A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, April 1950 — page 115: what you’re looking at

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

THE LITTLE DOLL DIED At.any rate, my Colt finally fired and shot him four times through his watermelon lips. Even then it took him a minute to fall. Amazement formed on his Negroid features as his lower lip sagged; then blood came glugging out of his mouth; the butcher-blade fell from his loosened fin- gers, and with a sort of bow he stepped back off the platform. Mrs. Peabody freed herself from my clutch to point off, “There’s a white man coming out there!” CHAPTER 8 Christian Burial ND that’s what almost knocked me A unconscious. Not the blow from that chopper. Not the wild charge that followed, storming into the stockade like a cyclone. No, a white man on a donkey! Pounding down the trail where it wound out of the nighthung jungle. Into the fire-glare of the village. Through that holocaust of blazing hovels and - straight for the stockade gate—a white man, or I’m a liar! And how he came! Low in saddle over that donkey as if he were riding a motor- cycle. Whooping at the top of his lungs. Aiming his rifle one-handed, the braced in the crotch of his arm, firing at everything in front of him. Yow! In the dust, smoke and fireworks I couldn’t make out who it was; he was holding with his left hand some object up in front of his face for protection—something that looked like an old chunk of wood. But whoever he was, he was a madman. Like a oneman cavalry charge, he slam- banged into that melee before the gate, and the Cacos squalled like a tiger with a morsel in their midst. That white man’s sun helmet was shot away; the donkey reared and stumbled under him; the blacks closed in, and I expected to see him hacked into a thousand fragments. But he wasn’t. No; through the dust-swirl I could see him flaying at the blacks, one-handedly swinging his rifle—beating up that crowd into a screeching thresh. Still holding that brown thing up in front of his face as a priest holds a cross, he waded into that mob like a threshing-machine, What? butt. Well, those Cacos were tumbling around like chaff. Jumping away. Screaming in fear, and running. Running, I tell you. Dropping their guns and butcher-knives and legging it for the jungle pellmell. Howls of terror reached the black ears of those in the stockade, and they dashed to the entrance to see what it was, That gave my boys a chance to reload, and they gave the re- treating fiends a blast in the sit-down. That wasn’t what kicked them out, though. What sent them flying was that white man in the gateway, roaring curses at them with that queer object shielding his face. It might’ve been a magic charm, a courage-melter, the sort of wizardish hoodoo that sends goblins back to their praves, Anyway, it did something to those Cacos. There was a hundred-tongued squall of fear, and the next thing I knew the whole mob was bolting, panic-stricken. Well, it’s generally the other way around—it isn’t usually the Marines who are rescued and send up the cheer. This time it was our turn. When the dust and din cleared away there wasn’t a live Caco in sight to be shot at and the Leathernecks in the stockade looked down and yelled themselves hoarse. That was a wonderful rescue act. Just in the nick of time. The hero who'd pulled it off didn’t realize it was over, either. Down there in the smoke-fogged gateway he was still swinging his rifle and capering with that thing held up in front of him, bellowing at nothing. “Come on, ye dirty scuts! Blacklegs! Assassins! Try to get the white woman, will ya! Just try to get her from me!” “Terrence McCoy !’’ I'd forgotten the woman on the plat- form beside me. Her cry broke through the cheering ; brought that wild man in the gateway to his senses. He looked up, thrust behind him the brown object | he’d been holding, and yelled, “Sure, an’ it’s me, Jenny Lou!” His face was sweat- smeared, twisted out of shape, white as chalk ; it took me a minute to recognize the big Irishman. He tried to grin, climbing up to the plat- form where we stood, but he looked pretty cooked, Down in the stockade my top sergeant was gathering a bomb squad to com Icbooks (E(0) m