Adventure Magazine Cover, December 18, 1919 — page 110: what you’re looking at

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

96 was yet dark, Mercedes was aroused by her attendants. The four great fires flamed high on the four houses and low music sounded from the temple. On the roof of the main temple, above the great corn reservoir, visible against the first faint flush of the false dawn, a tall priest made his morning orisons. dawn was. in the air. Mercedes dressed herself carefully in the white clothes brought her by her at- tendant, let down her golden hair to the never-failing admiration of the girls, took the woven sieve of maize flour and salt and climbed down the ladder that led from the temple. She passed out of the main gate of the city and down the tor- tuous path that led to the cultivated fields below. Pausing at the foot of the hill, she looked about her. What a change four months had wrought in her fortunes! Then she had been the petted ward of the great governor of Sonora, whose name was known throughout all New Spain. Now she was a wanderer upon the face of the earth, dependent for her very life upon her ability to maintain the character of a heathen goddess among wild peoples. To be sure they were kindly and hospitable so far, so long as they believed her to be what they in- sisted she was, a tutelary deity, but what would they be when they should find out that she was a mere mortal like them- selves? Where was Spain? Off to the south surely, and her eyes sought thirstily the dim blue line of the southern mountains now beginning to loom big in the dawn. Would she ever see again the green places of the south—the grassy court- yards of Culiacan? The flowers would be in bloom there now. Well, she must do what she had come for. She must go through with a heathen rite of blessing the fields. So, like Demeter of the Baskets, she passed along the furrows, scattering the sacred grain from her sieve. Corn and beans and a dozen plants that she did not know stretched away in row on row be- side her, from her feet to that shimmer- ing, dark line a half-mile away, the line of the water-course that was filled with cottonwoods, all calling to a mute heaven for rain, the panacea of this stricken land. The smell of Adventure She flung abroad a.handful of the meal: and passed on down the edge of the field. Foot by foot she moved slowly toward the creek. Suddenly a dark ob- ject bulked big before her and she stopped in her tracks. The priests had told her that no one would be permitted abroad at this hour! She halted in her tracks, a veritable picture, the right hand holding the sieve close to her breast, her left hand on her scarcely beating heart, her golden hair enveloping her as a garment. “What was that?” There, striding toward her out of the gray-blue mist of the dawn, came, not the Indian herdsman she had thought to see, but a very ragged and unkempt man. His clothing was of soft leather; three feet of blue steel tapped his leg as he walked; a brown steel cap rested upon his head and in his eyes a light like none that ever showed on earth. Thus came the man thatsshe had seen so often in her dreams—Andres de Avilez. E stopped as if thunder-struck. The next moment he broke into a run and flung himself on his knees at her feet and was covering her hands with kisses. She stood trembling. “God in heaven!” she’ whispered through pale lips. “Can this be? Now let me not awaken.” “No need to fear the waking now, senorita!’ Andres sprang to his feet. “YT can face the world in arms now.” And he meant it. “But how? How? How? me quickly lest my reason fail.” tears. “Tell me quickly,” she said again, “before the sun comes up. They must not see you from the city.” plained quickly. “But you? How came you here?” “Come down by the line of the cotton- woods where none can see, and I will explain.” And she followed him down into the dry arroyo, her heart buoyant and happy, her face aglow. “Now sit, sevorita. before the people leave the city for the fields. You want our story. Well, then,’ when the fiscal was killed—” Mercedes started back from him. Oh, tell She leaned against him and burst into She ex- I must leave you CONIC DOOL< (E(0)