Adventure Magazine Cover, June 20, 1925 — page 86: what you’re looking at

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

68 won’t be working so hard, and our clothes are pretty well worn out.” Rollers were placed between the shore and the barge, and it was gently returned to the water from which it had been hauled with such labor twenty-four hours before. The chain was not detached from the windlass, but it was slackened as the boat was eased downward with prize-holes. Launching was easily accomplished. “Well, it floats,’ was Bain’s unimpas- sioned ‘comment. They had done their work thoroughly; but little water came in by the patches, which had been lagged and calked with cer- tain less essential garments donated or com- mandeered. ‘The craft as it stood possessed the two salient qualities of an egg-shell boat: Great displacement—and consequent buoy- ancy—and extreme fragility. Before placing firewood, their axes and provisions on board, Bain called the twenty- two negroes to the camp-fire. While warm- ing his back and looking vaguely over the tree tops, he addressed them without rhet- oric, tilting backward and forward on his heels and toes to keep from roasting. “Boys, that barge will hold us all and would float twice as many again. But she’s rotten as a last year’s punkin shell, and if we ‘smash into a log or a tree or if we ain’t care- ful every which-a-way, there’ll be the to pay. “Here’s what I mean to do: We’ll get out on Dupree Lake and follow it to where the wagon road strikes in. Then we’ll travel east, following the opening of the road till we hit the dummy-line track. We can turn north then and follow that to the plantation. The dummy-line right-of-way will give us clear going, and pretty soon we'll get to where the road bed is graded. “The water oughtn’t to be very deep over that. There is a string of flats loaded with logs standing on the dummy-line not far from Pecan Bayou. If anything goes wrong, and we have to swim, better strike for there, if we’re too far to make the Mound. Swim from tree to tree. If the cold don’t get you, you can make it.” “What ef we can’t swim?” asked Uncle John Key earnestly. _ “Sink,” said Bain laconically, amid a heartening shout of laughter, and thus ended the longest speech he had ever made. “Now get the stuff on board. Don’ t leave any axes nor rope; we may need ’em.’ Adventure When the men trotted downhill to their welcome task, Willie Thompson, aEnoticed tarried behind, “Cap,” he said in a low voice to Bain, “watch dat big scar-faced nigger. I heard him talkin’ las’ night, an’ now I knows where I done seed him befo’.”’ ‘Who is he?” “You ’member dat hold-up nigger what you caught five year ago dis fall at de wood- shed?” BAIN did. When the negro had presented a gun at his head, the wf manager, who had an armful of we oak stove wood, had let drive with the top billet of the load which he happened to be still holding in his right. hand. It was only necessary then to dump the wood on his prostrate assailant’s head, and go in to telephone the doctor and deputy sheriff. A surgeon, a jury and a prison warden next had to do, in the order named, with the daring stranger. Bain had not thought of the incident before for three years. It came back now in a flash, and his own memory corrobor ated Willie’ S informa; tion. “Hum! That’s the bird, all right. Wouldn’ t be surprized if he wasn’t responsible for our being here, Willie. I guess he set my cord-wood.”’ “Cap, I knows he did. Listen heah what I heard him tellin’ dat worthless -Fair Thomas an’ Oakley Brown las’ night: He say he gwine to ketch yo’ widout your gun fore we gits home, an’ git even ’bout dat other time. He done busted out f’om de Tucker State Farm and ’lows he kilt a guard. He sho’ thinks you’s got a gun, Mistuh Bain.” “Does he?” Bain might have been discussing a cup of coffee. “Yessuh. He sot de wood on fiah to bring you out, but we wuz all dere, an’ he wuz ‘feared to shoot. You watch him, Mistuh Bain, an’ J sho’ will. He won’t talk none to our niggers. But he is busy plannin’ mischief wid dem no ’count day-hands what stahted to skip wid him.”’ “Much oblige, Willie. Dll watch.” They descended to the barge. ‘The pro- vision of charred, half-cooked meat—they were learning what it is to loathe food and to starve simultaneously—was stored on comiclbooks.co@