Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 19, 1924 — page 117: what you’re looking at

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

FLOOD. 587 Tt wasn’t under the rifle, where he naturally supposed it would be. It wasn’t among the frozen ferns beside the rifle. The wind had blown it away, of course; and he cursed the old Indian. He searched down wind among the underbrush, but with- out success. ‘The cussed old fool!” he cried at last, and gave it up and went back to the lean-to of boughs and heaped more wood on the fire. He felt as sore toward Gabe Loon as if that worthy had cheated him out of the undiscovered money. He drank a little more gin cold, then a mug of it diluted with hot water and sweet- ened with sugar. Then he made tea and laced it with gin and drank it in large quantities. He atea little cold bacon which he had fried earlier in the day, and a slice of stale bread, and then judged that it was about time to set out on the trail of the old Indian and the little boy. He knew that it would be a difficult trail to follow, as the dry, scanty snow was blow- ing too fast to make a good bed for foot-. prints. He would close up on his quarry before sundown, then hang off until he was sure that the big double-barreled gun was laid aside and old eyes and young were sealed by sleep. It was easy—almost too easy! Poor old Gabe Loon! He decided not to break camp. To- morrow would be time enough for that. He would just take his rifle and a pair of blankets along with him—yes, and a few cartridges. How near he had come to for- getting the cartridges! This was certainly good gin the old Indian had given him! He laughed and drained another mug of highly flavored tea. : Then he reached behind him for his am- munition. He reached farther, and yet farther, and almost lost his balance. At last he turned around on hands and knees. No use! The ammunition wasn’t there—not so much as a cartridge of it! He jumped to his feet with an oath and rammed his head through the roof of boughs. Oaths flew from him like frightened birds out of a tree, a whole flock of them, singly and in pairs and threes; and he stageered eae with blankets twined about his feet. “The damn’ old fox! The dirty thie!! Cal’lates he’s fooled me, does ’e? Took my ca’tridges an’ give me back agun! [ll larn him! I don’ t need no rifle, nor knife neither, for to fix him.” At last he got away from the lean-to. He placed several heavy sticks on the fire and then set out in the direction in which Gabe Loon and the child had gone. He had the half empty bottle of gin in a pocket of his heavy jumper. He Carricd an axe and blankets and, from habit, his ammunition- less rifle. He walked quickly, but with frequent unintentional side-steps. The light was bad —gray andscanty. The sand-dry snow ran on the steady wash of icy wind, leaving scarcely a smudge on the frozen ground. It was poor tracking; and his progress was slow. He found marks here and there— but not as easily as it sounds. He fell twice, and the bottle in his pocket had two narrow escapes. Sometimes he got down on his hands and knees and crawled in search of the tracks, and his failures to find them were as fre- quent as his successes. He was losing val- uable time, and he knew it—but the knowl- edge didn’t help him. He was quite at a loss to know which way to go next in search of Gabe’s trail, when a glitter on the ground caught his eye. He picked up the glittering thing. It was a brass shell, loaded—a round of his stolen ammunition. Good! He was still on the track of that dirty old fox! He laughed as he drew the rifle from its case, with the intention of inserting the shell in the breech. The laugh froze, then melted to a string of blistering oaths. The bolt was gone from the rifle! So the old red-skinned dog was making a monkey of him, was he? He pulled himself together by taking a pull at the bottle. Then he went forward at top speed for several hundred yards, without a thought of footprints on the in- frequent patches of snow. Another tumble jarred his wits back to their job, and again the bottle escaped destruction by an inch, He found the tracks again before dark. TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT WEEK CORMICGLOOKS com Toe