Adventure Magazine Cover, February 3, 1921 — page 106: what you’re looking at

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

' 100 With a farewell shot Kitts yanked his terri- fied horse about and splashed toward the opposite shore. The trapper brought down his gun for a dead-center shot when the appearance of the flood crest caused him to hold his fire. The vengeance of Nature would be infinitely more terrible than’a bullet. With one last glance at the oncoming wall of water he turned and ran up the slope. It was a wall of water and yet it was a wheel of water, rolling over and over and bristling with the trunks of trees it had torn from the banks up the creek. When Kitts saw it and realized that he had delayed a few minutes too long he screamed with terror and senselessly struck the horse upon the head with the barrel of his revolver. The poor brute lost his footing and went down, throwing Kitts under him. - Then the revolving mass of flood débris reached animal and man and gathered them up as a portion of its sum total. PY) LARAMIE PETE begged his two © friends to remain and take an inter- =a est in his trading-venture; Natchez implored them to wait until after his wed- ding and then go prospecting with him in the hills. The girl hung her head and eyed them shyly. California Joe spoke for himself and his friend when he told them: . “T’ve seen ’nough o’ trade to last me four lifetimes. An’ trade is all right an’ has to be. “As to gold-huntin’, young man, take th’ smallest @’ two dern poor ways of earnin’ a livin’ an’ stick to trade. If ye go after gold an’ work an’ strave an’ sweat hard ’nough to find it, it’ll probably turn out ye found it for some fellers that never belted a pick into retten rock. “Best mine ye ever struck is this little gal. Adventure Make sure yer claim to her is all right, then stick close by her. There allers have been gold-mines an’ allers will be. “We won’t go into trade an’ we won’t go out to find gold. I could ’a’ had first crack at what these fellers round Denver found— an’ one or two rich ones that nobody ain’t found yet. But as I’ve said afore what’s th’ use? Tom ’n’ me would have to go East to spend it. We don’t hanker for that coun- try. Lots o’ new places out here we ain’t looked into yet. “Tom, how much time d’ye ‘low we can lose waitin’ for this weddin’ to happen?” Reason held up one finger, caught the girl’s pleading look and held’ up two more. Joe nodded, and said: . “All right. Make it in three sleeps an’ we'll be here to wish ye luck. Ye can git jest as fair an’ square hitched in three sleeps as ye can in a moon of ’em. © ‘“‘There’s a preachin’ feller jest come in from Kansas. He looks spry ’nough to do th’ trick. “Laramie, th’ gold dust I slung into yer wagon goes to th’ gal. An’ he was ’lowin’ to give her th’ five thousand that was stole from ye twice an’ that ye got back from th’ crick by jest pure luck.” Laramie Pete suppressed a sigh and agreed that the gold should go to his daughter. California Joe winked slyly at Reason and said: “Four sleeps from now, then, Tom ’n’ me will be makin’ for Bridger’s Pass. Then for a little visit to th’ Mormons, then for th’ Oregon, which is a man’s size of a_country. An’ th’ time will come when even Oregon will be filled up.with Easterners so thick that folks will build fences round their property.” His friends, including even the sober Reason, smiled quietly at such imagining. “ lively - (C@