Adventure Magazine Cover — page 101: what you’re looking at

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

~ The Heart of the Range “A mine!” muttered Swing Tunstall. “A gold-mine! An’ I thought they wanted it for a ranch!” “So did I,” Racey nodded. “T know that miné!”’ said Jake Rule. “Silvertip Ransom an’ Long Oscar drove the tunnel, done the necessary labor, got their patent an’ sold out when they couldn’t get day wages to old Dale for one pony an’ a Jack. But Dale never worked it. A payin’ lode! ——! Who'd ’a’ thought ads “Old Salt an’ Tom Loudon got a couple o’ claims on the other side of the ridge from Dale’s mine,” put in Kansas Casey. ‘“They bought ’em off of Slippery Wilson an’ his wife. Them claims oughta be right valu- able now.”’ : “They are,” nodded Judge Dolan. <““The agreement goes on to say that Jack Harpe found gold-bearing lodes in both of Slip- pery’s old tunnels, that these two claims will be properly relocated—I guess that’s where Jakey Pooley come in—an’ all three mines will be worked by a company made up of these four men, each man to receive one- quarter of the profits. This agreement is signed by Jack Harpe, Simon Lanpher an’ Jacob Pooley.” “An’ after Pooley was arrested,” con- tributed Racey Dawson, ‘‘the Piegan City marshal went through his safe and found the original of this agreeement signed by ‘Tweezy, Lanpher an’ Harpe.” Luke Tweezy held up his hand. “One moment,” said he. “Where was the agree- ‘ment signed by Harpe, Pooley an’ oa found?’ “In yore safe,” replied Racey elec: “Did you find it there?” “Yep.” “What were you doin’ at my safe?” “Now don’t get excited, Luke. I hap- feed to be in the neighborhood of yore house in Marysville about a month ago when I noticed one of yore back windows open. I snooped in an’ there was Jack Harpe workin’ on yore combination with Jakey Pooley watchin’ him. Jack Harpe _ was the boy who opened the safe—Huh? ~ Shore I know him an’ Jakey Pooley sicked posses on my trail. Why not? They hadda cover their own tracks, didn’t they? But that ain’t the point. What. T can’t help wonderin’ is why Harpe an’ Pooley were fussin’ with the safe in the first place. What do you guess, Luke?” gI Evidently Tweezy knew the answer. With a yelp of, “Tried to cross me, you ee he flung himself\bodily upon Jack Harpe. In a moment the two were rolling on the floor. It required four men and seven min- utes. to pry them apart. CHAPTER XXXII THE END OF THE TRAIL HY) Ree es DALE looked at Racey with adoring eyes. “How on earth did you guess that the Bill Smith who robbed the Wells Fargo safe at Keeleyville and killed the agent was Jack Harpe?” “Oh, that was nothin’. Yuh see, ’d heard ‘somebody say—I .disremember ex- actly who now—that Jack Harpe’s real name was Bill Smith, that he’d shaved off his beard an’ part of his eyebrows to make himself look different, an’ that he’d done somethin’ against the law to some Com- pany in some town. I didn’t know what company: nor what town, but I had some- thin’ to start with when McFluke was let loose. “T figured out by this, that, an’ the other that Jack Harpe had let McFluke loose. Aw right, that showed Jack Harpe was a ex- pert lock-picker. He showed us at Marys- ville that he was a expert on safe combina- tions. Now there can’t be many men like that. So I took what I knowed about him to the detective chief of three railroads. He’d done somethin’ against a company, do yuh see, an’ of course I went to three dif- ferent railroad companies before IT woke up an’ went to the Wells Fargo an’ found out that such a man as Jack Harpe named Bill Smith was wanted for the Keeleyville job. So yuh see there wasn’t much to it. It was all there waitin’ for somebody to find it.” “But it lacked the somebody till you came _along,” she told him with shining eyes. “Shucks.”’ “No shucks about it. That we have our ranch today with a sure enough producin’ gold-mine in one corner of it is all due to ou.” “Shucks, s’pose now them handwritin’ experts Judge Dolan got from Chicago hadn’t been able to prove at the time that the forgery an’ them fifty or sixty copies of yore dad’s name was wrote by the same hand, ink and pen? S’posé now they Oil COOLS, (EO)