Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 7, 1925 — page 75: what you’re looking at

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

Dariel avoided his. employee’s eye by the ereek that was invisible in its canoned bed—were black and lavender against a gray sky. All ioht, ” he said stiffly, and went out- side te wash. ‘* John aim’t such a 2 d loser, an’ that’s a fact,” Hoga shirt deus over his waked fae com- placently when Dariel had disappeared. - Evans stretched again and yawned. “No. But then he’s young, an’ ain’t been up against the world much.” Thus each boasted of his own serenity in the face of a lifetime of defeats. Quong dragged a table into the center of began te clat- _ the hard earthen floor anc ter the meal dewn on it. Hogan studied the. soggy flapjacks with a watery calcula- tion in his eyes. “ How much grub lefte” he asked the Chinese. = “To-day, thlee mo’ d y—tha’s all.” - Hogan and out dissatisfaction. = When Dariel returned—his face red and shiny, but the marks of the beaten fighter not erased—the four men sat down and ate. Hogan and Evans with vigor, the Chinese lightly, Dariel as one whe knows that a man must have food. They looked at their plates while they ate, and no one spoke until the plates were empty. Then Dariel pushed back his chair and stood up. “Let’s get started.” His voice was throaty and flat, with a suggestion of restraint barely managed. Fhe Chinese went out with the others, leaving the breakfast dishes on the table, A few paces from the cabin door they came to the brink of a cliff that overhung Feather Creek. The stream widened here in a circu- lar basin, forty or fifty feet across, rimmed by seventy-foot walls of reck. The basin’s surface was smooth as a green soapstone disk under the dull sky, but its upper and lower portals were narrow clefts where winie water seethed and srumbied. Down the face of the cliff a the pomt where the four men reached it, » TOOLS. vans itodded together, with- guic sank again. ‘ran a length of rope, a ae line follow- looking past him through the epen doorway, — ; 1 to where the California foothills—beyond bridge cane Ge foot | of the trail with a heavy raft—a dozen feet square— tethered in midstream b by two wire strands. Floating atop two bare tree trunks, a sluice box lay on the water, one end on ‘the raft, the other dipping into the spray of the basin’s outlet; attached to the upstream edge of the raft was a . long-bladed water wheel. One at a time, Dariel first, the others following, the men went down the crooked path, across the pontoon to the raft. Evans and Quong tested the creaking air pump that occupied the center of the raft, adjust- ing the gears by which the water wheel _— _allached. to it, _ while Hogan helped 3 7 Senne suit, vere cx ae ae: appearance of some eae deep sea monster. Standing on the ladder that led dann inte - the water, Dariel waited until his helme hac 1 1 been screwed into place, grasped the ide x IE, and dre opped Eas below the surtace— = Twice ane = adhe the valve on his helmet, and to hang motionless for the ten minute to the imereasing pressure; then he steed : knee- deep i in the mud and silt of the creek : fat found the edge of an iron easing that Another brief rest, and one groping stood up out of the mud. He stepped in- side the five-foot cylinder, sisnaled, and With outstretched hands he ae felt the four-foot lengths of tubing sti past him, automatically counting the joints. Five of them, and solid ground was under his feet again. - With bare hands already numbed by cold water and the pressure of the clamps that held the diving suit’s sleeves to his wrists, he found his tool—a ten-inch iron-steel gad —and began to pick at the ground under the edge Spf the non: ‘tube in which he worked. He worked slowly, his brain not consciously directing his muscles, forcing the pome of his gad into the ground, scrap- hing with mechanical application to a familiar task. His mind, freed from his body for the aha body required to adapt itself — COMIEDOOKS