Adventure Magazine Cover — page 104: what you’re looking at

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

94 the trigger had caught and fired the car- tridge. The bullet had entered his body. The light of the short January day had long since been blotted from the sky and only the faint glow of the vast field of stars above and the Arctic moon, peeping like a cold, disdainful eye through the spruce- tops, dispelled the shadows of the trail as the struggling dogs and Ryan, pushing with every ounce of his strength on the handle- bars, drew the toboggan containing the senseless form of Bishop up the slope from the river bank to the door of the cabin. Ryan rushed inside, lit a candle with numb and stiffened fingers and applied the flame to handfuls of shavings which he stuffed into the sheet-iron stove. When the fire was roaring up the chimney he crammed in chunks of wood and then re- turned to the toboggan. Seizing the wounded man by the shoulders, he dragged him inside, hoisted him to a bunk in one corner and covered him with robes. He filled a vessel with chopped ice and set it on the stove to melt, replenished the fire once more and went out to take care of the tired dogs. When he returned the ice had melted and the room was warm. Bishop with re- turned consciousness was moaning weakly. Ryan threw back the robes. “How yuh feelin’, Doc?” he asked anx- iously. “I’m goin’ to die, Jim; I’m sure goin’ to die,” Bishop moaned. “Die, ——!’ Ryan ‘retorted roughly. “‘Fergit that stuff. That little scratch you got wouldn’t even give a Siwash kid the belly-ache.”’ “You can’t fool me, Jim,” the other re- turned weakly. ‘You know I studied medi- cine once, and I know what I’m talkin’ about. She got me plumb dead center, and my guts are punctured, Jim. I ain’t got-a ghost of a chance. Just got to lie here and die like a gut-shot wolf. And I ain’t half fit to die, Jim; Lord knows I ain’t fit to die.” “Hey, now! Lay off o’ that stuff,” Ryan cutin. ‘I’m tellin’ you you ain’t hurt bad. You are strong and husky as a moose. You'll mush out o’ this fine and dandy ina few days. Hold still now while I peel off these duds. I’m goin’ to take a squint at that scratch, and swab it off with hot water and wrap something around it.” He spoke with all the assurance at his command, far more than he really felt. Gently as possible the blood-soaked gar- - Adventure ments were stripped away and the wound bared; a tiny, innocent-looking puncture oozing a small trickle of blood. But at sight of it Ryan caught his breath; his weather- beaten face paled and for an instant he felt sick and dizzy. As he turned away to get the pan of water he muttered dazedly to himself: ce , it’s a bull’s-eye sure enough. Poor old Doc.” | His optimism and the hope that the wound would prove superficial were en- tirely swept away. For hours Ryan lay awake on his ‘bunk listening to the painful, labored breathing. of his wounded partner and trying to force his long inactive brain-cells to meet the de- mands of the emergency. “T gotta have more dogs,” he reasoned. “If I could catch Daly and Jones at their home-cabin I could get their string and maybe one of them to-help me. I could make it up there in six hours, I reckon, but they might be gone over the line and my time’d be wasted. Jf I found ’em, though, I’d be back by noon tomorrow, and by dark we’d be headed south for the fort. If a storm didn’t hit I’d have Doc inside the mission hospital inside three days.” . At last he rose resolutely from the bed and began to pull on his outdoor garments. “It’s gotta be done,” he declared. Doc’s only chance. I gotta find Daly and Jones and get their dogs.” In spite of the fact that many hours of labor had elapsed since he last slept, he quietly left the room. From a peg outside the door he took his snow-shoes and a rifle and set off with long, quick strides up the river toward the camp of his nearest neigh- bors, thirty miles away. Each step was ac- companied by the snapping of his exhaled breath in the bitter cold night air and the sharp crack of freezing ice, loud and clear as the bark of guns. From the woods on either hand there rose the hunting cry of wolves, spokesmen of the desolation wail- ing at the moon. Pua “HEY, Daly, come alive! Hear exe that?” Jones nudged his sleeping partner with a vigorous elbow. Daly sat up drows- ily. From the direction of the dog-houses a pandemonium of savage barking had sud- denly shattered the air. ‘Must be a wolverine prowlin’ around,” SIt’¢ GOMIIGoOO S (© iin