Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

16 heard o’ fellows that got into poker games, gave a lot o' notes and found out they was in Fitzpatrick’s hands. And there was a customs man I knew once—a woman busted into his room at the hotel, began screechin’ for help and strangely enough there was a couple o’ fellows next door that gave very compromisin’ testimony. Somethin’ the same has happened to some Army men— framed. “Without knowin’, exactly, I’d figure that it would suit Fitzpatrick to get you kicked out o’ the Army by means of gettin’ you corralled in some scrape. He’ll know you’re in El Paso before you been there a day and if I was you I’d keep out o’ poker games with strangers, fight off any good- lookin’ women that tries to get friendly, and I wouldn’t go over to Juarez without about six good witnesses along in the party. Sabe?”’ “That sounds easy,” ruminated Tex, “although it’s a cinch to frame a man unless he’s got his eyes wide open.” ‘And easy to frame him so’s this officer and gentleman stuff would look mighty bad, too.” He raised his voice as the motor in the McMullen ship was started for its warm-up. ‘Without mentionin’ no names, Fitz- patrick has been the means of some resig- nations from government service that was to Dave’s advantage.”’ He slowly arose from his squatting posi- tion and spat deliberately. “Pll mosey on down the line now,”’ he said. ‘I just dropped in to give the dope to Cap’n Merritt to retail to you. Pretty lucky, meetin’ up with you this way.” He looked up at the six-foot-two flyer, who had risen likewise. “So long. I guess you and your friend here can take care o’ yourselves.”’ ‘We'll try to—and thanks. So long.” Tex watched the bow-legged, overalled ranger stroll toward his pony, which was drooping in the shade of the next hangar. “Looks like business might be pretty good this trip,” he observed. Ransom was tingling with excitement. He had been in shell-swept areas in France, but that had been merely impersonal horror. This man-to-man stuff—the check- mating of a border bad-man—adventure! ‘‘We’ll have to watch our step, all right, but now that we’re wise e He did not finish the sentence. His mind Adventure was leaping ahead in vague pictures of fu- ture struggles. He had forgotten for the moment what MacDowell meant to him. Tex glanced at him. Those ‘‘we’s” in the young observer’s excited words had not ex- caped him. ‘The corners of his lips curved slightly, but he said nothing. It might be that there was already an entering wedge in Ransom’s armor of dislike . .. that Captain Kennard had planned better than he knew. VI THE trip from Sanderson to EI — 4 Paso, broken by a landing at = Marfa, was an unforgettable event for Ransom, and far from a matter of course to MacDowell, who had flown the course only once before. Ten thousand feet below them the railroad was the only evidence of civilization that could be seen. ‘Tower- ing, mesquite-covered mountains, part of the Rocky Mountain Range, rolled vastly from the Rio Grande. It was the far- famed Big Bend that was spread below— cruel desolation that provides perhaps the last surviving haunt in the United States for outlaws. Those forbidding fastnesses, bleak and vast, held beneath their green curtains unnumbered hunted bad-men who threaded their lonely ways below—perhaps were even then lifting hard eyes to the speck that was sweeping over them. The rail- road seemed like a frail strand striving to hold the small outposts of the outside world together. And in all that country nothing but.a - bad wreck faced the flyer whose motor should fail. Perhaps the twisting Rio Grande might hold some wide places where death could be postponed for a while, but weary miles of uncharted wilderness, inhab- ited by the refuse of a none too particular country, would still face any one fortunate enough to save himself in the sure wreck of landing. ‘Tex watched nothing but his ship now, his eyes traveling from instrument to instrument. The air-pressure had crept up a trifle— nearly five pounds. It was nothing to worry about, but even the slight prospect of choking the motor made the pilot care- fully regulate the pump. New oil at Marfa had put the oil-pressure at a safe twenty- five. Fifteen hundred revolutions, engine running cool at the high altitude, voltmeter charging two—all was well, and yet Tex COmicloo oN Uf) CO