Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 211: what you’re looking at

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

A Man and His Deeds letters that throbbed with the frank heart- beats of a boy. Oh, it was good, he said—ripping! Why, making these men into soldiers was like sculpturing masterpieces from clay. Yes, it was a gloomy old hole up there in the mountains, but really his days were so full that he had no time to get lonely. Still, he longed for Manila, and—say, wouldn’t it be bully when he obtained leave for a run up? True, there were two flies that appeared in his ointment, and when these came, he sat staring with troubled eyes out over the panorama of forbidding mountains. They came in the shape of two very pointed letters from Mr. MacDonald. The first letter repeated the order to come home; the second spoke openly and directly of the admirable characteristics of a certain young lady who still remained single, and gave the youth to understand that, unless he saw fit to come to terms with her, he could look forward to some unpleasant results. “That means I will be cut off,” he re- marked to Bunga. “Well?” “So be it. Marriage is something dis- . tinctly individual.” Bunga allowed himself to pat the boy on the shoulder. “You’re right. There’s just one thing I want to ask you—is there any way this foster-father of yours can whip you ’round the peg?” “What do you mean?” “T was just wondering if this adoption, now, if there was any slip——”’ “Captain!” The youth’s hands gripped till the knuckles gleamed white. ‘‘We’ve been friends for re “Tut, tut! We'll go on being friends, too, as long as you wish. Wouldn’t matter a= to me, one way or the other. I was just wondering whether, if any one had a grudge against you, he could find a flaw in your birth record. It would cost you your * commission.’ By this time the = was smiling. “They’ve found the records flawless three times,” he said. “Besides, father wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing, even if he knew the entries to be false.”’ Bunga grunted, wishing that he could put away the memory of Mr. MacDonald’s stubborn and even ugly lips. And partly 209 because of those lips, he wished that the _ amazingly pretty young lady in Manila would say no to the boy when he went up on his two weeks’ leave. BUT this wish was denied him. When Gordon returned from Ma- nila, he seized Bunga’s hand and pump-handled it in an absent-minded way for a full minute. Meanwhile, he refused to meet the older man’s eye without blush- ing. : “Well,” said Bunga, “when you get through ruining my hand, I’ll congratulate ou.”’ “But I haven’t told you yet!’ “No? We-e-el—I hear her father took the Lieutenant-General’s place. Suppose he fell on your neck, and all that sort of thing—what?” The boy laughed shortly. “‘No-o-o, I can’t say that he did.” » “Doesn’t surprise me much. When I knew the “Tail Twister’ as a captain, he wasn’t the sort to fall on the neck of any young man whose relations with his father’s bank pile were strained.” “Oh, but you’re a little hard on the Briga- dier. An only daughter, doomed to spend her life in the Philippines with a man whose chances for promotion to the regulars are slim—I say, I don’t really think he worried so much about the money, really I don’t.” “He wrote to Mr. MacDonald, though didn’t he?” “Oh, yes, naturally. So did I.” ‘Hm! The girl seems to have proved up, then.” “Proved up? Proved up? Why, bless you, she told her father, with all due respect, that he could jolly well go hang; she would marry me whether or no.” And the youth would have departed in a huff, had not Bunga seized his arm, ‘Don’t be huffed,”’ he apologized. “When I have reason to—to think—why I’m not so con-demned sure about others who might rip those that I—I think of—up the back. I’m glad the girl has a whang in her bayonet. However, you take warning, and mind your P’s and Q’s.”’ But Gordon could not be induced to share Bunga’s lugubrious apprehensions. The Tail Twister was, after all, the father of the finest woman living, and Gordon could not believe that a progenitor of such caliber would stoop to wreak vengeance. Gomichook com —