Adventure Magazine Cover — page 158: what you’re looking at

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

Re Se at es =e Seeing Pee Le iS a Re as - The Indian girl came forward again and told us that under his burned barracéo was buried gold which his gangs had brought in from raids. And since gold is very heavy, and also because it pleased them to load him with the yellow dirt for which he had committed gso many crimes, the wild men forced him to dig up his treasure, and made rough bags from the scanty clothing of the dead Peccaries, and lashed them on him with ropes and vines. And they got large balls of rubber which had been scorched in the burning of the town, and fastened these on him too, until he was bent far over by the weight—as Paulo and I once had been. Then they drove him eastward toward their own land. Before we departed, though, the chief proved himself a wise young man as well as a good fighter. For instead of forcing all the women to come with us he told them they might go wherever they wished, and make their way back to, their own people if they could. I saw he understood a thing which some men never learn—that a wo- man taken and kept against her will is not worth taking, because she will surely make trouble when she can. And so the women did as they pleased. Some came with us, but more took weapons from the dead men who had been their masters and went away in a band, seeking their own homes. And then, with two wild men yanking the Yellow One along by a rope around his neck and others jabbing him from time to time with machetes, we men from Brazil took the trail by which we had come. In the next few days E] Amarillo learned what it meant to be a pack-animal. He carried that load at all times; he slept with. it on him at night, and was never free from it for an instant. And he carried more than that—the weight of the death and misery and agonized curses of the men he had tortured and killed for that rubber and gold, and the knowledge that for him there was no escape, and the terror of the unknown death that finally should come to him. And that, senhores, was all of my own revenge on him—driving him like a beast. In what came to him later from the wild men I had no hand. ‘As we went down the hills to the river, and up the river in the boats, and on through our own jungle, all of us remem- bered the chief’s puzzling words about the % Seba ee seats) fee ee ee Oe PE a AT Adventure peccaries knowing the Yellow One for their _ king; but none of us knew what he meant by them, and he did not tell us. The only time he spoke of peccaries was soon after we started, when he ordered his men to watch for the wild pigs on their hunts—for of course we had to hunt as we went, and kill game to eat. Twice there came hunters who told him they had found peccaries in the bush, and then he asked what they were; and when the men said{they were few and white-collared he shook his head. So most of us saw none of the pigs until we were nearing the maloca and the long march was. nearly done. e ying. {ee the forest and told their chief they had sighted a herd of the white- lipped peccaries. a number of others, and they went into the bush with the hunters who had seen the pigs. He also called two more savages, and I saw they were the same ones who had found me hanging in torment; and after a word from him they went into the bush by themselves: With a knife he then cut the ropes around the Yellow One, and the gold and rubber fell from him. He had been»bent under THEN came men hurrying through At once he gave orders to’ that crushing weight so long, senhores, that - when it dropped he dropped also, falling forward, unable to keep his balance. But he was up again soon, rubbing himself and scowling at the savages. Fear showed in his eyes, though, as he glanced around him. And when the two wild men came back and gave something to the chief the Peccary glanced at it, and his face turned sickly white. I looked too, and my recently healed wounds seemed to burn again as I saw what the chief held—a handful of those terrible long sharp thorns. With a yell of terror the bandit sprang away and tried to dash into the jungle. But men caught him, threw him down hard, and dragged him to a tree. And there, faced at last by the fate he had made more than one victim suffer, he screeched and whined and sniveled for mercy—the mercy he had never shown to his prisoners. It did him no good. The wild men only growled in disgust, while their chief stood before him holding the thorns for him to look at. I shivered, senhores, but I could do nothing for him even if I tried; they might seize me and nail me up again too, ecomicboo S - an a eee =>. Soe <> 5 Aer 3g a seen en nie et Deel Sa