Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 164: what you’re looking at

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

154 up its slope; but to reach it from Black Valley one must drive north two miles, or south almost as far, to Center Street or Canada Street, there cross the valley on firm ground and turn back on the other side. At best, it makes a five-mile detour; yet not the most heedless of our dwellers would suggest road-making upon the Black Quag. That was reserved for these rail- way engineers. And so in due course we reached Camp Two, and Simon hitched his team outside _ the office where the four horses which drew the engineers to their work still stood, harnessed to their long covered wagon. THE rain had ceased; miraculously the sun appeared, and with its coming the ordered activities about us took on a visibly faster tempo. The little construction engines, drawing long strings of stilted dirt-cars toward the end- of-track, whistled cheerily; snatches of song came from the laborers who plied pinch-bar and maul and _ track-wrench. Simon Black, rubber-booted as became the season, strode down the muddy track, and I followed him out on to the bosom of the Black Quag. Six feet high and, to all seeming, solid as granite, the new-made grade ran north- ward for three hundred yards and more; and beyond it the track strode on precari- ously, light-trestled on the thin skin of the Quag itself. Half-way we must step aside for the coming of a loaded dirt-train; and when it: had rattled by Simon stood quiet a moment, staring down at the Quag be- neath him. I followed his gaze. Before my eyes, quite silently and as if bystealth, a tiny crack opened and spread without a sound. For a yard—a rod—the black earth gaped slightly, and blacker mud oozed bubbling up. “Humph!” said Simon Black, and strode onward. We reached the end of the grade just as the dirt-train squealed to a stop upon the trestle beyond and dumped its cars on to the Quag with a thunderous roar. And here, watching, gloved hands idle at his sides, stood Lily-White Hand. He did not notice our coming, but gestured slightly to the trainmen and turned his back, looking across the flats toward Black Valley town. The little engine panted; with much fuss and -banging the light dirt-cars began to Adventure. roll back toward us. They clanked past Lily-White Hand; and Simon gave a warn- ing shout. The body of one car, still tilted, was swinging back into place; it thrust out a long iron bar, reaching for the engineer. With one flashing look Hand leaped away from its menace, lost his footing on the soft slope and stumbled down Wiege the Quag: Here was no open, honest sink-hole, but what seemed solid ground. Yet, as Lily- White Hand turned to climb the grade once more, I saw that he stood knee-deep in it. He made to raise a foot and could not. Puzzled, he looked down, and tried again, and sank to the mid-thigh. The Black Quag held him fast. Yet he showed no fear; only irritation. “Here, you men!” he called to a near-by gang of laborers. “Lend a hand!” They came unwillingly, muttering to one another; but they came and clambered down the ‘slope. Then Simon Black took charge of things. His heavy shoulders straightened; his head snapped back so that the thick black beard jutted straight out. He raised a voice long used to calling mile-distant cows, and the squat laborers shrank from the blast of it. “Stop!”’ he commanded. ‘You (oe guineas—be you tired o’ life? Keep off the Quag. Go git ropes—git boards—git fence-rails—anything!”’ The men obeyed, unquestioning, though Hand cursed them vilely as he sank lower and lower. They found a bit of wire cable somewhere and brought it, panting. Simon twisted it into a bight. “Hands up!” he snapped at the mired engineer, now arm-pit deep in the Quag. Lily-White obeyed. His face was com- posed, but strangely white against the black, viscid muck that rose about him. Old Simon tossed his stiff loop skilfully, like a practised quoit-player. It dropped over Hand’s raised arms, and he lowered them. The cable settled safely about his arm-pits; but lowered arms, and shoulders too, sank suddenly beneath the mud. His chin tilted back as the Black Quag reached up for its victim. “Quick!” bawled Simon. that rope, an’ pull like ——!”’ But even so, with all of us tugging as for dear life, Lily-White Hand was lip-deep in the earth before the Black Quag began, sullenly, to yield him to our traction. “Tail on to COmicloo CN Wp) CO