Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 176: what you’re looking at

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

166 to do? Why, get Bookmiller and Riley and Ed Burlingame and a few of the boys, and a fence rail and a bucket of tar. We'll give Mr. Isaac Lily-White Hand a triumph. I’ve got a feather bed I can spare.” I grinned at the thought of it. We are a peaceable, long-suffering folk, but our resentment, once aroused, has been ex- pressed after this fashion more than once; and the parting guest so speeded was un- likely to return. But Mary Belle would have none of this. “Why, Monty,” she reproved, “I’m surprized at you! You mustn’t tell a soul— not even Warren. Don’t you see, Monty dear? My beau’s_ gone away, and left Mr. Hand to finish his railroad. I know he’s horrid; but Warren says he’s just a won-derful engineer; and if the boys tar n’ feather him, who’ s goihg to do his work? Bec. you sce,” she finished gravely, “Warren’ s railroad has just got to be done on time!” ‘Let him come back and do it himself, then,” I grumbled. “Now, Monty! You know he’s got another awful important job down there in Pennsylvania. He’s depending on Mr. Hand to get this railroad done by May fifteenth, so’s he can get everything cleaned up and take his vacation in June. Now, Doctor Kirke Montgomery, if you do any- thing to this Mr. Hand, and hurt my beau’s reputation because his work isn’t done on time, and spoil our honeymoon, I’ll never, never speak to you again. So there! Oh, Monty, please!” I “swore under my breath. There was reason in the girl’ s stand; but it went against the grain that Lily-White Hand should go scot free. “He’d been drinking, Monty. If he was sober, he’d never have touched me. And anyway, you were here.”’ “Oh, well!’ I capitulated, for she was very sweet in her anxiety for the work of “her beau.” “But you know very well that Warren wouldn’t stand for it.” “Even best beaus shouldn’t be told too much,” said Mary Belle seriously; and that bit of eminently feminine wisdom made me laugh, so that my rancor cooled. “Oh, well,” I repeated. ‘Have it your own way, child. But one thing I will do; I'll serve notice on Lily-White Hand! No, Mary Belle, I won’t touch him; but the whole of Black Valley town is going to be - eyes front. Adventure posted with no-trespass signs for Lily-White. Come along, now!” She yielded in her turn, seeing that I was not to be moved; and we walked back to the village. At my house she must stop and see Molly; but before we went in I made her promise never to venture alone into woods or meadows while Lily-White Hand remained in Black Valley. _ Then I left her and went down-town to hunt up Verne Bookmiller; for, if I spoke with the man Hand myself, I feared for my promise to Mary Belle. I found Verne in the hardware store, buying chicken-wire. “Lo, doc,” said he. new hen-park. 2 I beckoned him into the little back room full of nail-kegs, redolent of kerosene from the great drum in one corner. “Listen, Verne; I want you to take a message for me—to Lily-White Hand.” He spat reflectively, and tugged at his square gray beard. “Didn’ t know you had any truck ‘ith him, doc.” ‘Humph!” said I. ‘You tell him I said to keep away from Mary Belle Hume.” Old Verne stiffened. ““Mary Belle!” he repeated, and his high, nasal drawl had dropped half an octave. “What’s he bin doin’ t’ her?”’ Mary Belle, the only child of a widow, had always been the whole town’s baby. I myself could remember, when I first set- tled in Black Valley, her grave daily calls upon a score of “uncles,” one; and how her little fat legs would twinkle as she trotted-into store after store from which she never emerged without an apple or a stick of candy. No, in Black Valley Mary Belle would never lack for champions. “Never you mind, Verne. I promised Mary Belle. Don’t youlipin. Just goand find Hand, and tell him from me to keep his Tell him his job is down on the Quag. He can come to the hotel for his meals; but if he so much as turns his head towards Mrs. Hume’s house I’ll make a colander of him! Tell him that; tell him I can shoot him down on Main Street at high noon, and any jury in the three valleys "ll acquit me and give me a vote of thanks.”’ “Uh-huh. Ye-ah. I'll do all o’ that, doc—an’ mebbe add a word ’r two fr m’self an’ the rest o’ the boys.” “Gotta build me a COmicloo of whom I was CN Wp) CO