Adventure Magazine Cover — page 45: what you’re looking at

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

A Pot of Gold “PUT yer hands up.” 1’ He saw the dull glint of steel on a -1 knife. He was jolted out of his trance. He halted abruptly. Then he acted. Savage, desperate, wild with self-humilia- tion, he didn’t care what happened. He saw red. He reached back. In a flash he swung out a heavy forty-five and leaped forward to kill. ‘‘Come on,” he pleaded. ‘Come on!” There was an eager whine to his voice. Too eager. It meant powder-explosions and quick eternity. It paralyzed the men. They expected an easy haul and looked into cold death. One of them backed against a wall. The other started to edge away. “Halt!” yelled Pete. ‘Hands up there! Quick!” There was no hesitation. Pete was too anxious. The hands shot upward. Pete’s free hand grabbed their weapons. A black- jack and a shiny knife went into the gutter. Pete cursed them viciously in a voice charged with dynamite. ‘‘You’d hold me up, would you? You’d take the last dollar from a busted man, would you? Heh! I'll see about that! Turn around! Both of you! Lemme see what you’ve got in return!” He laid the muzzle of his heavy six- shooter against a cringing head. He sought the man’s- pockets with his free hand and then he examined the other fellow. He was amazed by what he found. They were loaded with money. He had held up successful hold-up men! Pete was flabbergasted at his good for- tune. The ethical side of it hardly struck him at all. To him it was an offering by Fate to compensate somewhat for what he had suffered. Swindled and victimized, angered and desperate, bankrupt and hope- ‘less, he had turned a corner and wrested a prize from unworthy hands. To him it was a life-saver. Pete’s act was piratical. It was all wrong, but for a man of his type and in his condition it was perhaps natural. He was not educated to the finer ethics. The old sinner had been betrayed, flouted and robbed. He felt a fierce joy in coming back at somebody and thought himself entitled to the profits. His un- moral attitude was not what would be followed by men of better breeding, but 35 it was about what might have been expected from an illiterate old desert-rat under such circumstances. Some vague inner sense, however, told Pete that Tom would not accept the money if he knew its source. He would even make Pete give it up. Pete decided that such a catastrophe should never happen, no matter what sort of yarn had to be told. Pete could face Tom with anything but the real story, and brazen it out. Next morning at the ferry Pete poured eight hundred dollars into Tom’s amazed hands. Tom’s eyes were blinking. ‘““‘What’s this? For Heaven’s sake, where did you get it?” ‘Never mind. I got sixteen hundred dollars. Half’s yours.” Tom’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Pete, we only had a few dollars last night. Have you been gambling with them?” Pete grasped eagerly at a chance to tell a truth. ‘VYeh,” he retorted. everything—and I won.” “I gambled for Vill N ESCALANTE matters had gone badly. Tom’s sudden disappearance disorganized his friends and heartened the other element. The town government had failed to work smoothly. Tom took hold again. Though he did nothing in particular his name and his pres- ence stiffened the better element. People will rally around a man they trust, and Tom had won prestige by ousting Hill. Some of Escalante’s tougher citizens joined Finlev. Rumors of depredations by the Finley crowd kept trickling into town. Some one fired at Tom from ambush. It awakened him to the encroaching danger and he took action. Tom first led a crowd of horsemen to the sheriff's office at the county seat, ar.d that delighted official deputized the whole crowd. ‘Things can’t be any worse up there, and they might be better,’’ he opined. “I’d go myself, only I’ve got thirty-forty other cases. Good luck.” After the cavalcade left the county seat Tennessee began to chuckle. ‘“‘What’s the matter?” demanded Tom. “Oh, I was jest thinkin’. This here’s a funny country. The sheriff’s tryin’ to find CoOMmicbhook C©