Adventure Magazine Cover — page 183: what you’re looking at

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

There and Back briefly on the ship, and then shifted to meet Hemingwood’s gaze. There was a baleful glare in them that boded ill for the airman. ‘““Gover’mint, eh?” he sneered. “I’ve seed these hyar airyplanes around, and been hankerin’ to ketch one of ’em.”’ “We had to land. It was an accident, sir. We were coming from Dayton to Louisville. .Personally, I just want to get away from here . “Likely ye air anxious to git away now,” retorted the old man with drunken satis- faction. “But ye kain’t.”’ He seemed to be in a state of complete exultation—mentally licking his lips over the prospect before him. He HAM his eyes to his nephew. “And whut hev you been up to? Why is thet gun lyin’ over thar when ye ought t’ hev these revenooers tied tighter’n a drum?” _ Mark was silent. The utter fear ex- pressed in both his own and his sister’s faces was a revelation to Hemingwood. Even Woodruff, who had been smiling to himself at the turn events had taken, was sobered by the baleful determination apparent in the old.man, whose menacing rifle was con- stantly ready for action. “Answer me, ye skunk!” roared the mountaineer in sudden fury. The girl quailed as though from a blow, but her brother gave no indication that he had heard. For a moment it seemed that the old man was about to leap on his nephew, and then he thought better of it. k* “Pll tend t’ you and Liz later,” he said significantly. Hemingwood sickened with a physical nausea as the bloodshot eyes roved over the girl’s rounded form. In.a flash of com- prehension he saw what he believed to be the horrible truth. What he had heard, from men who knew, about the terrible de- gradation that sometimes could be found back in the hills, came to him with the force of a blow. He believed that in Mark and his uncle he had before him living illustrations of all that was best, and all that was lowest, in the mountain people. “Put down yer dress, ye ——!’’ roared Lafe in uncontrollable fury, and there fol- lowed a stream of filthy epithets hurled at the cowering. girl.. Something snapped in Hemingwood’s 173 brain. He leaped forward, straight at the mountaineer and his gun. Like a flash the old man raised it to his shoulder. He did not see his nephew hurl himself forward. Mark had been standing to one side of his uncle, and an instant before the crack of the shot, which would have surely been the end of Hemingwood, the young Ken- tuckian’s hand knocked the rifle downward and sideward. : There was a groan from Woodruff. Mark, with the gun which he had twisted from his uncle’s hands, turned quickly. The non- com. had dropped to the ground the instant Hemingwood had launched himself at the mountaineer, and the wild shot had reached him as he lay prone to escape any chance of being hit. When Hemingwood reached his side he was dead—shot cleanly through the heart. There was no time to think of him, for a moment. For just an instant the old man hesitated, and then with a bestial snarl leaped at his nephew, who was standing as though carved from stone, the gun in his hands. Hemingwood came to his as- sistance just in time. The old man had almost succeeded in wresting the rifle from the surprized Mark’s grasp. He fought with a crazed strength that gave the two other men plenty to handle for a moment, but finally, with the help of the girl, they had him tied securely with rope she had brought down to use on the airmen. The old man lay quietly; a ter- rible glare in his eyes. “Woodruff is dead,” Hemingwood an- nounced quietly as he dusted himself off. “Tf he hadn’t been a coward he wouldn’t bel”’ flashed the girl. “T know that. Thank you, Mark, for keeping me alive.” ‘“Whut air we goin’ t’ do now?” de- manded the girl, her bosom rising and falling quickly. “‘Give me just a minute and I'll tell you.” _ The flier’s smoldering eyes. rested on Woodruff’s body for a moment, and then on the murderer. He walked slowly down the field, followed by the wondering looks of the others. Few men would have even considered for a moment what Hemingwood had in mind, but his customary careless fearlessness was now intensified by the over- whelming revulsion and hate that swept him as he thought of the man who had killed Woodruff. He thought of the old NOOK (C@