Adventure Magazine Cover — page 86: what you’re looking at

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

76 felt that if any one wanted to buy it would be an easy matter to awaken him. The rows of shelves did not have their usual orderliness; the entire store looked, somehow, littered, untidy, as if in careless hands. Stockton was pernickety about order, too. An open sack of sugar was by the counter; its burlap sides were crumpled in drunkenly.. One almost knew that the sleeping clerk had stepped on it when get- ting to the counter to sleep. Another man lay on a bench, flat on his back, hands across his stomach, hat over his face to keep off the flies, and snored. The flies lighted about his mouth. At a table were the other men, all coat- less, shirts open, sleeves rolled up over dark arms; all bearded men. Two or three smoked pipes. One was the bartender, a fellow Stockton had cured of dysentery after a pearler had kicked the sick man off his ship. They stared at Heddon in much the same sort of guilty silence as if they had been talking of him. “‘Where’s Stockton?” Heddon demanded, coming in. “He ain’t around,” said the bartender. “T asked where he was!” Heddon was truculent; he was always truculent on the Kulicos. The law of the Reefs was bully or be bullied. They eyed him with reserve, noted his bandaged hand, looked into his face, still with the dark shadows of a fight on it. “He ain’t been around much lately. His eyes been botherin’ him a heap,”’ said one fellow, known as “Yankee” Saunders. “Anything particular you wanted?” asked another. “Off hand, I’d say somebody laid ’long- side you—from the looks o’ things,” a fellow ventured. Heddon took a step closer and glared at the man who had spoken last— ‘“‘Any further remarks you care to make— off hand?” The man shook his head, but smiled knowingly. For a moment there were no remarks of any kind. Heddon looked from one face to another, then repeated— “Where is Stockton?” ‘““He’s over to his house,” said the bar- tender with sudden agreeableness—too agreeably. Heddon looked about the store. It was evident that business was neglected, worse Adventure than neglected. Stockton was probably being robbed. Heddon knew most of the men, and liked none of them. Hard, tricky fellows, such as Yankee Saunders. He disliked them with a kind of instinctive antagonism, and he was of a size that could with a degree of insolence express what he felt. They were bold fellows in a way, who dared storms, and the law, and with hard- ships that more honest men have grown rich by took their livelihood from the sea. They were angered by his erectness, which was like pride, and his way of looking at them: his whole bearing and attitude, now as ever, was one of unfriendly superiority. They wished him ill, spitefully. He knew it, and was in- solently indifferent. They knew that, too. Heddon swung on his heel and left the - store. The men sat and looked from one to an- other as long as they could hear his feet scrunching in the sand. Then one of them quickly, with a little stealth, ran to the door, peered out, and facing about, said ex- citedly— ““He’s goin’ to Stockton’s—doesn’t sus- pect a thing!” “You lose!’’ cried Saunders, slapping his hand on the table before the bartender. “T said he would come!’’ “The blasted fool!’’ answered the bar- tender, shaking his head, wonderingly. ‘Now what?” inquired some one. “Tl tell you what,” shouted Saunders. “Pm goin’ right across this here island just as fast as I can get there an’ tell on board the Dolphin that he’s come. An’ don’t any 0’ you let on, or he’ll slip his cable an’ be off, like at Lianfo.”’ “Stockton’ll tell him! He’ll tell him she waitin’ for him for come in, sure!” “Stockton don’t know,” the bartender shouted. ‘Won’t let anybody come near him. Hasn’t for days.” “What’s all the row? Waking a feller up with your bally racket—what’s the row?’ demanded Jenkins, sitting up on the counter, scrubbing his hair with his knuck- les, resting his feet on the open sack of sugar. ““Heddon’s come!”’ The clerk nearly fell off the counter. But the man who lay on his back on the bench snored away and did not move. Yankee Saunders took a parting drink of gin, lifting the bottle to his mouth, hitched up his trousers, lurched heavily through the doorway and started off across the sand NOOK 1 @)