Adventure, February 20, 1922 — page 142: what you’re looking at

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

‘ os { ' Ran Su Ae -_ > E* 140 ’ line — six hours away, and he must go on before the chills began once more. _ As he poked the last of the mud from his heels he wondered if Driscoll, back in the warm little office cabin, were laughing at him. The district man had made a cat’s- - paw of him, he was certain now; he had eee! engineered the situation which had _ led to the bet. Curse that bet anyhow! But it would prove a boomerang to Driscoll ii— He -. must go on at once! He rose from the fallen tree, threw away the stick and was reaching for the chart _ when he suddenly raised his head and began to sniff the air. He sniffed explosively several times. Unmistakably it was wood- -. ~ smoke! 3 - Bradley abruptly forgot his weariness, - bn ___ his recurrent chills and fever, and, throwing eS Re - back his head, laughed boisterously. It was that mysterious swamp-fire the service had been reporting daily. It was the thing _ he was after! At once faith in his hunch, in the coincidence of the smoke locations and _ the cross on his chart, revived. A light breeze had sprung up, bearing _ the smoke taint down upon him. He made _ his way rapidly in the face of it, and yard by Sant the odor grew more pronounced. His ~ pulse beat high as he came suddenly upon _ familiar ground and, just beyond, stepped out upon a small, natural clearing. There - ~ before him stood’ the rude cabin which was 3 = _ represented by the cross upon his chart. From the squat mud chimney of the cabin = a heavy, green-wood smoke emerged and — a Se oe ae = was bent by the breeze and scattered in his direction. The structure was without -_ windows, but at the bottom of the door @ narrow crack revealed a glow within. The Eyoltine of the smoke indicated to Bradley that fuel had lately been placed upon the _ fire, and it was likely that the quarry was The clearing was flooded with pale silver _ from the moon, and Bradley, keeping within the fringe of shadow at the forest edge, _made his way to the point where the open _ space between the cabin and the clearing ee was shortest. He halted there and Ze just beyond, the pine cross which ed the place where he had buried the oe; y he had found in the cabin. ~He drew his revolver and, silent as ss z a hawk’s shadow, he swiftly crossed the open Space to the cabin wall. He reached the a - Adventure building at a point just beyond the base of the mud chimney;. then, keeping within the shadow, he went cautiously toward the front. . Just as he turned the corner, his heel caught in_the crotch of a tree-limb lying beside a small woodpile, and, stumbling, he fell heavily against the cabin wall. He hung in breathless silence, listening. © He was certain that the quarry, was he within, had heard the sound. For several minutes Bradley waited, but no indication of movement within the structure reached him. He extricated his heel, and, rounding the corner, went directly to the door. It was unlocked; and, kicking it open, he stepped at once into the room. The door swung shut behind him, revealing the place empty of human life. He was mildly sur- prized, disappointed; the quarry must have left the cabin just before he had reached the edge of the clearing. The fire was still high; the savor of food still burdened the atmosphere. At one corner of the room hung a screen made of burlap sacks sewed together and nailed upon a light cross-stick which was suspended by a single rope from the ceiling. The burlap reached to the floor and might, Bradley considered, hide the man he had come for. At the opposite corner stood a pile of boxes which also might afford hiding-room. It was his hunch, however, that he was alone; probably some business had taken the cabin’s present owner off into the woods shortly before the ranger’s arrival. He glanced at the revolver in his hand and grinned to himself. He was about to return it to the holster when his eyes, running to the fireplace, suddenly fell upon the stub of a cigaret upon the hearth near the fire. One end of the stub was still damp; from the other end a thin thread of smoke twisted upward to join the heavy smoke of the fire. Bradley realized that he was not alone. He swept his glance first to the pile of boxes, then to the burlap screen hung by the single rope from the ceiling. In one place or the other the man was hidden. “Mr. Man,” Bradley said aloud, grinning . happily, “my bet is that you’re behind that burlap.” He "piastinted the sentence with a shot from his revolver. The rope holding the screen was severed, its strands suddenly released, coiling back like vipers. The CONMIEOOOL<S be « - . om? ——- . ~—. (€©) mM