Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 19, 1924 — page 111: what you’re looking at

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

FLOOD. a fair price behind, but Tim Leblanc’s dif- ferent. Ye might leave more’n he’d ask an’ still he’d be mad. He’s part French an’ part Irish an’ some Injun. He goes off at half cock, Tim does.” ‘‘ Whar does he keep his canoes?” ‘““T dassent show ’e, Archie. Tim’s bad when he’s riz.” “Come along, Joe, an’ let’s take a look round. What we want, Charlie, is to git started after Woodhall agin; an’ what Tim Leblanc don’t like he kin Jump!” They found the older of the two canoes— a good one. They pried open a window and entered Leblanc’s house, There Archie measured flour out of a sack, salt pork out of a barrel, salt butter out of a firkin. He counted blankets out of a press upstairs. He left thirty doHars in a teapot on the kitchen dresser. CHAPTER XI, MORE OF THE CHASE, NDIAN summer ceased overnight and | winter began. before dawn. The sun went down after a day of cloudless voy- aging in sheer azure, with just enough frost to bring out the fragrance of the brown ferns and overripe seed pods and purple cones. The ground was already frozen be- neath its Indian summer skim of thaw. No sooner had the yellow sun vanished than the frost intensified and struck like iron. Then a slow wind crept in from the westward and edged around until it blew from the north. Later, it slid in from the northeast with a veil of snow in grains as dry and hard as sand. The brief red dawn disclosed the wilder- ness aching with frost to the very hearts of the big trees and filmed with white. The sun paled to the grayness of ice within a hand’s breadth of the horizon. Over all that wilderness, in houses and shacks and cabins and hunters’ camps, there was a great clawing about in-the dark for extra blankets between dusk and dawn that “night. Some people were caught cold, with fallen fires at their feet and scanty shelters of spruce boughs over their heads. 581 Archie McKim and Joe Newsam were of these unfortunates, and so were Pete Wood- hall and the little boy in the blue suit. Archie and Joe were overtaken by winter at the mouth of Gunflint Creek. The kid- naper and his captive were nipped at a point twenty miles farther up the creek and iully ten miles above the scar face’s near- est snug retreat. But the woman with the red head and green eyes was not caught out. She had returned to the shack above Heil-an’-all carry before sunset, somewhat tattered as ‘to skirt and muddy as to feet, but other- wise in good order. In answer to Charlie’s questions concerning her whereabouts dur- ing the last twenty-seven hours, she had told him to mind his own business. In reply to his charge of the destruction of Archie McKim’s canoe and outfit, she had ~ hooted derision. “ Pll give ye up to the police!” poor old Charlie had threatened. “They'll jail ye for ten years—an’ sarve ye damn well right! Good riddance to bad rubbage, too—that’s how I feei! An’ what did ye do with Mc- Kim’s brand new rifle? Oh! I know what ye done with it—but it won’t do him much good. Dandy Devil McKim ‘ll git him! fell kitch *im!” “That old stiff j’inted bunch of whiskers? You make me laugh. He’s as old as yer- self, Charlie Dix. He couldn’t catch a porkypine. Him an’ that young nigger! All they'll catch in these woods is colds.” And she had laughed derisively again and started in frying bacon for supper; and later, when the wind came freezing from the north, she simply piled all the blankets left in the house on top of herself and smiled at the thought of poor Charlie smoking and stoking all night beside the rusty, roaring Stove. Winter, striking with all his force between midnight and dawn, dragged Pete Woodhall and little Jacob Kester shivering out of their sleep. The child had been dreaming of Lob’s Point. He tried to choke back his sobs, but could not stifle them. “What the hell’s eatin’ ye now?” ex- claimed Woodhall. ‘ Ain’t I doin’ me best? Ain’t ye got half the blankets? There’s CoOnniclooolks ep PA ih 9 ony bE CARS N I LEA UMS Pylead oott tess dy fo al wish k ot eT aaT oS. Ve ee CA AY AEP oN ON a ONES Se ee ee (Pree ie ce MS kh ne ’ ; 4 . ste ask f y MA a Re Or Yep el? Rae: PAR) etn eee Fae eee ee ; ny rt v vara ‘ Pry Oe Oe Pod SO en te) Pree Sade aclena ye eva