Adventure Magazine Cover — page 92: what you’re looking at

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

86 Not he. There was fire in his eyes, a pug- nacious set and thrust to his bulldog jaw and shoulders, and a cocky swing to his arms, as he ‘strutted down Lily White Street with me at his heels. “T’ll need a bath more after I get through with that louse than before I start in on him,” he replied. : “Think he’ll fight?” “He'll fight or jest stand there an’ take a wallopin’, one o’ the two.” We entered the enemy’s camp. In ie tent were Gillen, Johnson and Ruination. They sat on a cot, matching coins, paying the three-cornered match game. Old as this flimflam game is, there’s many a good but callow sport caught at it every day. It’s very simple. The three players turn up their coins. The odd man wins. That is, if two turn up heads and the other a tail, the tail wins. Two tails and a head, the head wins. Three of a kind, no one wins. The game is on the level—if they toss the coins in the air. But when they merely turn them over in their palms, so that each knows beforehand whether he’s turning up head or tail, then nine times out of ten there’s a “hen on;” that is, two of them are in cahoots to trim the third. One of these two signals the other what he is going to turn up—head or tail—and the other turns up the opposite. Then the third man—the sucker—must match one of them, leaving the other the winner, the odd man. That’s what Gillen and Johnson were doing to Ruination when Snoots and I en- tered their tent. Gillen and Johnson shot black scowls at us. The grin Ruination gave us was not that of a happy ship’s cook; he bore all the earmarks of a loser. Gillen and Johnson had fair-sized piles of bills and coins before them, while Ruination had not more than seven or eight dollars. { waited, watching Snootful aslant. Fora few minutes he stood with arms folded, looking down on the play in silence. Fin- ally he spoke, but to Ruination instead of Gillen. ‘Mean to tell me you’re as easy as that?” Ruination looked up, mouth open, eyes blinking. ‘‘Why—wha’d’yuh mean?” “Yuh poor ham!” Snoots jeered. ‘“‘You’re a: of a ship’s cook! Why don’t yuh go over in your galley an’ soak your head in hot grease? Can’t yuh see through glass? Flow much have they got yuh fer?” Adventure “Say—” Gillen stood up. : “Who asked you to horn in here?” “To with you!” Snoots snapped at him. Then to Ruination he repeated— ‘““Hoow much have they got yuh fer?” Before Ruination could answer, Gillen had stepped over the cot and stood facing Snoots. “Get out of this tent!” “T’d*ruther you’d put me out,” Snoots shot back. Gillen drew back and swung. In the same instant Snoots bored in, crouched, with his huge left fist held out like a batter- ing-ram. Gillen’s swing went over his head. With a hundred and eighty pounds of plung- ing bulk behind it, Snootful’s big fist crashed into Gillen’s right eye. So terrific a smash was it that Gillen fairly shot out through the tent’s open end, and contin- ued, trotting backwards, to the middle of the street, where he finally lost his feet and sprawled. Snoots had followed him up close. “Git up an’ fight!’ "he snarled. “Put a scorpion in my bunk, will yuh! Git up an’ fight, yuh dirty louse!” | Gillen lay on his back, with one hand feeling of his right eye—or rather, feeling of an egg-sized lump alongside of his right eye. He made no attempt to get up. “Yuh dirty louse!” — Snoots reached over, grasped a handful of Gillen’s jumper and jerked him to his feet. Then he let go and stepped back. But Gillen sat right down again. Gobs are quick to scent a fight. They came galloping down Lily White Street like boys running to a fire. From up at Germ Junction, Doc Waldo saw, and he too came galloping, arriving just as Snoots again jerked Gillen to his feet. “Can this rough stuff!” he bawled, push- ing threugh the crowd. Stepping between Snoots and Gillen, with a big hand against the chest of each, Doc pushed them apart. “Now get me.” Doc spoke straight out. There was nothing highflown or flowery about him. “Get me straight. You fellows don’t settle this grudge in this camp. You'll have to hold it for three weeks. To- morrow morning I expect to pronounce the last case cured. That means that we’ll be here twenty-one days longer. In that time I don’t want to see you two even looking at each other. Understand?” COMGHOO (©