Adventure Magazine Cover — page 96: what you’re looking at

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

BOVE the brilliantly painted bil- A lows that were the mountains of | eastern Tennessee in late Autumn, the single-seated airplane wheeled lazily, the heavy, bubbling drone of the motor sifting irregularly down through the haze of early morning. The leather-coated athlete in the cockpit of the plane—his name was Lieutenant Bruce Gordon, of the Air Service—peered unceasingly down at the brushy hills five hundred feet below, guiding his machine with unsconscious ease. He had _ been searching that territory for over an hour. Nothing moving had escaped his black eyes. But the thing he sought—a touring car with a khaki-colored top which had been traced to the solitudes below and which carried two men, one a prisoner con- victed of many crimes, who had escaped in the night from the guard house at Fort Crowley, fifty miles west, and the other his accomplice—the mountains had not re- vealed. “Tt’s a fool’s errand, anyway,” speculated Gordon disgustedly. ‘‘Has looking for a needle in a haystack beaten from the stand- point of useless occupations. I never knew there were so many cars in this deserted strip. knows I’ve looked at them all. And—.”’ he smiled at the thought—“‘scared some of them, possibly well-meaning ’shin- ers, by my curiosity. It’s all over now, though. I’ve forty minutes gas and fifty miles to go to make the home field. Kind of hate to quit without seeing him. But——” The slightest twitch of the controls flipped ELDREDGE = the stubby wings of the sensitive plane to the vertical, and the machine whirled, sparrow-like, and straightened with its nose pointing west to Fort Crowley and the air- drome. — “Hello. There’s one.”’ The home-bound Gordon’s fingers ca- ressed the joy-stick, and the airplane dropped like a rock for three hundred feet, leveled, wires screaming from the speed of the dive, and raced down a narrow, wooded cajion, at the bottom of which was a straight, wide, whitish ribbon. Along thisribbon, likea huge, dust-covered beetle, scurried an automobile. Gordon throttled and gazed calmly at the car. Then he shook his head. “Some farmer’s flivver,” he told himself, smiling as he saw heads sticking out of the side of the automobile. “Trying to keep up with the plane.” He opened the throttle again. But the response of the motor, instead of being a smooth roar, became an ear- splitting scream. A blur in front of the nose vanished. The plane quivered like a stricken thing. Then it meekly subsided into stability and silence, except for the singing of the bracing wires, as Gordon switched off the ignition. The pupils of his eyes had dilated slightly, otherwise he was as calm as before. “Propeller couldn’t stand the gaff and went to pieces,” was his conclusion, as he guided the plane swiftly toward the earth. “Lucky this machine is small so I can land it in the road. Saves a crash in the trees at either side. Steady—say! Slow down, you fool. Judas Priest!’ 86 COMICLOOOKS. (C@