Adventure Magazine Cover, December 18, 1919 — page 167: what you’re looking at

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

Gentlemen of the North slipped his hand through the noosed thong of his war-ax. He said—’ “Watch!” Stalking a few rods from his hut, Le Borgne raised his mighty voice in a war- cry and, catching the robe with his left arm, he swung it round his head and hurled it aside. It opened and caught the wind and fluttered like some monster moth to the ground. | “He has éast his robe! The white woman’s medicine has made him cast his robe,” softly rejoiced the Pillager. “Now he is under vow to his manito to kill the first person he meets, man, woman, or child, that. doesn’t belong to his tribe. - All the village knows it, and the Minne- tarees will stay in hiding, although his vow does not mean he will kill any of them. You and the chief of the Pillager Chippewas are not of his tribe.” : Now the muscles of his arms and legs were knotting- in bunches, then relaxing and rippling smoothly as he prepared to leap to the ground and have at the brute. I grasped his arm and warned: “You must not do it. The white woman’s medicine does not call you to fight him.” = Le Borgne raised his war-cry and began stalking the empty spaces between the huts in search of a victim to satisfy his vow. Doors slammed throughout the vil- lage and the men on the roofs lay flat and hidden from view, although a Minnetaree should have had no cause for fear. Le Borgne doubled over and shook out his hair and danced from side to side, the silence of the people permitting the thud- thud of his stamping moccasins to be plainly audible. “He has said it! Hecriesfor blood! He dances for death! The Medicine Hair’s manito makes him do it. Her manito pushes me to him. I will go and kill him!” snarled the Pillager, striving to cast off my ip. “You will kill us all,” I cried, feeling my hold breaking. “T’ll kill Le Borgne, who has cast his robe,” panted the Pillager. Then he raised the war-cry of his tribe and, wrenching loosé, dropped to the ground. I stood up, intending to-follow him and make sure with my gun of the death of Le Borgne if he fought with my friend, when I observed the Minnetaree chief had shifted 153 his course so as to place our hut between him and the Pillager. I looked down on the Pillager, and he, thinking Le Borgne was all but upon him, was shaking out his Sioux scalps and engaging in a little cere- monial dance of his own, brandishing his ax most adeptly. I looked back after Le Borgne and_saw.the mad woman running toward him. It was a tense situation. Le Borgne, bowed low and intent on his grotesque steps, did not see the fury approaching him. The Pillager, with a segment of the hut between him and his man, was con- ducting his advance with close attention . to ritual, never dreaming of the woman’s presence. The first that Le Borgne knew of the woman was when she grabbed him by the hair. With a roar he straightened, swinging her feet off the ground and raising his ax. She screamed vituperations and fell back to the ground with both hands filled with hair. her in time to save himself from a hideous crime—the killing of one under the Great Spirit’s protection. With a shout of rage and fear he leaped back. She was at his face again, and, for a second, I believed he would brain her. Then his arms dropped to his side and he turned his back on her. She caught his long hair and began tearing it out, making terrible. animal cries as she did so. He paid no attention to her and did not seem to sense her presence; but swung his ax and hurled it high over the nearest hut, and then strode rapidly to his own hut with the woman worrying his neck and hair. She released him as he reached his porch. He went inside and closed the door. I looked about for the Pillager and beheld him standing with folded arms, disgustedly watching the anticlimax. [ dropped down beside him and exclaimed— “He didn’t kill her!” “He could not kill her,” he growled. “She has been touched by the big manitio. No one can hurt her, no matter what she does. Her coming was bad medicine for my coup. Had I seen her, I would have reached him first; then his heart would have been glad and his ax would have sung a song as it hissed against mine. Yet it could not kill her, although she is not of his people—” and he made the spiral sign with his finger—‘‘so his vow is broken. He cast his robe for nothing, and that is COPMIGOOOKS Le Borgne recognized _ (E@)