Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 172: what you’re looking at

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

170 musically; when the voices of young people rise in songs and laughter; when children romp upon the wide beaches or in the shal- low waters. Along the shores, half hidden in the glistening green of young birch, or the darker green of pine and maple, white and red and brown and green cottages send up lazy shafts of wood smoke. It is very beautiful, very peaceful in the Summer, but in Winter it is different. Then the northwesters come roaring down from the straits. The hurricanes rage between the Bear Islands, howl past the Manitous, beat upon the old Sleeping Bear until he seems to grunt and stir uneasily, and, freed from restraint, they hurl themselves upon the defenseless Point Betsie. Seas pile thirty feet high upon the bars that hedge the point. The winds, as if al- lied with Lake Michigan in its age-old ef- fort to rescue Crystal from the imprisoning hills, roar through the gap, tear and rip at the great pines, and, falling in fury upon fair Crystal, lash her into a torment of water and ice. On such a night Ole Lekker’s ride was made. If, after you have wearied your eyes gaz- ing upon the beauty that is Crystal’s, you turn away and follow the course of a beauti- ful road that winds and falls and lifts south- ward over ridge after ridge of hills, you will come presently to Frankfort, a village straggling along the edge of Little Betsie Lake to where the channel opens to let the big boats come in from Lake Michigan. When you reach Frankfort ask the first per- son you see where “Doc”’ is, and, when you find his office, and a jolly, round-faced man shakes hands and smiles, ask him if you may see Ole’s automobile. He will, if he is not too busy, take you to the shed in the yard at the rear of his office, open the door, and show you a mass of wrecked, twisted, bat- tered steel and iron and leather, and, if you appear properly curious, he will tell you the story of the ride. But first he will tell you who Ole was. eae, OLE drifted into Frankfort eight weH years before his ride. He came ona vas*’' car-ferry from Green Bay, and he was sick with smallpox. Doc was a new- comer in Frankfort, with small practise, and, when all others fled, he took Ole to a deserted cabin that the town hastily secured, and nursed him back to health, burned the Adventure cabin, and brought Ole to his rooms to be his man. Afterward Ole was a fixture. His name was Le Clerc, transposed to Lekker by some purser who spelled the names of the crew by ear. He was fifty-two years old, and had fished and followed the lake from boyhood. His father had been a French Canadian lumberjack, and his mother a Swede, daugh- ter of a lake fisherman. To them two children had been born— first, Ole Le Clerc, named by his mother, and, seven years later, René Le Clerc. The boys had been separated for thirty years, and Ole’s life dream was to find his brother. “René she somewhere on Lak Mich. Ay ban find heem,”’ he said. His faith was un- limited. He spoke a strange dialect—a mixture of Swedish and French Canadian. He ignored all rules of gender, and with that combina- tion he talked the argot of the fresh-water sailormen. He was very serious, even sol- emn, and devoted to Doc. He became a character. Instead of saying, ‘‘Good morn- ing, Ole,” the townspeople said, ‘‘Found your brother yet, Ole?” Always he replied: ‘Not yet. Doc she find heem.” This was, because of the fact that, when Ole was delirious and raving in his worst stage of the fever that accompanies small- pox, he pleaded for his brother, and Doc promised to find him. So Ole drove Doc’s horses, did the chores and cooking in the bachelor apartments behind the office, and waited for Doc to find René. When the doctor, keeping pace with prog- ress, purchased an automobile, Frankfort roared at the thought of Ole as chauffeur. Ole regarded the new runabout seriously, and said: “Ay tank Ay ban run heem. Ay ban wiper on gasoline boat vonce.”’ Frankfort ceased to laugh. Ole drove the runabout, and the manner in which he sent it over the sand hills and deep, rutted roads, and kept it in perfect repair without aid from the garage man was the envy of other owners of machines. woe ON THE night of February seven- oe i teenth, a northwester was howling @ down from the straits. Frankfort, sheltered behind its high, forest-crowned hill, felt only the backwash of the hurricane COMmMichoooks (©