Adventure Magazine Cover — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

16 us; but now that we had our eyes open it was otherwise. Before long we left the swamps and the mud, and passed by the last of the Muscovite water-towns, Novgorod, on the bank of a small river in flood. Like a flash the oaks and the pine forest closed around us as we pounded south toward Moscow. Probably when Strelsky made out our permit for post horses he never thought we would go far enough to claim the yamshiks, the picked horses that his paper allowed us. But at each zamora I combed over the nags for the best ones, keeping only the Kabarda of mine that ran loose beside us for three days until I gave it into the keeping of an honest Armenian who would bring the horse to Kherson by slow stages. For we were covering then nearly a hundred versts, which Edwards said was eighty English miles, a day. The postilions of the carriage complained, and finally became useless. So we were not sorry to leave them at one of the huts. The two Tatars did their work more to my lik- ing and the postilions may have been in the plot against us. Even the éarantass proved itself a friend now, because John Paul and Edwards took turn about sleeping in it, as well as they could for the jolts. Haz, they could not sleep as well as I in the saddle, but they made no protest and we made no stop. Several times we heard the wolf packs howling and once the wolves were at our heels for ten verst posts. We had to burn much powder and my horse was slashed by their teeth when we pulled up at the next post station. Still, we saw nothing of the two-legged wolf that had passed us in the first night. I scanned each rider we turned out of the narrow way between the trees, without coming upon one who might have been a Muscovite spy. The officers cared little for the rider that was ahead of us, and looked on our ride as a new game. “Stuppai, Ivak!’? Paul Jones would shout. And forward we went, Edwards jesting with me that I would taste his dust into Kherson and lose a half-year’s pay thereby. Only when we sighted the domes and spires of Moscow in its great plain did we halt, for six hours, so that the American might dine with the governor of the city. On the sixth day out we had to halt for three hours to repair a wheel of the carriage. Adventure In the stables of the post station I asked for news of a rider from Petersburg, who was bearing dispatches a few hours ahead of us, knowing that any man who wished to make the utmost speed along the highway would claim that he carried dispatches. The men of the zamora told me that an officer had passed south at sunrise, which was twelve hours before. Dried mud was still on his boots and his permit had read from Peters- burg to Kherson. asked if he spoke with a German accent and looked to be about my size. They said it was not so. The officer had cursed them in good Russian for delaying him. So, after all, we had no real reason to suspect that a spy had gone ahead. But when a man hunts wolves he does not lie down under a tree to doze because no wolves are in sight. that night, keeping awake to do so, and promising the Tatars half a flask of corn’ brandy to stir them up a bit. We put a hun- Thinking of Borol, I I pushed the horses: dred and twenty versts behind us, from sun- ° set to sunset, and changed horses six times, and it was my two officers who were stirred up finally. Edwards, who was suffering from saddle sores, cursed my beard and my soul and my father’s grave and other things, yet I took no offense, knowing that weariness had gripped him and there was no meaning in the curses. take you, Ivak,” he promised, ‘I will give orders to slow down to a hand pace. You are rubbing the bones out of my but- tocks.”’ “TI hope your Honor is well,” I replied, knowing how to handle him. not, I will have to wait for you in Kherson, to spend the hundred rubles.” “Blast you, Ivak—sink you for a lying rogue!” And he leaped from the ¢arantass and ran to a horse, jumping into saddle and plying whip and spur until I was tasting his dust— as his beast was fresher. “T’ll lead you into Kherson even if your Tatars have to carry me on a door.” And his words were near to the truth, as will be seen presently. Meanwhile, how- ever much we pressed the horses we did not gain sight of the officer who was ahead of us. If we rode like the wind, he went like a witch on a broomstick on All-Hallow’s Eve— or like a man with his neck in a noose. We came out on the vast level that lies MICLOOOK “Because if C@ in