Adventure Magazine Cover — page 58: what you’re looking at

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

48 With his free hand he tried to extricate his revolver, but his body swayed in and Cub’s hoof struck Red’s leg, which further alarmed the animal. Other shots whined plain- tively, but Cub and Whitesock darted away, their bells clanging down the silence in what seemed to Red to be a thunderous ringing. It is a credo that a burro is inexpressibly lazy, but the tradition of obduracy is per- haps even more firmly intrenched, and when that obduracy is applied to a desire to put space between a burro and a given point, some remarkable agility is displayed, as the bleaching bones of a considerable number of desert rats can mutely testify. Cub and Whitesock were frightened. They made for the one point that called forth mem- ories of safety and serenity—a shack. Red would not release Cub; he saw, dim- ly, that here was some sort of salvation. He was battered and bruised with passing rocks, but somewhere, beneath the super- ficial whirpool of his thoughts, there lay a profound belief that he had something to see through. In a brief time he wus aware that the bur- ros had stopped. Red fell on his side, al- most under Cub’s feet, out almost instantly he was aroused and looking dizzily about. He saw they were at the shack. The jacks had quite forgotten their fright, and White- sock was braying loudly, doubtless recall- ing potato-peelings of a bygone day. Seizing Cub’s halter-line, he dragged him- self to the far side of the shack. His brain seemed slowly to cease whirling. He felt his thigh wet and sticky, and he looked down to behold a viscous mass of sand and blood. Then he smiled. The significance of it all came to him like a blow from a bludgeon. Well, Gar Nunn had a fight on his hands! Red knew the other would lay immediate plans to end the work he had started. Doubtless he was creeping now toward the shack, leaping from rock to rock, or circling through some sandy wash. Red was able to open the door of the shack, and he herded the jacks into the structure with him. 2 He had water for a siege of two or Ciel) three days, and he had all the food and the rifles. On the other hand, Nunn controlled the outside water supply. Fur- thermore, Red could not sleep, while Nunn might snatch some sleep out in the mesquite. CERTAIN facts needed to be faced. Adventure The wound would settle it, soon or late. If it developed seriously there was little chance, unless Nunn were entirely reckless. Granting Nunn moderate sagacity, Red was forced to concede that his opponent was the overwhelming favorite. It was life, too, for Nunn as well as for Red. The former had no water-bottle to make a try for the outside, and no burro. He would have to improve his shooting, Red thought with a wry smile, even to get a prairie dog with his automatic. He had cast his lot irretrievably with that first shot. It was victory or death for one or the other in the next forty-eight hours, perhaps in twenty-four. A violet evening had settled on filmy wings. Red could see no vestige of his enemy as he dragged the rounds of the shack. To be sure, a sortie could not be expected that night. The other had doubt- less taken a point of vantage from which he could watch the shack without himself be- ing detected. He might make a dash for the spring in the night, but other than that the shack would certain!y be under close sur- veillance. ; This sense of being under surveillance of death was a strange, a ghostly one, and these qualities were accentuated by the utter silence of the night.. The white oval of a three-quarter moon sailed out from be- hind Dead Squaw Mountain, and as reluc- tantly as it sailed there formed in Red’s thought a nebulous plan. This was sup- ported by a growing certainty, which he was loath to concede, that his wound would prove fatal. While he had pondered his plight he had cleaned it as best he could in the gloom and had fashioned and applied a tourniquet. The femoral artery seemed in- volved in the wound; whether it was sev- ered or not he did not know, but the blood did not appear to clot properly. It was characteristic of Red, of what had lain dormant within him all of his life to be called forth now valiantly, that his consid- eration of victory or defeat was concerned not so largely with his personal life, or loss of it, as it was concerned with winning the game against his opponent, live or die. This is a rare attribute, for it rejects, or at least depreciates, primal law, the instinct to survive. It is born of a love which is more for living than for life. The vast purple vault which is Arizona night had been fashioned from the more NOOK 1@)