Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 155: what you’re looking at

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

A Proof By Peril beyondaridge. Asifitsexit from the slope had been the cue for the scene-shifters of the mountain the pitiless white light of the snow went out. Hargood looked up quickly. The sun had vanished. A dark, whirling, smoke-like cloud was circling in about the peak and the air smote suddenly with a damp ache. “THAT’S bad, Miss Ripley,” he =} said impulsively, pointing upward. “You know how storms gather and break in a moment along this range. We'll wait here under the shelving rock until it passes.” It was simple mountain-sense, such as any Alpinist must have used, such as Major Ripley himself would have approved. To attempt the glassy slide in a snow-flurry was mere madness. Julia had been standing as far away from him as the rope that joined them would per- mit. At his words she turned toward him, then, with a brusque gesture, raised the heavy black glasses from her eyes, snapping them over her hat. She took Hargood in slowly, from head to foot, as one examines a repellent object thrust upon the attention. If she had somewhat veiled her judgment of him before, she spoke it now in a blaze. The man recoiled from her before her lips parted, so intense was the scorn in her glance. ‘Mr. Hargood,”’ she said, precisely and very distinctly, “I think I made it clear yesterday that you are free to follow your own course without considering me. If you are afraid, kindly untie the rope from your belt. JI have no wish to be linked to—a coward!” The word slashed him lke a whip of white-hot metal. Every nerve in his body leaped under the impact. He went the color of the snow; then, as he braced, the hot blood surged back to the surface in a raging flood. His hands clenched about the ice- staff with a spasmodic strength while with supreme effort he forced down the wild, insensate surging of revolt. The girl, aroused as she was, quailed before the dumb cry of suffering from his stricken manhood. For a space he stood, every fiber twang- ing. Then, with a thrust of his underjaw that brought each lean muscle out like a plaited cord, he whirled and strode forward. In another moment they had attacked the slope. I1OI Hargood’s instinct was for frenzied action, but after a few yards he was forced to pain- ful deliberation. —Thenumbing wind plucked at him with eager fingers as he worked from hold to hold. Grips were hard to find or to make upon the evasive ice-sheath. Before they had gained fifty feet above the field the dark, menacing snow-clouds swept upon them and Hargood knew that he had been right. It was a flurry, and no trifle. Dashing the gathering moisture from his eyes with frozen glove, he worked on, seek- ing in violent effort surcease from the pain at his heart. The dancing, wreathing flakes enveloped him. Glancing below, he could scarcely distinguish the figure of the girl he still loved in all faith and tenderness. In that bitter moment he was aware that it was so, that it could never be otherwise. With the thought, the folly of this risk to her came clear before him. But he could not find it in him to go back. The wound was raw. He stiffened to his task. Up and up he wriggled and hacked and spiked. A sharper rise confronted him, the aréte over which the first string had dis- appeared. He took a wide angle to the left, edging in search of a supporting ledgé. He had Jong since lost the trail of the others in the swirl and twilight of the storm. He found a narrow shelf whereon he kneeled and, selecting a likely spot beyond the break, he drove the shod end of his climbing- ax into the ice. As he made good his grip a sudden drag upon his waist threw him backward. Julia had slipped. The combined weight of the two climbers fell upon the ax and tore it free. He had struck the blind. Hargood retained, from the next few mo- ments, the vague, hazed impression of a racking fall down a furrowed incline, vain graspings at unaiding ice—and the face of death. Ina vivid flash of comprehension it came to him that his angle to the left had carried them far along the flank of the peak. Below them lay, not the ice-field from which they had come, but—emptiness, and the glacier two thousand feet down. And the poignant pain was the thought of Julia, who had been entrusted to his care, ‘‘shooting’”’ the slide somewhere near him at the other end of the rope. His last sensation was the feeling that he had pitched over the final dip into the void beyond. Then breath and life were driven from him in a terrific shock. CO MICLOOKS CO