Adventure Magazine Cover — page 86: what you’re looking at

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

76 horse stampeding at the explosion, rope- tied the animal to the trunk of the pine. After which he removed his spurs, carefully unwrapped the dynamite and stuck three sticks in each hip pocket. The caps, in their little box, he put in the breast pocket of his shirt. With the coil of fuse in one hand and the bran sack given him by Lainey in the other he walked toward the house of Tweezy. The house was of course dark. Nor were there any lights in the irregular line of houses stretching up and down this side of the street. The neighbors had apparently all gone to bed. Through an opening be- tween two houses Racey saw a brightly lighted window in a house an eighth of a mile away. That ®ould be Judge Allison’s house. The judge then was awake. Two hundred and twenty yards was not a long distance even for a portly man like Judge Allison to cover at speed. And Racey had known Judge Allison to move briskly on occasion. Racey, moving steadily ahead, slid past some one’s barn and opened up a view of the dance-hall. It had previously been con- cealed from his sight by the high posts and rails of three corrals. The dance-hall was going full blast. At least all the windows were bright with light. away to hear the fiddles. ‘The dance-hall! He might have known it would still be operating at midnight. But it was almost twice as far from the Tweezy house to the dance-hall as it was from the judge’s house to Tweezy’s. That was something. Indeed it was a great deal. But he would have to work fast. All the neighbors would come bounc- ing out at the crash of the explosion. Racey paused to flatten an ear at the kitchen door. He heard nothing, and tip- toed along the wall to the window of the . room next the kitchen. The ground-plan of‘ the house was almost an exact square. There was a room ineach angle. The office, which Racey knew contained the safe, was diagonally across from the kitchen. Racey, halting at the window of the room next the kitchen, was somewhat surprized to find it open. He stuck in his head and saw a faint glow beyond the half-closed door of the office. The glow seemed to be brighter | near the floor. Racey listened intently. He heard a faint grumble and now and then a squeak. He was too far - Adventure He crouched beneath the window and removed his boots. Then he crawled over the sill and hunkered down on the uncar- peted floor. The floor boards did not creak. Still hunkering, his arms extended in front of him, he made his way silently across the room, skirting safely in the proc- ess two chairs and a table, and stood up- right behind the crack of the door. Looking through the crack he perceived that the glow he had seen from the window emanated from a tin can pierced with several holes. The dim, uncertain light revealed the figure of a tall and hatless man kneeling beside the safe. _ The man’s back was toward the lighted tin can. One ofthe tall man’s hands was slowly turning the knob of the combination. The side of the man’s head was pressed against the front of the safe near the com- bination. Racey could not see the man’s face. Across the window of the room two blankets had been hung.. The door into the other front room was open. Then sud- denly the doorway was no longer a black void. A man stood there—a fat man with a stomach that hung out over the waist- band of his trousers. There was something very familiar about the figure of that fat man. The fat man leaned against the door- jamb and pushed back his wide, black hat. The light in the tin can illumined his coun- tenance dimly. But Racey’s eyes were be- coming accustomed to the half-darkness. _ He was able to recognize Jacob Pooley— fat Jakey Pooley, the registrar of the dis- trict, whose home was in Piegan City. “You ain’t as fast as you used to be,” observed fat Jakey in a soft whisper. “Shut up!” hissed the kneeling man, and turned his face for an instant toward fat Jakey, so that the light shone upon his features. It was Jack Harpe. “What’s biting your ear?” fat Jakey asked good-naturedly. “T’ve told you more’n once to let what’s past alone,” grumbled Jack Harpe. ‘‘—.—.. there’s nobody around.” ‘Nev’ mine whether they is or not. You get out of the habit.” “Rats,” sneered fat Jakey. “What was that?” Jack Harpe’s figure tautened in a flash. “Rats,” repeated fat Jakey. =SGOmIGbDook (E@) 5}