Adventure Magazine Cover — page 186: what you’re looking at

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

184 a fifty mile ride. Yuh got yore wish. By the time yuh git back, yuh orter be purty well warped aroun’ into saddle shape.” cried out for rest. His nerves were pulled to the breaking point. Be- cause the harmful breaking down of a splen- did body had taken twenty years in its ac- complishment, that harm could not be un- done between sunrise and dark. Faro was paying heavily, but with a grim fortitude that bordered on heroism. Dusk, then night, found him riding stead- ily on, standing in his stirrups as his horse kept on at a long-legged trot, the road gait of the horseman who knows horses and his country. The chill air, creeping through sweat-soaked clothes, made him shiver and ache. Joints stiffened, muscles cramped into painful knots that twisted the rider’s face into distortions. His mind swam with a hundred torturing regrets and self-accusa- tions. They pounded at his sanity, driv- ing him on, numbing his physical pain in their insistent torture. Sometimes he cursed himself and Jack Manton and Man- ton’s son. Cursed in broken, husky sen- tences that seemed to blurt out of their own accord. Later, when the moon came up and its soft silver light spread over the hills, he quit cursing and rode on in silence. ‘“‘God!”’ he croaked once. ‘‘God, can’t yuh lend me a hand? Jest till I ketch up with him? From there on, I kin manage.” From his knowledge of the country and the way of a man who rides burdened with crime, he mentally mapped out the course that Manton would be most likely to follow in his flight. The trail led south toward the bad-lands along the Missouri River to the ford at the mouth of Bull Creek. A trail that sometimes was but the faint trac- ing of cow tracks, sometimes a deep-rutted road where round-up wagons had sunk hub- deep in sticky adobe during wet weather. Bald ridges, brush-filled coulees, stretches of sage-brush-dotted flats with bald spots of white alkali that showed like silver lakes in the moonlight. Now and then a creek, flanked by tall cottonwoods, willows, and box-elders. Under the brim of his battered hat, Faro’s bloodshot eyes peered across the country ahead, straining their vision for the mov- ing blet.that would be Jack Manton. Time Bciea muscle in Faro Furnell’s body WALTER J. COBURN after time he was fooled by stray horses that loomed up ahead, then with a startled snort, faded into the shadows. Each time Faro’s fingers unwrapped themselves from the butt of the gun Tom had given him, he tasted the bitterness of disappointment. A little more weary each time, he choked back his disap- pointment and spurred his horse onward. At a sandy crossing he picked up fresh signs that revived his courage. A man had dismounted there to drink. Boot heels dented the sandy bank. An empty whisky flask glittered in the moonlight. Where the tracks left the creek on the other side, the water was still a trifle muddy. Whoever had ridden that horse was not more than half an hour ahead of him. ‘Hittin’ the licker, too.”’ Faro nodded to himself. ‘“TIt’ll make him ornery. He'll shoot. He killed Turkey Track. He’ll kill me if he gits a chanct— If he gits the chanct.”’ He rode Tom McDonald’s top circle- horse. A big, rangy bay animal that cov- ered ground in long, swinging strides with- out turning a hair. A horse whose honest heart had never been abused, he traveled against the bit and gave eagerly of his splen- did strength. Faro let the horse choose his gait and gripped his gun. Tired as he was, his muscles tingled with the thrill of his man hunt. The danger of it cleared his brain and drove the pain from his racked body. Gravel crunched and spattered into the brush under the shod hoofs of his horse. That sound and the creak of saddle leather were the only sounds that broke the silence of the night. He topped a ridge, was skylighted for a moment, then dropped into a long draw that narrowed to a brush-spotted dry creek bed, filled with black shadows. Out of the shadows came a sound that pulled Faro up short. The nicker of a horse. Even before the horse under him had slid to a halt at the edge of the brush, Faro flung himself from the saddle. As his boots hit the uneven ground he lost his balance, stumbled forward, then tripped and fell. The fall catching him unawares, he lost his gun in the effort to check the force of it with his hands. A shot ripped the shadows with orange flame, echoing and re-echoing as the des- perate Faro groped for his gun. That bul- let had missed him by a scant twelve inches. His horse, startled and frightened by the Comicloo@ S CO