Adventure Magazine Cover — page 81: what you’re looking at

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

Lost Diggings After he had helped himself the girl remarked: “So you're going after the mare? Why don’t you tell the Payette Committee about . it? They’ve done lots of good in getting stolen property back. If they’d had Ben Riply over at Idaho City when it was burned this Spring the thieves wouldn’t have lugged so many store goods into the hills.”’ “T don’t belong down here. I can’t ask favors of strangers. I pack my own blankets and run my own trails. If I can’t get the mare back after locating her the thief is welcome to her.” “Vou seem to be awfully cock-sure of your- self, Shoshoni Hale.”” She spoke as one over- awed, but he knew she was making game ot him and his face colored. He was ill at ease under her solemn eyes. He feared for what her artless bluntness would incite her to say. Intirely unaccustomed to women’s com- pany he felt he was trapped and helpless. The old man perceived his growing embar- rassment and tersely commanded— “Harry, keep your trap shet!” “Oh, I don’t mind!” protested Hale, mopping his long face. Then he humbly explained to her, ‘‘Being a stranger, it don’t strike me as proper to go round begging for help. Up North I might feel more free to call on.” “And you might not,” she soothingly added. ‘You might just trust to your hand guns and rifle. You look like that.” This time he flushed with happiness. It was a wonderful experience to have a young woman, as tantalizingly pretty as the girl was, give him praise. He found himself saying— “It was only a notion my coming down here, anyway.” After he had spoken he decided it sounded idiotic. He discovered that Old Idaho was grinning in his beard. aru] FOR several minutes they were too tee) busy eating to talk. The girl was <4 taking time to perfect her estimate of thé stranger. All tongues did not agree as to the kind of man Shoshoni Hale was... He had been active in building the Mullan wagon-road from Walla Walla to Fort Benton, and was credited with having a more extensive knowledge of the country between the upper Missouri and the Cascade Mountains than he was entitled to. But vet there is no pleasure in adhering to facts when gossiping about a man. It is very probable that his friendship with certain leaders among the Shoshoni was construed to mean that he knew the country as well as they did. As a fact he was sufficiently familiar with all the country forming Idaho Territory and western Mon- tana, northern Utah, and parts of Washing- ton and Oregon to serve as guide to the majority of newcomers to this, the latest El Dorado. To say he knew the country as well as the Indian he had left north of the Payette was nonsense. But his reputation as a trail- maker alone would not have made his name conspicuous among the miners in the Snake River Basin. Something else was needed to keep his name alive at camp-fires and in the saloons on the Boise, the Clearwater, and the creek tributaries of the Snake and Owyhee. There was a mystery about the fellow; therein was found the stimulus. He dressed like a mountain-man of the old beaver régime. No one seemed to know where he had been, or what he had done since quitting road-building in ’Sixty-two. Not that he had vanished during these three years, for such a prolonged absence would have spelled oblivion. He had come and gone, flitting in and off the scene. But he was never known to prospect for lode or placer; and yet he always had his bag of dust. It was an easily accepted truism that an able-bodied man in Idaho Territory must be engaged in mining, ranching, farming, transportation, merchandising, selling rum, or gambling, or else he must have a much less wholésome occupation. More from a love of exaggeration and the human desire to increase the mystery than because of any adequate proof it came to be whispered by some—some who had never seen him— that he painted his face and did gruesome work while thus disguised. This poisonous uncertainty about the man persisted, although no proof involving him with law-breaking had been unearthed out of all the too few examples made of outlawry by the Payette Committee and other extemporaneous tribunals. Yet surely was a man to be eyed askance who had no vocational background? No one had produced any evidence connecting Hale with the banditti, but his detractors said this evidenced his great cunning. It COmiclbookKks © inn