Adventure Magazine Cover — page 6: what you’re looking at

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

4 WILKESON “And look at them boots,” invited Bar- stow, thrusting a foot into the light that streamed from one of the deep-set windows. “Just look at ’em, I ask ye! How’d you know it were a boot if ’tweren’t on a foot?” “Oh, I don’t know!”’ said the guard dis- paragingly. ‘“There’s a deal more to them uppers than there is to mine.” “And you’re not scruntching ’round on bare ground yet, like me,” said Riddle. “Fact is, Vll trade mine for your’n— what'll ye say now?” “Nothing at all to ye,” said Barstow, without a second glance at the straw and string that composed Riddle’s foot-gear. “But [ll make a trade with Holtzburg, if he’s on.” “He ain’t!”’ stated the Dutchman. “Not vhile he’s alive to valk in his own. Dose are good boots. I finish dem off only vone veek ago. I beg der hide from Ant’ony, himself, vhen dot draft ox die, and I skin der ox, and I tan der leader, and I cobble dese boots and anoder pair like ’em!”’ Three voices were raised by a single thought— “What did ye do with t’other pair?” “T sell ’em to Johnny Horloch for twenty of dose paper dollars,” said Holtz- burg. “But dose paper dollars don’t buy noding hardly. I vas a fool to take ’em.” “Johnny Horloch lies main ill in the hospital,” reflected Barstow. ‘He'll have a phthisic, likely.” ‘“‘No—is that so?” said the sentry, sud- denly interested. ‘‘What’s his regiment?”’ ‘The same as mine,”’ answered Barstow significantly. “And we was always main good friends into the bargain.” “But, of course,’ said Riddle dis- couragingly, ‘ye must count on the sur- geons— body-robbers, all of them!’’ “But he might give the boots away first,” said Barstow. “Dot’s true,” said Holtzburg. “What’s his uniform like?” asked the sentry; but now he inquired idly, no longer interested, like Riddle discouraged by the competition disclosed. “A good bit like mine,” said Barstow, “but maybe two thoughts more ragged, and lacking a shirt at all.” ‘“‘That’s another p’int I mean to take up with Anthony,” said Riddle, spitting with as much unction as if he had real tobacco between his teeth. ‘How the does he expect to have a decent appearing corps, ? O’CONNELL when he goes and bobs our coattails till we look like a pack of rat-terriers? He does it to get material for patches, he says; but we ain’t give no needles or thread with which to sew on the patches, after he’s gone and cut our coats for us. "I'would be a dis- grace to the uniform, so ’twould; only, due to the old patches, there ain’t none left— hardly. Leastwise, nothing you could right- ly call unzform. Why, if Holtzburg, yonder, was to meet up with a British patrol some fine day when he was out a-foraging, they’d string him up for a spy, like as not, for wearing scarlet. And could ye rightly blame ’em?”’ Holtzburg grinned and patted his flanks, which glowed gloriously in the square of cross-barred, yellow candle-light that fell from the window. Patches, undeniably cut from a captured coat and sewn thickly on breech and coat-skirt, kept the thrifty Moravian warm and comfortable at the enemy’s expense. His comrades were en- vious because less_ ingenious. Barstow shifted restlessly in his broken boots. ‘Seems like he’s mighty long away,” he he said to the guard, while he peered through the murky night down the road that led to Morristown. ‘‘D’ye guess he’s got wind of what’s up, and is staying out of purpose?”’ “Might be,” said the sentry doubtfully. “Though Wayne don’t go about to dodge much, as a general rule. Wade in and shove her over is his notion of doing things.”’ “Well, if he knowed what I was a-going to say to him,” began Riddle, but the sentry cut him short. - take what you’re going to say to him! He knows it all aforehand and he’s already done all that mortal man can do to get supplies. But them penny-pinching dunderheads in Congress don’t pay no more ’tention to him than he will to you, so ye may as well go back to your huts and save your breath to cool porridge.” “Dot’s true, I guess,’ admitted Holtz- burg. “Saving we ain’t got no porridge,”’ said Riddle. “And dot’s true, too,”’ said Holtzburg. “And Wayne’s got friends in Congress,” said Barstow, “‘high up men like Dr. Frank- lin, and President Reed, and Medico Bush. And ’tis well known that the Council of Go .OOK CO