Adventure Magazine Cover — page 95: what you’re looking at

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

The Heart of the Range reality it was forty feet wide. Racey stopped and swept with squinting eyes the place where he knew the bridge to be. “See,” he said suddenly, pointing for Molly’s benefit. ‘“There’s the Daisy trail. I can see her plain—to the left of that ar- rowhead bunch of trees. An’ the bridge is behind the trees.” “But Idon’t see any trail.” | “Grown up in grass. That’s why. It’s _ hid by the trees mostly, anyhow. But she’s there, the trail is. You can bet on it.” “IT don’t want to bet on it.’” Shortly. She was still mad at him. He had saved her life, he had succeeded in saving the family ranch, he had put her under eternal obliga- tions, ‘but he had called her thought for him foolishness. It was too much. Yet all the time she was ashamed of her- self. She knew that she was small and mean and narrow and deserved a spanking if any girl did. She wanted tocuff Racey, cuff him till his ears turned red and his head rang. For that is the way a woman feels when she loves a man and he has hurt her feelings. But she feels almost precisely the same way when she hates one who has. Truth it is, that love and hate are close akin. Down, down they dropped two thousand feet, and when they came out upon the fairly level top of the saddle-back Racey mounted behind Molly. _ “He'll have to carry double now,” he ex- plained. ‘‘She’s two mile to the bridge, an’ my wind ain’t good enough to run me two mile.”’ It was not his wind that was weak, it was his feet—his tortured, blistered feet that were two flaming aches. Later they would become numb. He wished they were numb now, and cursed silently the man who first invented cowboy boots. Every jog of the trotting horse whose back he bestrode was a twitching torture. “We'll be at the bridge in another mile,”’ he told her. “Thank Heaven!” Silent and grass-grown lay the Daisy trail when they came out upon it winding through a meager plantation of cedars. “No one’s come along yet,” vouchsafed Racey, turning into the trail after a swift glance at its trackless, undisturbed surface. He tickled the horse with both spurs and _ stirred him into a gallop. There was not much spring in that gallop. Racey weighed fully one hundred and seventy pounds with- 85 out his clothes, Molly a hundred and twenty with all of hers, and the saddle, blanket, sack, rifle and cartridges weighed a good sixty. . On top of this weight pile the many weary miles the horse had traveled since its last meal and you have what it was carrying. No wonder the gallop lacked spring. “Bridge is just beyond them trees,” said Racey in Molly’s ear. “The horse is nearly run out,” was her comment. “He ain’t dead yet.”’ They rocked around the arrowhead grove of trees and saw the bridge before them one stringer. ‘There had been two stringers and adequate flooring when Racey had seen it last. The snows of the previous Winter must have been heavy in the Frying-Pan Mountains. Molly shivered at the sight of that lone stringer. “The horse is done, and so are we,” she muttered. “Nothin’ like that,’’ he told her cheer- fully. ‘“‘There’s one stringer left. Good enough for a squirrel, let alone two white folks.” “T—TI couldn’t,” shuddered Molly. They had stopped at the bridge-head, Racey had dismounted, and she was looking . down into the dark mouth of the cleft with frightened eyes. “Tt must be five hundred feet to the bot- tom,” she whispered, her chin wobbling. “Not more than four hundred,” he said reassuringly. ‘‘An’ that log is a good strong four-foot log, an’ she’s been shaved off with the broad-ax for layin’ the floorin’ so we got a nice smooth path almost two feet wide.” In reality that smooth path retained not a . few of the spikes that had once held ‘the flooring and it was no more than eighteen inches wide. Racey gabbled on regardless. If chatter would do it, he’d get her mind off that four-hundred-foot drop. “T cuc-can’t!” breathed Molly. “I cuc- can’t walk across on that lul-log. I’d fall off. I know I would.” “You ain’t gonna walk across the log,”’ he told her with a broad grin. “I’m gonna carry you pickaback. C’mon, Molly, slide off. That’s right. Now when I stoop put yore arms round my neck. [I'll stick my arms under yore legs. See, like this. Now yore all right. Dong worry. I ain’t CORMICLOO Ss (E@)