Adventure Magazine Cover, November 10, 1924 — page 145: what you’re looking at

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

White Challenge twisted the other’s wrist—twisted—twisted. There was a deafening explosion. Melvin’s foe ceased resistance so suddenly so completely, that Melvin, tensed to that resistance, almost turned a flip. He heard directly another explosion and felt an irritating sting in his shoulder. He was up blindly, lunging at the waver- ing, crouching figure of the big man dark against the dying sun. As he lunged, he tripped, and a bullet whipped through the hair at the back of his head. With the little man’s gun, he shot upward, thrice, and the sharp sting in his shoulder was obliterated by a jar that plunged him into darkness. He sat up with a jerk, and the mountains wheeled about him. He sat stupidly watching these mountains whirl, grinning like an idiot, knowing he had won some- thing, knowing not what. He fumbled with. a tenuous thought. Then, still the grinning idiot, he saw a tiny river of blood coursing down a crevice in the lava rock near him, and soaking into the white sand. ‘The big man, shooting at Melvin, had shot his own companion. He had done better the second shot, but the third shot had failed when Melvin tripped. And that had been the end for the big man. Melvin was no longer the grinning idiot. “Both through the heart,” he muttered, - gazing dizzily at the blood soaking into the white sand. ‘Well, ’ll be ——. Funny it isn’t black—the blood—funny it isn’t black.” He found Drift beneath his dead pony. Drift was still breathing. Those were mad hours in which Melvin sought the elusive burros. He could capture only Jenny Lind, but she was able to haul the horse from Drift. Poor old Drift. Melvin cried while he worked. ‘There are times when a man must cry, he decided. Down through the cafion that Stygian night he cried again. But this time he decided it was a case of nerves, or perhaps that damnable leaking wound in his shoul- der. This was not a time for tears. This was a bitter fight. Perhaps more bitter than that joyous one he had passed through a thousand years ago. Yes, a thousand years it seemed from midnight back to that ‘dying sun. ' And a bitter fight, with Drift, just breath- ing, bound to Jenny Lind, gomg down through the dark cafion and out into the 143 desert. The blazing dawn came, and with it insufferable heat. A hundred times he would quit, and a hundred times he would not quit. Not so long as that faint, flut- tering breath came from the lips of old Drift would he quit. He muttered to him- self crazily. That evening, on the east flank of Snow- drift Mountain, eight miles from home, he knew he could not go on. Like a beacon there flashed again and again the dim thought: “Drift will die; I could get in on Jenny Lind!” Yes, he could get in, and he had a chance, while Drift—— , Still holding to Jenny Lind’s flank he staggered, sobbing, while the beacon flashed. Up through the defile, quite ~- swiftly, knowing home was not distant, Jenny Lind wound her way. Melvin’s hand to her flank, clinging to a pack repe. To release her for one instant—alt—all lost. Beyond flickering hope of retribution. He saw that in one radiant moment. His grasp on the pack rope slackened, tightened again spasmodically, then slack- ened once again. The rope slipped through his fingers. Like a caress, a last, a passion- ate, a reluctant caress of life, his failing fingers slid down the creature’s flank. The man slumped forward, recumbent, while the burro’s hoof-beats faded, like faint whisper- ings, like dim recollections, like frail bubbles of the love, and the sacrifice and the white challenge of the desert. “BY THE Holy Buzzard, it gits me!”’ said Drift. ‘“‘You take those 4M four fellas—’course, they was look- in’ for the sillimanite when they come across me tied to Jenny, an’ you down in the cafion. But how’d they know "bout them other two? [I still don’t git that.” ‘Vou aren’t supposed to get that,” re- joined Melvin. They were’ on an electric train bound for Los Angeles. “You are a specialist in men, not commerce. I sup- pose each one of the four explained it at least once to you. You see, the four who rescued us were agents of a Los Angeles manufacturing concern, a scientific expedi- tion. The Eastern trust also had an ex- pedition out. But these two bandits had hired themselves out to both the Lo Angeles and the Eastern interests, and were going to double-cross both and play a lone hand. That’s why they had to dispose of Comicboook Wh) © 5}