Adventure Magazine Cover — page 116: what you’re looking at

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

3 oe zg say you know all about the mysterious sign ef _ the mouse. D6 you mean to stand there and *. ag tell me it means to the Japanese what Suzu- __ noya-no-Koji-said, or even that it has the obvi- ous signification of the ancient Chinese cyclical : s animal; that in other words it has anything at —all to do with water figuratively or literally? eally, don’t you think it some sinister sign like E the hair-ball of the black Voodoo worshipers, the five orange pips of the Ku Klux Klan? __ Maybe not so terrible I'll admit, but with some secret, symbolic and perverted meaning like the ‘kid without the horns’ of Voodooism that stood for human sacrifice. “After all I fear, Chet’old man, you’re as much in the dark as ever. Why, oh why, did Suzunoya, the Wily One, bring those red-eyed, sleek white pets of his across the wide ocean aboard that crowded schooner? To awe the - Guiacuras whom he doesn’t even bother to con- doing! “Here’s something slae, old man, something -_ which happened to you at the very start. What - did those Japanese mean by leaping out of the night and calling you a government agent? Of course there’s old Suzu’s explanation about them not knowing where they landed and fear- ing deportation, but you know as well as I that’s all bosh, strictly the bunk!” 3 I slumped physically despite the sharpness of the pony’s knobby back-bone that penetrated even through the folds of blanket’ I saw that _— . all I knew, really, was the secret of the former understanding between the Indians and Japan- ese. About the promised delegation I was of two minds. . Perhaps those perfidious two, Kit Morley and his wife, had told of Mariquita’s presence among the Guiacuras and of the war-party we had feared and had added that, undoubtedly now, the Mexican girl would arouse the Indians to similar hostile activity against the Japanese. But that should have caused the Retired Scholar to send his delegation with all the more despatch. . On the other hand, perhaps the presence of the sub-chaser in the bight of bay had caused Suzunoya to withhold the delegation. To judge _ from the watchers in the sand, those men who had called me a government agent, the bonze had feared we would follow his party. Should he send forth the delegation, we might trail it and thus learn of the superstitious hold he had gained on the Indians and realize that his tale of sappers and cooks was one monstrous lie. Immediately we would wax altogether sus- picious of his business there in Magdalena Bay; we might stick around to find out exactly what was the nature of that business; and certainly from all his fabrications and deceits, he showed desire neither for our proximity nor our probing. Adventure 3 = ciliate with the promised delegation? Nothing ' Then had occurred, while he hesitated, a sweeping change in the status of things. The monkey crew of the schooner had come over us. It was done so quickly and handily that with © the schooner still at his back Suzunoya-no- | Koji probably felt now he would not be both- ered with a poor few Indians. There is this much true about a certain racial characteristic of the Japanese, all diplomatic amenities aside and candor to the fore. In Ha- waii and in California where the man of Yamato is a familiar, no one would think of hiring him for instance as a chauffeur. He would be polite, surely, and very eager to learn and entirely submissive at first to com- mand; but let him work a week or a month for you and, while impertubably polite, he would ~ not suffer you to tell him what you knew about the engine if it knocked; he would know it all; brained boy in driving you at breakneck speed, risking all manner of collisions, just to see you, the master, pale. He comes of a youthfully aggressive cock-sure race. Perhaps a bit of that cock-sureness had contaminated, with the successful boarding op- erations, even the highty educated and cunning Retired Scholar of the House with the Bell. Thus I rested the matter as we chuted from the level green mesa down the sandy-floored ravine to the desert. Looking ahead I thought to raise those clay-coated, white-hooded scouts, under command of Quetzal, who had immedi- ately preceded us. They were nowhere in sight. AHEAD was only a great rolling soli- tude of sand, glittering like glass under the merciless flogging of the sun. Gray-white sage, dark bush and malformed cactus seemed to float on the radiant, quivering air like so much wreckage on the heaving bosom of an illimitable sea. A physical revulsion smote me. I felt Jike turning back rather than ride under the scorifying sun across that void. I was busy tying a handkerchief over my bare head, the wound in which was athrob, when of a sudden I noticed that Mariquita had checked her horse atop a dune and leaving Metztli to ride on alone, was apparently waiting for me to come up. I dug my guarachas into the pony’s flank, knowing I was in for it and desirous of facing the music as soon as possible. There would need be some tall explaining I knew, ere I could convince the girl that if this was truly Dicenta and some strange women ahead with the Japanese and not Morley and his wife, it was as much of a shock to me as to her. She nudged ‘the stallion into an even canter with the pony and we rode for a space in silence. I looked at her in fearful expectation of a stormy outburst. But her head was tilted for- ward, the broad brim of the sombrero shadow- ing her face and the long jet-black, silky lashes, GOmiGcdooks _ and he would take the infernal delight of a hare- | (E©) Cs a. Bi