Adventure Magazine Cover — page 48: what you’re looking at

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

612 on the surface of it, like a flaw in a big ruby, the shiny end of a dirk handle. He looked harder. ’Way down, slowly coming out of the moraine, was a hand, a white hand, stiff like it was made of ivory, reaching out to the knife and blood. Then the storm shut in, and he grabbed his head again, for he,was seeing red. He swore the body moved, was alive and fight- ing to get up at him—this beast that had grafted like a fungus on the body of the girl he loved. Let Gail at him first! He must have dug with his finger-nails or knife down through the rotting ice, for he remembers yanking it by the feet, ripping it out of the case it fitted so nicely. Next he knew, he was blind and choking, fighting for air, like a rat in a pit—crazy. To rise and breathe, he must trample what was under him; and so, fighting and stamping, he struggled up through the snow. You’ve never killed a man—no? Never lost your temper, shot at him and missed, —yes? Well, then, you know how you feel on the rebound. You’re as meek as you were angry, as scared and pitiful as you were dancing-red. And Gail had the Winter- madness, hadn’t he, and a grudge that may well make a monster of a man for good? He remembers sitting in the snow, looking at the body and thinking: ‘‘ Now I’m even. I done my job—the duty o’ my nature. And the old coward stuck you from behind, too, you cuss.. Poor fool, you knew no better. And youslooked like a good Siwash. —I done this for you, girl, for you. God help me, but I love you!” You see, Gail was still mad to talk like that. But could he help it? I’ve never been in love. I don’t know how crazy it can make you. A queer thing—love! He started to crawl back to her in the cabin, up out of the snow-cones. He was weak as broth, and the blizzard was spouting drifts, cutting his neck in sheets of snow. Before he got to the edge of the moraine the drowsiness strangled him, and he lost hold upon his head. f=, IT MUST have been before the %) storm broke, that I saw the light of their cabin from down on the tundra. When that science outfit had reached Hope City again, they reported having lost Gail. I was working in the store for his father, and so got their dog-team. We knew that when Gail couldn’t find that outfit he’d Adventure hit for the mountains, and whatever of him was left would lie along the face of the hills,- to be found by hitting northeast from the head of the south fork. It was a bad trip alone, breaking trail, and two of the dogs died, which is neither here nor there. Somehow I knew it was his cabin before I opened the door. I found the girl still senseless on the floor. When I brought her to, it was pitiful the things she said, stum- bling to the window, pointing out and wailing Gail’s name. I hunted an hour before I found him, and was nearly all night bringing him to. I try to forget the next few days before we hit out for the Tanana. Gail and the girl would talk to me as if their hearts would break, but not a word to each other. I learned all— perhaps I wouldn’t have acted as I did if I’d been wise at first. They both looked like creatures hid in a cave—I’ve seldom seen beings farther gone from scurvy. The storm cleared the third day, and I shot a caribou. You know how meat cleans the blood and a new face clears the foolish- ness from two Wintering alone in the white darkness on the dark snow. But no miner will tell you that all Gail’s coarse work was foolish. Ought I to recon- cile them? I guess not. Gail was my part- ner, and the living taint was still with us. But maybe no degradation is too low not to have its redemption. And if your hands be put to blood, doing of the ugly job may win it—I don’t know. Happiness is hard to choke when you’ve suffered for it. Each hardly moved from his sled the three weeks going out, till we hit the Tanana camps. The first night, living in the Record- er’s tent, I saw Gail and her talking. That was enough for me. I took a job of burning up on the creeks and lit out. When I came back in the Spring the Recorder said they’d left for down river almost at once. I had never told him. After the break-up, the first steamer from St. Michael’s brought me a letter. I opened it before I knew it was from her. Perhaps IT would have, anyway. It said that she and Gail were leaving for the States for good, because they couldn’t face any of us in the North any more. ‘Gail seems to be losing his memory of all that happened. Should I remind him? I can’t!” Well, if he does—but in the States they may look at things differently. And some- times I still think of Gail as my partner. COMICLOOCKS. CO S|