Adventure Magazine Cover — page 115: what you’re looking at

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

Mariquita rode in the van with the brilliantly striped priest Metztli, who had mounted the broad back of the heavy-fetlocked bay. Be- hind them came I upon the blanketed ridge of a pinto pony, the blanket an afterthought I had had the fearful temerity to insist upon, myself cutting as queer a figure as any in the cavalcade, Ill wager, what with the khaki knee trousers and army shirt, my bare legs and red head and feet shod in rawhide teguas. Bringing up the rear were the drummers and buglers and the bucks, two abreast, a long waving column of flashing guns and of skins that gleamed duskily like tawny gold under the perpendicular pelting of the sun. We wove among the boles of cottonwoods through the chasmy break in the hills, past the Seventh Spring and the colorful Collado de Colo- rado with its black mouth of tunnel and blind- ing-sheeted shack, and out upon the broad ex- panse of mesa, greenly laced with spiky grass and tangles of leguminous creepers and spangled here and there by yellow wild flowers. We rode at a leisurely though steady canter. The pace was carefully judged, I surmised, to fetch us to the Japanese encampment around dusk. During daylight such an interval of dis- tance would lie between the yellow men and us as to render the cavalcade indistinguishable to the eye among the billows of sand and sage. Mariquita and Metztli were talking earnestly together. As he nodded to some statement of the girl, the baked curls of the priest leaped and danced like nothing so much as snakes writhing inagony. At times I could glimpse the chiseled profile of the girl turned to him in concern or ap- _peal, the short piquant nose, an olive-fair cheek faintly curving into outline, the patrician pen- ciling of silky lashes and black brows. Always at these times there was strongly the impression of vivid, animated, humidly splendid eyes. I knew they were discussing me. I felt a certain fear that Mariquita in her bit- terness might prevail upon the balbriggan-suited priest to send me back to the cafion, there to await the result of the expedition. I hoped that the position Metztl had taken at the outset, his assumption of complete au- thority and apparent jealousy lest one iota of it be jeopardized, would frustrate the girl from winning her acrimonious contention. sincerely she would drop back, if only for a mo- ment, and suffer me to explain. Meantime however I knew a strange elation over thus riding with the war-party. It was the happy culmination of a most perplexing night. Instead of having to trek on across the sand after the dubious aid of the American ranchers on the northern uplands, I was accomplishing my mission with unlooked-for success, riding back with these swinging, bobbing Indians, over one hundred and twenty strong; bristling with -Mausers and belligerently vengeful. # pony, I fell to imagining myself relating the I wished ~< Everything was shaping to my desire. Even what had been an insoluble mystery was a mys- tery no longer. 1 knew now the secret of the clutch of superstition Suzunoya-no-Koji had vised about these Guiacuras. True, I had not had the courage to tell the Indians the real meaning of the sun-flag and dormant mouse of the Azteca zodiac; but still I had been instru- mental in loosing that superstitious clutch, in opening their eyes to the Oriental deceit and in rousing them to this determined crusade. Such indeed was my elation and such my res- pect for the martial skill of these Indians that I could see naught to hinder us from routing, Mor- ley and his wife and their Japanese. We would | yet regain control of the Seventy-three and the gold chest in its magazine, rescue the loyal crew and poor old Jim Hathaway if he still breathed and ship all those yellow coolies helter-skelter out to sea. THERE being nothing else to do while I awaited Metztli’s decision but bob and swing to the canter of the loose-reined whole wild yarn to good old Jim. He at least would believe my tale of the nocturnal walk across the ghostly sand, the unchained thrall to that mouse-nest of a Buddhist bonze; the epi- sode of. the clay-coated Indians that pursued like hungry coyotes; and my successful session with the sun-worshippers and rather unfortu- nate one with Mariquita. I even straightened up with a thrill of pride as I pictured myself ex- — posing the solution of the whole mystery. And then it seemed to me as if Hathaway, looking quizzically through his horn rims from under down-drawn brows, would drawl: “But what really are these Japanese doing here? Of course that was all fabrication about their making a portage over the hills to join Villa’s forces as sappers and cooks, the same, Chet, as the story they told these Indians about joining with them to found a new hybrid nation. But what on earth are they doing building a village in the sand and apparently preparing for a long stay? They must have some deep plan afoot, that’s clear; else they should never have brought those sections of houses clean across the Pacific. “And looket, Chet! Why didn’t Suzunoya- no-Koji, that crafty Machiavelli, send the dele- gation as promised to these Guiacuras? It was easy to’ do and it would have been the diplo- matic thing to do, altogether placating the warlike propensities of the Indians. More. it would have put those Indians irrevocably under his superstitious sway, made them putty in his yellow hands for any mold or purpose. He must have realized all that. It was a move entirely _ in keeping with his cunning. What then stopped him? “And here’s another leak in your yatn. You 105 COmicloooks