Adventure Magazine Cover — page 60: what you’re looking at

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

He brought a neighbor with him. The two were astonished to find their sleek horses prancing. They saw ahead of them, on the snow, a crimson stain. They saw a cloven ‘hoof sticking from a little drift of snow. ‘They saw elk and mountain sheep pressing down to the very stack of hay for which they were headed. There, in the snow were tracks. ‘The ‘tracks circled around on all sides. The two ‘men, mere homesteaders, hardly recognized those imprints. They looked exactly like a dog’s, but the longer the men looked, the bigger the tracks seemed. There couldn’t be a doubt of it! They were wolf tracks; and as they stared at the elk and sheep stumbling around, they saw that the wolf had been killing these precious game animals, They wished they had brought their guns. They wondered if the wolf would come and kill their horses. They looked around, and saw that the wolf had killed many animals. Lots of them lying. around had been torn and rent before the blood had stopped flowing. “My gracious!” Top Hazer, who had a 640 arid-land claim with a dandy big spring on it, gasped. “Think of it! What kind of a wolf ‘is it—how big—that he can kill a bull elk! And there he’s killed a mountain sheep, too! We better hurry up. ’Tain’t safe up in these mountains, with packs of wolves running around!” The two hastily loaded a sled full of hay; and while one held the elk at bay with a pitchfork to keep them from eating the fodder off the sled as fast as it was pitched on, the other made the load. Then they wired up the fence again good and strong, and raced away on their steep back trail down into the valley, far below, glad to escape with their lives. 3 There, having looked around and cleaned up the rifles, they telephoned off across the country, letting folks know that wolves were killing the elk and mountain sheep, and that if something wasn’t done about it there wouldn’t be any game left in the whole State. Packs of wolves that didn’t think anything of pulling down bull elk and eating mountain sheep alive just had to be taken care of! The Government couldn’t ‘expect people to stand for that. If something wasn’t done to clear the range of wolves, after they’d eaten what they wanted of game they’d be coming after 3 Adventure the fat herds and flocks of tame meat. And next anybody knew, it wouldn’t be safe for humans, no sir, not for American citizens, to follow their own public highways. Some- thing ought to be done! That was just scared and lonesome home- steaders—everybody knew Top Hazer, how he always was blowing, sometimes about hydrophobia skunks and sometimes about red cats in the buttes, and that sort of thing. He always had something to holler about, every month or two. Same way with Hip Ruriter, Top’s neighbor. They traveled in a pair, and tried to out-whoop each -other—and then they’d both swear to each other’s lies. People laughing at them made Hip and Top go back up to the valley of sheep and elk, carrying their trusty old .30-30s. They dusted off their saddles and patched the crumbling stirrup-straps. They took cow- boy blankets, and things to-eat. They burrowed holes into one of their haystacks, with their horses inside the wire fence. They killed a chunky little sheep which had found its way somehow through the wires, and had been eating a haystack all up for six weeks or so, destroying a lot of valuable cattle fodder. But they saved what was left of the stack, under the Destroying Prop- erty Act of the game laws. That night they heard a howling. From their hole under the haystack they listened to the wolves filling the bleak valley with | their horrid hunting bay, which boomed and echoed over the elk and sheep who were moving, sighing, coughing, gasping, beneath the sparkle of the cold stars and the blue- black depths of space between the glim- mering points. Happily the moon rose, bright and re- vealing. From their hole in the haystack the two hunters stared out over the barbed- wire fence across the eddying and wandering groups of elk and sheep. Here and there was a space of pure white snow; and into these spaces they saw the black shapes of the lank, uneasy elk walking, lifting one hoof at a time, and nosing down into the wind-packed snow, and then moving on again, and digging some more. They saw one elk walking, suddenly begin to turn around ina circle, sinking on bending knees, its head weaving. “Gracious!” Hazer whispered. ‘He’s got locoed! He’s goin’ crazy!” Just then they saw something. It was a ~ (©) S MNicbdoo (eC (EO)