Adventure, February 1917 — page 139: what you’re looking at

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

The One Way Out ef he does anything to you, I—I’m likely to kill him myself!” - “Do ye like me thataway, Sally?” asked Hale. Sally leaned toward him. In the semi- darkness he could see her roundish bosom rising and falling rapidly. “T reckon I do,” she whispered tenderly. Then Hale rose, and so did his sweet- heart. ‘ “Ef I thought nobody’d see us, I'd kiss ye, Sally,” smiled Hale. “The’ hain’t a soul a-lookin’, Charley,” murmured Sally King. THE Haynes-Norris Logging Com- pany’s monthly pay-day came on oN © the fifteenth. Late in the night of the fourteenth, those in the big, unpainted boarding-house were awakened suddenly by a great, dull, rum- bling explosion that sounded as if it were very near to them. The timberjacks and their superintendent, ne-man of them more than half-dressed, rushed out of the build- ing before the reverberations had died away. Bill Cooley carried a lighted lamp in his hands, and he at once made for the office; the others followed hard on his heels. The office door was properly closed and fastened, but the lower sash of one of the windows had been very neatly taken out. Cooley unlocked the door hastily and pushed it wide open. The yellow light of the oil- - lamp showed them little streamers of gray haze floating here and there in the room, and there was present the pungent odor of exploded dynamite. A closer look revealed the fact that the company’s old iron safe _ had been blown. “By ——!” cried Super Bill, dropping to his knees before the wrecked safe. “The satchel with the pay-roll is gone!” Cooley counted his loggers. Not one of them was missing. Even -Linderman Mc- Nabb, who slept in the old cabin by himself, was there among them, though he did arrive some two minutes later than the others. Super Bill did not like to suspect any of his timberjacks. He began to look his office over for a possible clue. Soon he found a common bone-handled barlow knife lying under the front of the safe, and this he picked up and pocketed without anybody _ noticing it. Also he found that one of the - two keys to the dynamite house was gone. “I reckon there’s nothing we can do now,” 137 he oo presently. “Better go back to bed, : oy They left him. Cooley put the lamp on the upper part of his old roll-top desk, sat self down in scarred swivel-chair, took the cheap knife from his pocket and looked it over carefully. One of its bone sides bore the crudely carved initials “C. H.” “Charley Hale!” he muttered under his breath. He went on, a moment later: “But — Ill be hanged if I believe he did it. He wouldn’t have done such a thing as this. True, he might have made the shot, hidden the satchel, and joined us-when we gathered here—but I won’t believe it. The initials must be somebody else’s. Super Bill had a big heart, but he had a bigger idea of squareness. The company had had him deputized as an officer of the law in order that he might be more able to protect its Pistol Creek interests, and he was a man to keep his oath at any cost. As the hours wore on toward the break of day, the idea that the blower of the safe might have been Hale took a greater and greater hold in his mind. When breakfast was over, he called Sally King’s sweetheart to “Will you lend me your knife, Charley?” he asked. Hale unsuspectingly searched through one of his pockets after another. “T shore hain’t got it,” he drawled. must ha’ lost it, I reckon.” “What kind of a knife was it?” narrowly. ““Bone-handled barlow, with my initials cut on one side,” readily. “All right,’”? mumbled Cooley. your work.” Charley went toward the woods. Cooley promptly notified the company’s wall | “Go to headquarters of the robbery, and another . pay-roll was sent out. The county’s high sheriff came with it, and he made investi-. gations that ended just where they began. Cooley kept his own counsel and said noth- ing of the knife. Three more days passed, and Sunday — morning came. In the big up-stairs of the boarding-house, the timberjacks were’ get- ting ready to go to the swimming-pool at the confluence of Pistol Creek and Little — Pigeon River, a short mile down the valley. There was the usual amount of quibbling - and laughter, and Charley Hale did as much of it as anybody else. Why shouldn’t he be happy? Wasn’t Sally King, the sweetest COMIC HOOKS (E(0)