came five minutes later, Adventure when the wind gave a little. The arctic fox rose to meet it, right up on his hind legs, and so did the other. For a moment they grappled with inconceivable ferocity, fore- arm to forearm, jaw against jaw. They executed some lightning play with their teeth, and then in a flash the other had him by the neck. That, however, did not worry the arctic fox; the other was at full liberty to get his fangs through our friend’s fine, thick ruff, if he could and was given time to do so. He could not, however, and was given no time at all, for instantaneously the arctic fox pinned him by the foreleg. There was a yell of anguish, and the other wrenched away. Then the blizzard came on with more raging accompaniments, a new set, worse than before, and both combatants could only crouch and breathe through their noses. The arctic fox groveled, nearly blinded, and felt for his ptarmigan with his nose. Then he quivered and jerked back, for he had touched another nose, wet and cold, as well as feathers; and the owner of that other nose was an arctic fox too—of the gentler sex. Not that you’d have known it by the way she tried to snap the white one’s nose literally off. Indeed, they were both arctic foxes, those two black ones—or rather blue ones. The white arctic fox made a little friendly, whining noise to the lady who owned that muzzle. He thought she could hear it, but she could not. And moreover he made no attack upon her. She guzzled and tore like a mad thing in a cloud of white feathers and white snow whirling about her head. The white arctic fox could just see her head through the fog. He watched her eat, and snatched a wing only—just one wing out of all the bird that was his. He made no attempt to recover the rest, but-when the other, who was bigger and self-evidently the female’s consort, throwing chivalry to the winds, made an effort to recover not only the rest but the whole bird, he found the- white one crouched in front of him, ready and dangerous. He drew off and circled round, crawling on his belly, a faint smudge in the night; and as he circled the white fox pivoted, keeping himself between his black foe and the fam- ished female thing. COmiclboo oN ) C©