Adventure Magazine Cover — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

48 downstream a hundred paces before swim- ming to the bank. By that time the canoes had touched; Indians, Bré@lés and fort company were mixed pellmell at the landing. He clambered out, shook himself, and, keeping to the white-wood shadows, ap- proached unobserved. Against a lingering red glow in the west the fort palisades of pointed, eighteen- foot spruce poles loomed up in dim silhou- ette. To the left, in a thicket of birch saplings, was a clutter of Indian tents, thirty or forty, of buffalo skins painted with red and black devices. From their shape and from the warrior trappings visible beside the big fires Lady-Face knew they were the traveling summer-time lodges of Bloods. Planked on a cedar slab by one fire, a huge sturgeon roasted entire; over another, placottes of buffalo cow sizzled and splut- tered. Pots of sagamity and beans, cooking in buffalo tallow, willow baskets full of the native delicacy of young birds in shell, stood in front of the teepees. At top of pliant saplings meat and other provisions hung out of reach of the legion of snarling dogs, which had so much wolf in them that they never barked. There were no chil- dren outside the skin lodges nor Blood women, save a few old squaws, wrinkled, sexless. At right of the fort, on a sandy stretch, was another camp, smaller, noisier, more luridly lit up than the Bloods’. Women, clothed in little beyond body-paint and elaborate coiffures done up with red and white clay, wove in and out among the fires, singing and dancing. They were drunk already, but only as a preliminary to the real boisson of the night. Adventure A scattering of warriors, too full of “fight- water’ to flock to the landing, tottered about the camp or sprawled at the flap doors of their teepees. Piegans, Lady-Face judged them to be. His lips curved in disgust at the debauchery—wrought by trade wine in a few short years upon a tribe once spirited and noble. He crept nearer the landing. A brush fire had been kindled to aid the décharge. By its light he searched the mingled crowd with quick, keen eyes. Half the Brdlés were guarding the pieces against thievery; the others plied swiftly between bastion gate and cargo. Nearest him stood the leather-robed Bloods, tall, slightly stout, manly warriors, all of them. On the other side were the Piegans. In the cleared center MclIllivray and the partner talked with a third Scot, Iran McDonald, factor of the fort, a ‘wintering wolf” of the N. W., a clean-shaven, lithe man of restless energy. Lady-Face guessed easily that their conversation was about him, for they glanced here and there as if trying to locate him in the fire-lighted confusion. | With a Jast quick searching of swarthy faces, the youth stepped forward, shouldered his tall way. through the Bloods and con- fronted the three. “Hollo, there!”’ the partner exclaimed at sight of him. ‘‘We were wondering ss “T was pushed aside,” Lady-Face inter- rupted. “Into the water, too,”” McDonald ob- served. Lady-Face returned the factor’s piercing glance. “T rescued my paddle in midriver a bis- cuit toss downstream.” ‘““A clerkly trick—to lose a paddle,” the partner jested. ‘‘And to be pushed aside by this lot,” McDonald commented. The factor and Mclllivray exchanged looks askance. Lady-Face saw without seeming to see. He smiled his rare smile and spoke shame- facedly. “Truth, this is a new sight to me, -best seen from the edge of the gathering. The king himself, God bless him, is less a marvel than noble red men in these numbers.” The partner burst out laughing. He pointed to the Piegans. ‘‘Noble red men! Ha, ha, ho, ho, ho! What a new-come, McDonald, with his MICLOOOK C@ inn