A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 53: what you’re looking at

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

eo we 53 the way a sickle nips through a swathe of tender grass. The natives have worked out a system of machete play that’s almost as elaborate and scientific as small-sword fencing, and I had had masters to teach me—eager and enthusiastic teachers, too. They collected their tuition fees in scoring points on me, and when you’re nicked on the head, or chopped on the arm, or rammed in the stomach, or whacked on the legs by a free swinging machete, even though the blade is dull, it has a certain meaning. After you come to, you remem- ber that wallop, and you lie awake at night planning how to parry it, and get in a home crack in return. So, after three years of slaving around there in Central America, I got so that I gave my teachers more than they sent me, and the mean beggars used to send far and wide to ring in celebrated experts on me, so that they could stand about and embrace their skinny stomachs while they bowed with laughter. However, I got so that I could handle the experts, too, and at about that time, I left the land of malaria and yellow fever and came back to the more harmless and hard, cleaner biting mosquitoes of my native cow range. I put in all of this disgression so that you will understand how it came about that when I saw a big scimitar with a blade like a bit carved out of the sky, and with a hilt toughened and roughened with tiny rubies, I grabbed it, and tried its beautiful balance, and slashed the air once or twice, and said that it would do. The captain said that he thought so, too. For his own part, he said that he preferred a sword with a straighter point, but a curved blade was handier for carv- ing through armor. Some day he would be enchanted to have a few friendly passes with me, fencing the straight edge against the curve. Well, I told him that that was a pleas- ure that I was looking forward to, and I meant it. Now that I was fixed up as far as this, I thought that enough had been done, but while I was admiring myself in a long mirror, and turning this way and that, and sticking my chest out, and pulling my stomach in, and resting my hand on the hilt of my new sword, along came the captain of the ‘gard, again, with a big black wig in his hand which he offered to me. I could not feel comfortable, said he, with my head so naked! So I gave an embarrassed laugh, or one that I hoped would sound that way, and popped that wig on my head. I got it wrong side out, but when it was finally settled, and smoothed and brushed out, it was the finest wig that you ever saw, and it made a lot of difference in me. The glossy black curls came down over my shoulders, and swished and swashed around whenever I turned my head. Yes, I thought that the wig set off everything very well, and I was pleased with myself, to be frank. So was the captain. He backed off and looked at me out of narrowed eyes, and then he burst out: “Truly, sir, though clothes be not the man, the pleasant seeming of gentility appeareth through them, and the well born are not easily mistaken !” The more he studied me, the more he seemed to like me, finding new points to admire with every flick of his eyes. “T cannot but feel, sir,” he admitted at last, “that I misjudged you before.” For the first time I really agreed with the captain. I saw that he was a fellow of more penetration than I had guessed before this, and in fact, he warmed my heart a good deal. I began to think that we might get on together in spite of his red beard and redder heels. When I was all fixed up, he led me back to see the priestess, and as I stepped along, I listened to the rustling of my clothes, and the clinking of my sword in its scabbard, and the music of the golden chain that hitched the scabbard to my belt and above all the whisper of the silk against my ear to be saying: “Smoky Cassidy, for the first time you're really looking yourself!” Then the captain brought me to a room that was not a room at all, at first glance —and in it I saw the princess once more. CHAPTER 15 Men of the Mountain HIS room was circular, and about fifty feet across, and the reason why it didn’t look like a room at all was because it was domed across with glass, GOMIIGooo <S) C@