Adventure Magazine Cover, August 18, 1921 — page 170: what you’re looking at

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

hy | al al Ay [ERS Author of “‘Lure of the Lode,” “The Dance of the Golden Gods,” etc. 66 ILA” FERGUS, who had been staring at the camp-fire for the best part of an hour, suddenly et became rigid, save that his thin, muscular, right hand tightened over the nicotine-stained clay pipe and his jaw- muscles twitched curiously. His every sense seemed to be straining toward some- thing vague, distant, invisible. — Immediately around him, beyond the ring of faces by the fire, circled the gray tents of the cavalry company. Beyond that was the half-desert land covered with sagebrush, greasewood and growths of cacti grotesquely in keeping with the weird, shifting-shaped wonderland of geological delirium which is peculiarly Arizona. “Dinna ye hear it?” muttered Fergus, addressing no one apparently. | The circle of blurred faces about th camp-fire—Indian, Mexican and American —turned toward the Scot where he sat, an archaic figure in fringed buckskin, a relic of the middle century, even to the beaded pipe-case swung from his neck. He was armed obsoletely, too. He still stuck to the long-barreled, muzzle-loading rifle of earlier Indian-fighting days. A _ strange figure in the year 1886, and daily becoming stranger. | Into the momentary lull came the restless movings of the hobbled mounts, the foot- fall of the guards about the temporary en- campment and a murmur of voices from the tent where Lieutenant Gaillard conferred with his chief scout, Leacock, over the probable whereabouts of that band which had detached itself from Geronimo, prob- ably as a blind. It might even be that the “Tiger” himself was with the detachment, and the main band, which Crooke pursued more to the southward, a ruse to draw the general’s forces from the main quarry. Overhead the stars twinkled and snapped in an atmosphere so rare that the lungs seemed to yawn in taking hold of it. Over to the right, the moon, a little past the full, was trying to clear a cluster of infernoglike rock pinnacles which stood up in sinister blackness against a hell-lighted background. “Dinna ye hear it?” repeated the Gila, his eyes straining into the fire. The half-breed Kiowa looked toward the pinnacle rocks, his bronze profile in sharp relief against the radiance of the coming moon. The Mexicans exchanged glances of superstitious uneasiness. An Irish team- ster cursed softly, while one of the white scouts—Ringer, who knew—studied the rigid pose of the grizzled, long-haired Scot with a look of tolerance not unmixed with pity. Presently the straining figure in buckskin relaxed. Deliberately the hot ashes were tapped from the blackened clay pipe and the latter placed carefully in the beaded pouch. The thin, sinewy hand of the Scot reached for the long-barreled rifle. Slowly the Gila rose to his feet and stood still for a moment, the rifle-stock grounded 164 C© CloOOOLKKS CO S|