Adventure Magazine Cover, December 18, 1919 — page 104: what you’re looking at

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

a Adventure QO sunk to his haunches in the shadow of a giant cactus. “Would you cease the search, my son?” “Tp” Andres smiled grimly. “God so do to me, and more also, if Ixever quit this trail while grass grows or water runs, till it leads me to the woman I—pshaw! I can not stand chattering here. Is there water in the bag?” For answer, Fray Marco held the skin upside down. It was as dry as a bone. “Bueno! We must fill it.” There was not a drop of water for forty miles behind them and Fray Marco knew it, so he watched Andres as he took the bag and moved toward a great round cactus plant a few yards off the trail. They saw him draw his knife and bend over the cactus as if to cut into the juicy head, and then a startled, joyous shout brought them running to him. Andres stood with dilated eyes, his finger pointing to the cactus, in which a gaping cut showed brown and _ sun- burned. It had been cut with a knife. “They have cut it for water! Here is sion! See where they have cut the cac- tus for the juice to fill their water-bags.” Xicot] nodded and sprang forward. “And here is the stallion again.” He pointed to a hoof-print. “How long ago did they cut this cactus ?” “Perhaps a week since. See how dry the cut is. We lost at least ten days on them.” “On, then, compajieros! take it up in the flat land.” We must AYS passed, days that seemed a thousand hours long to Andres as he hung impatiently over Xicotl, who. painstakingly traced every inch of that broken trail across the hills and the long reaches of the desert. There were things that helped, too, as when they found the bark gnawed from cottonwoods, showing that the horse had foraged on them, and once a little pile of mesquite beans the tired stallion had left. Whenever their water ran out they replenished it from cactus plants that dotted the waste country. “Blessed sight! There is water again.” Fray Marco pointed to a narrow stream- bed filled with small trees in the dis- tance. “Let us hasten.” The trail was plain now, for the pur- sued, feeling themselves safe, had be- come careless. It led direct to the stream-bed, where it lay below a bank. In the grass were unmistakable signs of a camp, ashes, remnants of food and a broken bow. - “Hoof-prints again in.the stream! Saints and angels! What a leap that was!” Andres pointed to the hoof-scars that showed where the startled stallion had leaped fforward, when Mercedes had- struck him with the riata the night she escaped. In that hurried dash for freedom Mer- cedes had left a trail that any child could have followed. When Xicotl had traced it for a short distance, he stopped with a smile. “Tt is all right now, sefores. We can follow at a run if we like—I think. We can not miss it any more.” “What do you mean?” Fray Marco and Andres spoke almost simultaneously. For answer, Xicotl pointed to the hoof-scarred slide where the stallion had slipped down a steep bank. Many miles farther on he picked up 3 the water-bag that had fallen from Mer- cedes’ saddle. Suddenly, he stopped short in his tracks and Faced his com- pantons: “The sefiorita has escaped from the men.ef the north,” he said positively. “She escaped down in the arroyo that we passed. There have been no signs of any Indians with her for twenty miles, and the horse is going so fast that no dis- mounted man’ could keep up with: him. No! No! Sefores! The lady has es- caped from them. No Indian would have left such a trail.’ Fray Marco muttered a blessing and - crossed himself. It was Andres who swore aloud. “Alone then! God of mercies! can she do alone in this land ?” “My son!” Fray Marco’s voice was very stern. “Thus far, though she was in the hands of savages, we have trusted and toiled. Shall we trust less, now What that we know she has been taken out of heathen hands and placed in God’s strong ones?” CORIGLOOO“KS (E)