Adventure Magazine Cover — page 9: what you’re looking at

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

THE PENNSYLVANIA LINE Zi there’s a moon bright enough for him to make a raid by. And west of there, ’tis sheer awful! ‘There’s short rations in New Windsor, and starvation all about it; there’s wet scalp-locks in Canada, and living skele- tons in the New York churches; there’s red ruin along the Mohawk, and black ruin up and down the Hudson, but none of them’s the ugliest thing I hear tell of in York.” “What d’ye mean, Jemmy? What are ye hinting at now?” Barstow stirred uneasily, and the pacing sentry, catching the last words, grounded his gun again while he paused to listen. “Mutiny?” breathed Riddle. “Mutiny’s but a trifle,’ said Jemmy con- temptuously, ‘to the treason,that’s whispered of in every tavern between Philadelphia and Albany!”’ ‘“’Treason!’’ echoed the sentry. “Or what looks main like it,” said Jemmy, squatting down on the doorstep while he chewed on a sodden straw. ‘‘Wherefrom, are ye asking? Where does any misfortune blow from? The north, in course.” “Ye mean Ethan Allen?” asked Barstow. “And his Green Mountain Boys?” “You’re after hearing the rumor, then, down here in Jersey?”’ Jemmy answered like a New Englander. “Only that he shows far fonder of the British now, than he did afore he was their prisoner,”’ said Riddle. “Dink of it!” murmured Holtzburg. He seemed pleasantly shocked, rather than angered, by the threatened infidelity. But the guard was the reverse of indifferent, muttered surlily something to the effect that what the hero of the New Hampshire Grants needed most, for what ailed him, was a dose of cold iron, “‘if so be one could come at him to give it.””. Barstow seemed not to have heard. He stood staring, and poking with a naked toe at a rut that gleamed mellowly in the light from the window. ‘And have ye been hearing aught,” gossiped Jemmy, “‘concerning Floyd Allen— ‘Tory’ Floyd, ye recall, who ‘listed with the Britishers before independence was de- clared and hath clung tighter to the King than he hath to his brothers, outlaws or other sorts, ever since?”’ “No,” said Riddle, shaking his head. ‘I never even heard tell of him afore, at least as I remember.” “Dot’s funny,” said MHoltzburg. “TI t’ought everybody knowed dot Eden Allen weren’t der only one of der tribe to have a price set upon his head. I’ve heard of der Tory broder a score of times, vhen ve vas in York last vinter, but only as how Eden and Ira set a price on Ais head, and run him out of der Grants vid no more pity dan if dey had been of no kin to him at all.” ‘Would ye be knowing him if ye caught a sight of him?” asked Jemmy. With one accord the Pennsylvanians shook their heads. ““He’s a long, thin man,” said Jemmy, “with a hawk’s beak above the lean, hard jaw of him, and an eagle’s eves that it seems like ye can’t get away from. A young man yet, though he’s lived hard, and the hair ts frosting over his temples. But ve could tell him best by his gift of gab. Like all the Allens, he has a great conceit of his own vocabulary. Lord, how the man will talk!” “Well, there’s none of that description round here,” said Barstow. “Is it him that’s bringing the bloodybacks into the Grants?” ‘What I don’t know I’m not saying,”’ in- timated Jemmy darkly. ‘‘What I say is that when I was in York, a time or two be- hind me, I heard talk wherever I was rest- ing me foot of how Tory Floyd was riding, bold as brass and free as air, up and down the Grants in the full face of nocn. And it was suspicioned, by more’n one, that he was raising a new partizan corps for the King, with no waste of time nor small success.”’ ‘And that without let or hindrance from his brothers?”? demanded Barstow uglily. “Devila bit, at least that Iam hearing of,” said Jemmy. “What Ethan savs is fair law in the Grants, since he got back from the British prisons, and Ethan’s saying whatever Ira’s telling him, and Ira— Faith, but that little man has a brain too big for his times and country!’ Jemmy paused to admire it silently. 5 ed traitors!’’] snarled Barstow, and the guard echoed the sentiment. Jemmy raised one pented, questioning eyebrow. “Well, ye know as well as I do, Jemmy, that if the Grants go over to the enemniv, there’ll be nothing left ’twixt Washingion and Carleton, in Canada, but a bit of bad traveling! Just as there’s nothing between him and Clinton but them pesky little Highland strongholds—weakholds _ they might better be called! Lord, if Sir Harry should ever guess of their true nature!”’ 3 cCOmiclbook CO