Adventure Magazine Cover — page 117: what you’re looking at

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

The Doom Trail rivermen would like you to give them a mass Sunday. ’Tis a long = “Give me the letter,” he cried eagerly. “Ah, that is good reading! Sometimes I despair for my sons—aye, more than for the miserable children of the wilderness. But now I know that a seed grows in the hearts of some that I have doubted. I shall go gladly.” He turned to depart, onincieed his steps and fixed me with his gaze that seemed al- most to scorch the skin. “Remember what I have said, monszeur. Repent, and in the joy which will come to your soul you will rejoice in your agony. You will triumph in it: Your heart will be uplifted by it. Do I not know! I have suffered myself, a whole day at the stake once, and again for half a day.” |<] the priest limped away. <-1 =©“‘T must send Jacques a barrel of brandy for this,” he remarked; “but our Cahnuagas would be in the sulks if they could not celebrate the Moon Feast, and they stand in such fear of the worthy Hyacinthe that they would never risk his wrath.” “The Moon Feast!” exclaimed Murray. “True, I had forgotten. Well, ’twill be an excellent introduction to the customs of the savages for our friend the intruder.” “°Twill make a great impression upon him,” laughed de Veulle. “In fact, upon both of them. I have a surprize for our Iroquois captive as well. The Mistress of the False Faces awaits them.”’ “Then haste the dancing. Will you dine with us?” De Vuelle hesitated, looked longingly to- ward the end of the clearing and more long- ingly toward the house within the stockade which housed Marjory. “Aye,” he said at last.. He murmured some orders to our guards, kicked me out of his path and sauntered through the gateway beside Murray. DE VEULLE winked at Murray as CHAPTER XVIII THE MISTRESS OF THE FALSE FACES Ww" H Bolling in active supervision and Tom hanging greedily on the flanks of the crowd we were hustled through the clearing, past the chapel and an intervening III belt of woodland, into a second and much larger open space, crammed with bark lodges and huts. “A big village,” I gasped to Ta-wan-ne- ars as I dodged a blow at my head. “°Tis the haunt of the Keepers,” he re- plied. “See, there are Adirondacks and Shawendadies, as well as Cahnuagas. And those yonder are Hurons from north of the Lakes.” Bolling slashed him across the face with a strip of rawhide. “Keep your breath for the torture-stake, you Iroquois cur!” Ta-wan-ne-ars laughed at him. “Red Jack can only fight with a whip,” he said. “But when Ta-wan-ne-ars holds a tomahawk he runs.” Bolling struck at him again, but the rest- less horde of our tormenters pried the rufflan away as some new group pushed to the front to have a look at the prisoners and deal a blow or two. The throng became so dense that individual castigation was im- possible, and we were tossed along like chips in a whirlpool. In the end we were hurled, head over heels, into a natural amphitheater on the far side of the village, where a background of dark pines walled in a wide surface of hard- beaten, grassless ground. Two stakes stood ready, side by side, in the center, and our captors tore off our tattered clothes and lashed us to these with whoops of joy. So we stood, naked and bound, ankle, knee, thigh, chest and armpit, whilst the sun, setting behind the village, flooded the inferno with mellow light and an army of fiends, men, women and children, pranced around us. For myself, I was dazed and fearful, but Ta-wan-ne-ars again showed me the better road. “The Keepers scream like women,” he shouted, in order to make himself heard. “Have you never taken captives before?” They shrieked a medley of abuse at him, butsonce more he compelled their attention by force of will. “Are you afraid to let Ta-wan-ne-ars and his brother run the gantlet?” he demanded. A squat Cahnuaga chief grinned and shook his head. “We do not want you to tire yours he answered. ‘You would not be able to last so long under torture.” “You are afraid of us,” jeered Ta-wan-ne- ars. “You know that if we were free we oF COMMICLOOOKS (F@)