Adventure Magazine Cover, October 10, 1921 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

The Silent Captain “Do the other ranches have the same trouble?” asked Wilcox. “More or less. Mostly less. This place gets most of it.” “Why?” “T dunno. Maybe it’s because there’s been no reg’lar head to it. Then again, I wasn’t able to hire the men I wanted. While the San Francisco lawyers were lookin’ for the heir—that’s you—they kept down expenses. Didn’t give me no au- thority and no money. They tied my hands. I had to hire cheap men.” Grant Wilcox smoked in silence for an- other half-mile as their ponies approached a gaunt brown butte at the end of a narrow little valley. Finally he spoke. ‘“T give you full authority. You know the cattle business. I do not. Do what is best for the ranch.”’ “Thanks!” The foreman set his lips in grim lines and his shoulders squared. “‘Now mebbe there’ll be somethin’ started!” They had come to the base of the butte where their trip was to terminate. They had traveled twelve miles over hills, gullies, plains and dry-washes. To Grant Wilcox it was a jumbled landscape splashed by nature with lavish colors, exaggerated and somewhat unreal. He passed a copper hill standing along- side a purple one. He passed the dazzling white bed of a dry lake where flame-~ colored rocks speckled the sand. He passed a light blue mound rising out of a yellow valley. And always the clear air seemed to his nostrils like champagne, flavored eter- nally with the pungent smell of greasewood. The foreman took it as a matter of course. He belonged in this amazing land of Arizona. To the newcomer it was ex- travagant, but when he rode to the top of the butte, the stunning panorama dwarfed everything else. TO THE westward great purple- sera brown mountains frowned down upon giant gray cliffs which in turn towered above miles of foot-hills covered with sage-brush or rocks or plain earth. To the eastward hillocks descended into the haze of agreat flat prairie. Soclear was the air that the mountains appeared almost on top of the foot-hills, and the foot-hills on the plains. The mountains looked a mile away. They were ten miles away. “Over yonder’s the Three Buttes,” 5 Khas said the foreman, pointing toward three brown domes rising out of the bluish haze to the northeast. ‘“That’s George Minden’s ranch. Your next-door neighbor. south’ard you can see the hills of the Big Foot ranch, your other neighbor. Back westward’s the cliff country. There’s a lot o’ neighbors up there you don’t want.” “Whore” : “Robbers and rustlers. They all sneak in here. Yonder among them granite cliffs all Arizona could hide itself. There’s country up there that no man ever got into. The Injuns know somethin’ about it, but they don’t talk and—Whoa!”’ Something moved in the sandy wastes Over to the rs, at the base of the butte. It came around the . corner of a granite ledge, walking with a queer lurch and halting every few steps to look around. Its body was long and narrow and gaunt. Its color was black and its face garishly white. Its hoofs were cloven. Its carriage and manner seemed grotesque even to the inexperienced eyes of Wilcox. “Gosh!” muttered the foreman. ‘Old Misery! That means trouble!” “That steer gives everybody the creeps. That was the calf that started the Jarvis- Denham war. Wiped out thirty cow- punchers in two years. It’s crazy. Got all shot up. They call it Old Misery. Nobody wants it around. It’s bad luck!’ » Grant Wilcox silently watched the animal sniff at the bare ground and amble morosely into a gully. “‘The bad luck has left us,”’ he observed. “Yeh. Mebbe. Still, I’d ruther not have seen it. You can’t get some things from your mind. I had a cousin in that fight. Shot through the heart.”’ Wilcox chewed on his cigar. He had nothing to say. Suddenly the tall foreman made an exclamation. ‘Look over there to the northard!” he pointed. ‘See? Going down that bare knoll. Three men and a pack mule.” “What does that signify?” ‘Some one that don’t belong here. Cow- men stay near the chuck wagons. These fellers may be prospectors goin’ out after supplies and then again they might not.” ‘‘Are they on the Wilcox property?” — ‘Sure. Everybody hits for this ranch. That’s the trouble!” ‘““Any way to learn who they are?” “Yeh. Ill scout around a little. COmiclbooks Cc You’d C@