Adventure Magazine Cover — page 157: what you’re looking at

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

killing Peccaries as the chance came, but never going far from their leader. But now a solid group of Peccaries came charging straight toward me, probably in- tending to free the Yellow One. The chief and his men sprang into their path. Shots cracked out in a ripping volley, and several of the wild men fell. Then the Peccaries closed in on them with swinging machetes. The spearmen drove their weapons into the bellies of some and tore them out again. The clubmen attacked with terrible blows, their tooth-studded bludgeons smashing men’s heads and tearing out their brains. The chief himself swung one of those clubs, and I saw him crush the skulls of four men. The blow-gun men seized machetes from fallen foes and slashed throats open with them. And I stood where I was, snapping a bullet into any Peccary I could hit with- out shooting one of my Indian friends. It was a bitter fight, anda fast one. Soon the charging Peccaries were only mangled corpses. Then Lknew the fight was won. For the crash of gun-fire died out, and only a few scattered shots cracked out here and there as some cornered wretch fired his last bullet and went down under club or arrow. Then from all around rose the exulting yells of the savages. And suddenly the sun dropped behind the mountains, and dark- ness swept around us. Somewhere a man set fire to a barracao and quickly the others burst into flame. By the red light the wild men dragged the bodies of the dead bandits into a heap, and attended to their own hurts, and brought all the women before the chief. And there we found that one of the Yellow One’s three women was a girl of this same Indian tribe— a girl who once might have been handsome, but who now looked thin and old from the abuse he had given her. In her own language, which I did not understand very well because she spoke fast, she told the chief her story; and the Indians growled and hissed as they heard her and glared at the Yellow One, who now had his senses back and lay with his yellow face a very pale yel- low indeed. But the chief ordered that no man touch him, and set me and a clubman over him as a guard through the night. And you may be sure, senhores, that we gave him no chance to escape. Once in the night El Amarillo asked me | de a winks tone what would be done with ‘The Peccaries him. This I did not know, but I did not tell > <= I told him to remember what he him so. had done to me and to others, and that he would be well repaid for all his kindness to helpless prisoners. At the thought of enduring himself what he had done to those in his power he groaned and squirmed and struggled to break the ropes. When he tired of that he offered me much gold if I would free him. I ordered him to be quiet, or I would make him so. And he said no more, though he tried again and again to loosen his bonds as the night wore away. from him, and he stood up in a circle of Indians, and the chief sat and looked at him with eyes hard with hatred. And whether he was desperate with fear and hoped to anger the chief so that he would be killed at once, I do not know; but he began to sneer and boast. The woman who had been his and who was of this tribe repeated what he said, so that all the wild men understood. He boasted of his evil deeds, of robbery and murder and worse, and called himself King of the Peccaries, who feared no man. If he sought quick death he came near get- ting it, for the savages, hating him bitterly already, were maddened by this. But the chief spoke sharply, and nobody touched him. And then the chief answered him. “So you are King of Peccaries!’’ he said. ‘“‘We shall see whether peccaries know you for their king.” He laughed then with all his pointed teeth, and we wondered. Not even his own men knew what he meant. But he said no more to the Peccary, but turned to me and asked me what I would like to do with that man. And thinking of Paulo and his broken arm and of my own toil under a burden, I replied that I should like first to drive him many miles under a heavy load and make him “‘sweat blood.”” He grinned again, did the chief, and said it should be so. When he understood that he was to be made a beast of burden the Yellow One snarled and tried to fight. He only got ! AT SUNRISE the ropes were taken himself a terrible thrashing. The barbaros beat him with the flat sides of machetes until he could hardly stand. Then they looked about for something to “ge him with. , ie | AP, ; a] ity y} vy ie 5 | Vote Pie tase