Adventure Magazine Cover — page 163: what you’re looking at

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

ee ee SS They Always Run True to Form The road turned and the air came sweeter. Again it turned. A faint breeze wafted by. Warningly Bertie held up ahand. The torch went out. A faint glimmer of light came streaming in. Carefully, carefully, the two men peered round the edge of a wall of rock. Only the tips of their noses and their eyes were show- ing. Slowly the eyes became accustomed once more*to the feel of day. Outside, fierce glaring white sunlight beating back from a gleaming baking earth. Sunlight, and in the sunlight hosts of men with arms—men standing, men squat- ting, men moving—hosts of dark men, lithe and alert—troops of dark men within a huge stockade—men with assagais, shields and axes, men with knobkerries. And on the ground were pots and fires. The men were there day and night! el ee about settles it, Frank, eh?’’ “Tt looks like it, Bertie. Looks like we had to serve out our month.” Miserably Bertie grinned, then went on seriously. “Well, Frank, I’ve done one good job in my life in any case. I came out here to get lost and I couldn’t very well get much loster, could I?” The graybeard grinned, too. - “No, Bertie. Your creditors aren’t ‘very likely to find you here.” Aggrievedly Bertie snorted. | “Creditors! T’ with ’em! any. I didn’t clear out for that.” The old man’s grin was a smile—a smile of understanding. “What was it, Bertie? telling. Girl?” For a second Bertie hesitated, and in the darkness killed a guilty, sheepish laugh. ¢ ‘Um-um!”’ “Out with it, Bertie.” “Tt’s nothing, Frank—nothing. But, Frank,” and a hand reached out uncon- sciously, “‘you ought to have seen her hair.”’ The smile of understanding broadened. “Nothing, eh, Bertie, yet your mind carries a vision.” “Tt was a vision, Frank—” and the truth of enthusiasm rang clear. ‘Not golden, Frank, and not red—I can’t describe it.” QUITE hopelessly Bertie sat back in the middle of their old cavern, _and listlessly Frank wilted and sat No harm in I haven’t 157 “They mostly can’t, What was her name?” . “Eileen. She was the finest little kid who ever lived, Frank. Full of outdoors—hunt- ing, shooting, adventure. The best-hearted, the best: “They always are, Bertie. Then you " fellows come out here.” Again for a second Bertie hesitated, then, searching his mind to find if he were causing sympathy or amusement, decided it was sympathy. wy chought all the world of Eileen, Frank, and she thought all the world of me. Hon- est, Frank. She was an orphan and an heiress, and she——” And Frank smiled right out loud. “The heiress, Bertie, not the hair. The heiress.” The reaching hand pinched viciously. “No, Frank. Can’t you be serious for a single second? She was the fe “And then you came out here?” “All right, if you must have it, Frank. Eileen had an old guardian who lived on her, and who tried to fix it for her to marry the son of an old crony of his. Crooked old beast, he was. Crooked old ——. Both crooked.” “They always are, Bertie, where there’s a girl concerned—and you’re the other fellow.” Puzzled, Bertie pondered. “Yes, but they were crooked. - Eileen didn’t like that son, but they persuaded her and persuaded her, and lied about me and fixed things up to discredit me. And in the end she came to believe them.” “They always do, Bertie. All little ladies have receptive minds for the little wrong things in life.” “But this one hadn’t, Frank. And then I heard Eileen was going to get married,” - “And then you came out here?” Abruptly Bertie stopped. For one full minute his brain went dumbly back. “No, Frank,” he quietly said. “Then I did the very silliest thing in the world. The very exact thing I shouldn’t have done. Got on a —— of a bust and made a perfect, complete, full-sized, egregious ass of myself.”’ ‘And then you came out here?” “Ves,” Bertie finished seriously. “And I dropped the family name.” In the darkness a hand came down, and Bertie felt a grip. And Bertie knew chat sympathy was right. 000) GOMEE Ss) €O