Adventure Magazine Cover — page 120: what you’re looking at

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

114 And his gaze switched to me, but I had myself well in hand and remarked: _ “That seems as mysterious as the manner of Ogden’s dying. I had no idea a man could always identify his own arrows. The killer was trying to cover his tracks. Too smart to use one of his own arrows. But to think of taking one of the chief’s arrows!” “T don’t mean every Shawnee man can pick out his own arrers. When he’s gitting ready for a big fight he makes a lot. He has some that other men have lost. But Blue Jacket has a red mark on the shaft of his. No Shawnee would think of stealing an arrer from the chief. Too many quiv- ers to take one from without doing that.” With great earnestness [ cried: “The Delawares! I was forgetting them. You believe one of them did it!” No such idea had occurred to him, and for a bit he looked as stupid as Durgin ever had looked. “The Delawares!”’ he slowly repeated. “‘Now I wonder— No! No! A Delaware would never think of killing a Shawnee prisoner, let alone a friend of the Shawnees. Besides, Ogden had a road-belt, and both villages knew it. No, no! No Delaware would ever dream of doing such a thing. The like of it ain’t to be considered. Yet if White Tom took one of his crazy notions 2 _ A squawking sound from the cabin inter- rupted him. ‘“‘Simpson’s got the notion he’s to be tor- tured by Spotted Snake,” I broke in, to bring Old Podge to his senses. ‘“That’s why he keeps so close to the cabin. His mind 1s sick as well as his body.” Girty nodded, his thoughts refusing to be diverted to Podge. “‘There’s not the slightest grain of sense in what you’ve put in my mind by speaking of the Delawares. But it’s a trail that’s soon run down. I'll send a man across to see if White Tom’s still in the village. He got back there yesterday afternoon, all tuckered out from a long journey from the Muskingum.” “He’s probably there now,” I said, fear- ing I had brought vengeance down on poor Podge. “He was there yesterday afternoon. I didn’t see him here in the village. But he might have come over in the evening. He mightn’t be noticed with a blanket over his head. I'll speak to Blue Jacket about Adventure it. He can ask Buckongahelas to find out the truth. White Tom’s been fair crazy against all whites since he lost his son. Still it wouldn’t be like him to cover up a killing. He’d dance and sing and rave after doing a job like that. Whole thing seems to be twisted up—no sense to it. I can see how you might have a interest in killing Ogden. He had something he wanted tosay about you. But the drunken fool wouldn’t talk when he had a chance!” “He would have talked different when he was sober,”’ I insisted. ‘‘We may have met in a general fight. Rows every day between the men on leave. I had my share of it. But if he had a real grudge against me I don’t know what it was.” “It'll keep,” Girty surlily said. ‘Blue Jacket never leaves a mystery behind him. As it looks now none of you three men had a chance to kill him. But the chief may take a short cut and decide it was your medicine. It would have been better for you-1f Ogden had lived and talked. Now he can’t talk, and a man can believe he had all sorts of things to tell.” “He didn’t have nothing to tell that would bother us any,” stoutly spoke up Durgin. Girty walked away without a_ word. Old Podge’s terror-stricken face showed at the door, his flabby lips trying to say some- thing. Durgin softly swore at him with calm New England precision; but it was some time before Podge could compose himself enough to whisper weakly: “You heard him! You heard what he said! Just a pistol shot away is the last man on earth I want to meet! If I don’t git out of this mighty pert my old sculp will cover his son’s bones.” “You'll kill yourself yet if you don’t stop this foolishness,” Durgin warned him sourly. ‘“‘You ain’t wearing a beard. You don’t look like you did when you shot his son. He wouldn’t know you in a dog’s age. Put some more paint on your face and hold your head up.” “Paint!” jeered Podge. “All the paint ever spread on all the red tribes couldn’t blind his eyes. But I'l] never go under that ’s knife. Tl start and run for it and die quick with a arrer or a ball through my back!’’ And if we had not blocked the doorway the thoroughly frightened man would have started running through the village. We ComiclboOoks.conn