Adventure Magazine Cover — page 81: what you’re looking at

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

THE WOLF MASTER the fresh dirt. They were half-way down the traverse road, and the worst of it was before them. That slide of earth told a story of frightened horses rearing back, and riders hovering over eternity. But Otrépiev had gone on, and Kirdy meant to follow. He bade Nada dismount, and took the rein of the bay stallion. The hardy Tatar ponies kept their footing wise- ly but the charger was all nerves. The Cossack talked to him and Nada coaxed, and it was one of the ponies that missed a short jump, and hurtled screaming down the face of the cliff, with a thunder of rock and loosened dirt. The charger took the jump with a yard | to spare, and it needed all Nada’s weight on the rein to keep him from plunging ahead with the sudden spurt of a high-strung horse that thinks danger lurks under his rear. “Well done!” Kirdy cried, as the girl quieted the bay stallion. ‘Here Otrépiev lost one of his mounts.” A speck on the valley bed had caught his eye—a cluster of vultures that had dined on something. Obviously something a day or more old, because a score of the flapping creatures rose into the air to investigate the Tatar pony that had finally stopped, an inert huddle, not so far away. The dis- tance was too great to make out whether they had been feeding on a horse or a man, but Kirdy prayed that it was a horse and that Otrépiev who had led him across the Earth Girdle, still lived on the plateau, now near at hand. And Nada read his mind with a single glance. “What will you do, White Falcon, when you meet with Otrépiev?”’ “Bid him to sabers.”’ Both had jumped to the same conclusion at once. If Otrépiev and his companion were living and on the plateau, they might well have noticed the fall of the pony and the miniature avalanche that set a hundred echoes flying. If they happened go be on the cliff side of the city, they might have seen the two pursuers. “Ech boula, m boula,”’ Nada tossed her head. ‘‘Maybe death to me, maybe not— what matter! So the Cossack says. And what, O my hero, if both fools die—and I am left alive with the Tsar’s dog, who has been trained since birth to torture and who carries a sword as long as himself? Take 79 heed! If you must fight Otrépiev, agree with him as to that. But first do you and he and the other band together to journey safely back across the Earth Girdle.”’ Kirdy frowned and shook his head. The sun was well up by now and the glare of it against the white limestone had made him throw off the tattered sable coat, so that he walked in a worn red shirt, slashed and stained where he had been wounded. His lean head was dark as the long hair that fell over one shoulder—Nada, considering him, thought that he did look like a falcon, swift and merciless. “Tf Otrépiev were a true Cossack, or even a boyarin of honor, I would do that,” he made response curtly. “But he has betrayed men too often.” “And if he comes to you sick, asking aid?” Kirdy laughed grimly. “Let him first do it.” “He has another with him, and he himself isamatchfor you. What if the other draws and strikes when your blade is turned against Otrépiev?”’ Again the Cossack laughed shortly, touch- ing the splendid hilt of his curved sword. “‘God gives. I desire only that.” Under veiling lashes, the girl looked at him steadily, and a sudden purpose made her tingle. “Nada,”’ Kirdy said gravely, “whatever happens, you must not draw that plaything, the yataghan.”’ “Could I draw against the man in black with the sword that is longer than I?” she demanded reasonably. ‘“‘And would you suffer me to stand against Otrépiev?”’ She sighed, and fell silent—unwontedly silent. Kirdy became grimly intent on their surroundings. They had reached the foot of theramp and hereashelving ledge allowed them to walk oposite the plateau. They discovered what had been concealed from sight until now. Somewhere in the mountains a river had its source, a river that foamed down in flood when winter loosened its hold on the heights, but that now was no more than a bed of round stones, far below them. This river ran, in season, between the mountainside and the mass of the plateau where the city stood. During countless ages it had eaten through the soft stone and clay until it formed a chasm. ‘The chasm was thirty yards er so across—its depth un- guessable. DOOLK C©