Adventure Magazine Cover — page 173: what you’re looking at

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

of high boot heels had awakened him from sound sleep and he was a trifle peevish. “This round,’ said a _white-bearded spokesman, ‘‘will be on the house. Us boys jest seen a speerit. Jack Manton’s ghost jest rid down the street on a hoss that’s a dead ringer fer the Circle C Dun.” ‘“‘Manton’s dead,”’ announced the saloon man coldly. ‘‘So’s the Circle C Dun. If you danged ol’ sage-hen roosters aims to job me, you made a shore bad guess. Last night I lays awake listenin’ to the hollerin’ of a — sheep-herder that’s got snakes. I ain’t in no humor to be pestered by a herd of broke-down cow-hands seein’ spooks. Decorate the mahogany with some green money.” Then the ghost of Jack Manton came through the short swinging doors. A rangy, long-muscled man of perhaps twenty-five, a trifle bow-legged, with lean flanks and wide shoulders. His features were sharply cut, his eyes were yellowish in color, deep set under straight black brows. Under the dusty brim of his Stetson his hair showed black and straight as that of an Indian. The face, eyes and hair of Jack Manton, quarter-breed Indian. This dust-streaked replica of a dead man stood there for a moment, just inside the doorway. His mouth, a straight line under slightly hooked nose, twisted upward at one corner. It might have been asmile. More likely it was not. The men at the bar swift- ly recalled Jack Manton’s smile. He had been of the breed that smile across gun sights. The yellow eyes of the newcomer swept the line of men at the bar in swift appraisal. Then he stepped to the bar and took his place apart from the others. ‘“‘The house is jest buyin’, stranger,”’ an- nounced the man behind the bar. ‘Get inp” ‘“‘Whisky,”’ nodded the newcomer, and his yellow eyes chilled the warmth of the saloon man’s welcoming grin. He was pointedly ignoring the presence of the other men on his side of the bar. Because they were old-timers in a coun- try that minds its own business, and be- cause they had known Jack Manton and his ways, they, in turn, paid no further atten- tion to this living man who bore him such a marked resemblance. Yet to a man they were tingling from battered hat-crown to runover boot-heels with curiosity. Jack Manton had never spoken of a son. Still, there was nothing strange about that, for Manton was close-mouthed. Granting that this was Manton’s son, why was he in Chinook? Would he ask the whereabouts of Faro Furnell? Would he kill the man who had killed his father? Had he pur- posely ridden a buckskin horse with black mane and tail that men might know that 171 COMICooO S CO