Adventure Magazine Cover, October 10, 1921 — page 31: what you’re looking at

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

The Silent Captain VII mod GRANT WILCOX started the next AYenat morning for his examination of the maes3 whole vast ranch, taking Steve Adams, Old Man Shay and an extra horse to carry things. It was planned to run along the southern boundary of the ranch into the mountains, and then swing nor- therly across the vast network of cliffs and peaks which stood like ramparts above the big estate of Jim Wilcox. The boss was advised not to go. Cutting across those cliffs and ravines was a hard task, as Tupper pointed out. Wilcox made his only comment while the horses were ‘being saddled: “We will try to stumble across a few trails.”’ Tupper stayed home and nursed his wounded shoulder. The editor also stayed. He was glad of the rest. His morale was shattered. When he staggered into the house shortly before dawn he was literally a wild man. Wilcox poured him a jolt of whisky that would have paralyzed a mule, but the editor didn’t seem to feel it. He was seething, boiling, raging. He stamped up and down and shrieked for vengeance, shedding tiny feathers all over the floor. He raved like a lunatic. gave him a cigar to soothe his nerves. chewed it up in two minutes. “The dogs!” he yelled. “The dirty hounds! They sneaked up! They caught me in bed before I could move a finger! Oh, wait till I get at em! Ye gods—wait!’’ The editor could guess who his enemies were. He opined that his editorial had “burned some people considerable.” It had. They dragged ‘the editor out of bed, - bound him, gagged him, took him out to a lonesome place, poured warm tar on him and rolled him in an old feather-bed while a mob of armed night-riders chuckled. After that they tied him on a horse and rode him for dreary miles over wind-swept hills and valleys till they turned him loose. His subsequent adventures were _ hair- raising. While wolves howled in the darkness, he groped ahead without knowing where he was or where he was going. The wolves came nearer. To his mind they had grown into a pack slavering for his blood. He ran like a scared deer. He was still going He gorges. Wilcox % 21 strong when he struck the lane leading to the Wilcox ranch-house. It took two hours to calm him and two more to scrub most of the tar off him. Wilcox asked him to stay; so he did. He realized that the cards were stacked against him in town just then. The boss and his little caravan started out, ready for anything. Their trip was easy enough at first for the storm had sub- sided. It was late in the afternoon before they approached the larger mountains and al- most dusk when they swung to the northward. Next morning the real work began. As they climbed into the higher country, hills became cliffs and cafions became Great walls of granite or deep crevasses blocked their way and made them circle for hours to find crossings. The land grew wilder, a jumble of earth and rock heaped on end for miles. Later they reached certain weird landmarks. They came upon a mound whose flat sides showed crumbling doorways, windows and stairways where ancient cliff dwellers once lived. Their footsteps echoed in dusty corridors that might have been the halls of a king. They came upon a brown granite mountain that stood straight on end, a giant obelisk rising out of a dusty little yellow plain like a lonely sentinel. They came upon a dark, narrow gorge and looked down for hundreds of feet where tumbling waters betrayed a great subter- ranean stream. ‘They climbed a copper- colored mountain by a trail hewed out of solid rock centuries ago by a vanished race. They explored a gorge until they turned a corner where shafts of sunlight flamed on dens of hibernating snakes in a vast satanic colony that looked like Dante’s inferno. There was still no traces of man. or domestic beast. Once Shay thought he dis- cerned a nude Indian in the distance, and twice the party came on the tracks of mountain lions, but that was all. Late in the afternoon they descended a hillside, turned a corner, and beheld a gem of a little lake set in pine trees and girdled with little patches of snow. ‘The opal- green waters were clear and deep, with rocks and the limbs of old trees showing at the bottom. To the travelers it was like a breath of heaven. Grant Wilcox spoke his first words since the trip began. ‘Are we on the ranch?” ““We’re ’way back of it, said Shay. comiclboool C@