Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

960 “All right! I got you!” snapped Trainor savagely. ‘‘Make that a test case! Now you hear me!” He raised an impressive forefinger. I had been laboring to find a means of interfering with Kinyon’s obvious purpose. Now I was disgusted that Trainor had fallen into his trap so blindly, and could not speak. The big man went on solemnly, ““T have ten dollars left out of my quarter’s allowance. I shall keep five for Thursday night, when we see Jefferson, and I shall pay all expenses of the trial with the other five, including fines and all!” ‘““That’s all foolishness!” I broke in, for the Girl’s eyes had appealed to me. ‘‘There will be lawyer’s fee, witnesses, and the birds | were worth a hundred.” “Surely you will let your own people help you, when you were doing this fo’ them!” The Girl watched his face wistfully. It softened as it turned to her. “IT promise I shall take you to the theater the very evening after the trial.” Trouble cleared from her face, with the slow flush that mounted to her bronze hair, and her eyes dropped. ‘Then I shall not worry.” And she meant it. But I couldn’t see it all. And Kinyon was as positive as Trainor. ‘‘I’d like to bet something that, if you stick to that, you’ll be doing lockstep Thursday night!”’ “You’re on!” Little Bill’s husky drawl startled us. “As far as you like!” “It is robbery,” once more Kinyon’s smile was working, ‘“‘but it is too good a thing to lose!”’ ‘Ts this right? Ought you to let him risk it?”’ the Girl asked Trainor soberly, though she was no Puritan. ‘““He’s made of money!”’ But the deep- voiced tenderness was not all for the girl. He turned to Kinyon, “I want in on this. If I lose, you have the tickets for Jefferson; if I win, you bring that last manuscript of yours here, right after the trial, and give it tome. Does that go?” “With pleasure—and with Miss Bar- bour’s permission.” But Miss Barbour was studying Trainor’s face so intently that she did not hear. IT WAS all over Cambridge in twenty-four hours, and in the Boston papers the third morning. Trainor was more than ever pointed at on the street, and betting ran high, with prevailing odds of three to one that Trainor would do time. Adventure Bill took so much of the small end that he created a zone in which it was hard to get even two to one. But I was so worried that I did not care to bet, even missed meals and some sleep. “Don’t take it so hard,” Bill expostulated lazily, finding me alone in my window-seat. ‘Do you suppose Trainor would let Kinyon go to the theater with the Girl?” ‘He can’t help it, if he is locked up. He’s not so crazy as he looks usually, but Kinyon got him angry and, now he’s made his promise, nothing can budge him. I tell you those pigeons were worth five to twenty dollars apiece, and Here Trainor burst in, waving a letter. . “From that bully old aunt who pays my board! Listen!” He read, “‘‘ John Trainor: If you count on me to get you out of your foolish scrape, you will be disappointed!’ That means she would try to persuade me to let her pay the fine? Don’t think it! IfI land in the work-house, I have seen the last dollar of her money!” He was as happy about it as if she had sent a check. “Do you know,” said Bill, ‘that this Nutting is a sort of a politician, has some pull with the machine, and that he has boasted that he will have you fined and imprisoned?”’ “Yep!” producing his eternal bag of oranges and beginning the slaughter. Casu- ally taking my big chair and putting his feet on the desk, he continued, “‘ But the magis- trate who hears the case is not a machinc. man, he’s a scholar and a gentleman, and I’ve read his decisions.” I opened my eyes. Bill got up and took his hat. “Where are you going?” ‘After more easy money.” He was already in the hall. grinned as he looked after him. ‘The little cuss!” ’ “But I’d give something to be sure you are not going to ruin yourself,’ I said. “T may be a fool, but I don’t see the joke.” ‘The joke,”’ said he, stoking a large section of orange, “‘is on Kinyon and Nutting.” He said no more until he had thrown the empty bag in the grate, then he came to look down at me with fatherly concern. “You old plaster elephant,’”—flushing slow- ly—“you have got bowels, but don’t you worry! You will see to-morrow!” and he departed. Trainor CoOMmicloooks CO