Adventure Magazine Cover, October 10, 1921 — page 133: what you’re looking at

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

The Doom Trail The horror of it first sickened me, then flogged me into a red-hot tempest of anger. And in the midst of the orgy of bestiality Murray and de Veulle penetrated the circle of False Faces, with Marjory, white-faced, tight-lipped, between them. They walked up to the stake to which I was bound. “T deeply regret, my dear,” said Murray in a voice which was conscientiously paternal, ‘‘that you must be exposed to this spectacle——”’ “?Tis no more distressing than the knowledge of your wickedness,” she flashed. ‘‘You have overset my belief in a cause I had thought holy.” “Well, we will not talk politics if you please,” he replied. “I want you to realize now beyond question the fate which awaits this misguided young man upon whom you have been so ill-advised as to pin your affections.” ‘Would you like to walk nearer the other stakes and study what has been done to the Senecas upon whom the torture has been begun?” suggested de Veulle suavely. She eyed him with such scorn that even he felt it, for his face hardened appreciably. “No, sir,” she answered; ‘‘I shall not be contributing to your entertainment any more than I can help.” Murray addressed me. ‘‘We are making a bargain with the lady, Master Ormerod. She is to renounce her objections to de Veulle, own herself mis- taken in her feeling of affection for you— and you are to be permitted to escape when she has sealed her engagements.” “Do not think of it, Marjory,” I called to her. ‘I mind this not at all. And fear not. Help will come to you.” A tinge of color showed in her cheeks, and she stepped to my side. “T can not let you die, Harry,” she said with a sob. “Indeed I will not be able to stand the thinking of it. Better anything —better marriage to this beast—than— than—that!”’ “You are wrong,’ I urged her. “You must not. I should go mad if you did. I should hate myself! I——” I twisted my head toward Ta-wan-ne-ars beside me. “Bid her not, brother,” I,appealed to him. ‘Tell her I do not fear to pay the price! And why should I escape if you His granite features softened as his eyes met hers. But before he could speak the 123 scene shifted with startling rapidity. There was a bulge in the ring of False Faces, and Ga-ha-no burst into the group. Dressed in her uniform as Ga-go-sa Ho-nun-as-tase-ta, the kilt and moccasins, she fronted de Veulle with eyes blazing, breast heaving. “Do you seek now to buy the white maiden with this man’s life?” she stormed. “You have no place here,” he replied in the Cahnuaga dialect. “Go away. You will make——”’ “You shall not!” she defied him. ‘You have had your pleasure with me. Now you would like to have a woman of your own color. You shall not! I have been bad. I have forgotten the ways of my fathers. I have betrayed a good man.”’ She threw a glance at Ta-wan-ne-ars, straining at his bonds. | “For that I am sorry, but it is too late!” she exclaimed. ‘‘White maiden,” she cried to Marjory, “do not listen to this man. He is more wicked than I—and I am now a creature of Ha-ne-go-ate-geh!”’ De Veulle waved his arm toward the attentive circle of False Faces. “Remove the Mistress,” he ordered. ‘She is hindering the torture.” The False Faces moved forward reluc- tantly, but Ga-ha-no acted without hesita- tion. A knife leaped from a fold of her kilt, and she sprang upon de Veulle like the wildcat to which he had likened her. He retreated, and ripped out his own knife. “Seize her, Murray,”. he panted in French. ‘She is insane.”’ But she closed with him, and the two knives sank home at the same instant. Hers pierced de Veulle to the heart. His drove to the hilt into her right breast, and she staggered back, coughing blood, against the rigid form of Ta- -wan-ne-ars, bound fast to the stake. “Ga-ha-no—was not—worthy of—Ta- wan-ne-ars,”’ she gasped as her head slipped down his chest. “TIt—is—better—so.”’ No torture could have distorted his face into the image of frenzied despair which it displayed as he strove uselessly to bend down to her. “My Lost Soul! he muttered. “Oh, Ha-wen-ne-yu, my Lost Soul! Oh, Great Spirit, my Lost Soul!” - Marjory crept nearer to me, the horror in her face turning to pity, the tears Sone from her eyes. DOOLK C@