Adventure Magazine Cover — page 35: what you’re looking at

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

The Warriors of the Pecos Avary lay on his cot, shrunk to a skele- ton, his jaw dropped, his eyes staring at the ceiling. The landlord’s ancient wife drew away from the bed as they entered, and one of the tipstaffs caught her by the wrists. “Show what you found on him, woman,” demanded the bailiff. He had noted the rifled chest, scattered papers and old rags, the disordered clothes belonging to the corpse. “Nothing—upon my soul—nothing! He owes us for lodgings.” “What did you just take from him? Those papers. Open her fist, Tim.” Trembling, she showed them. “But a scrap of printed matter, gentle- men,” she whined. ‘‘My man is fond of reading. I can not read nor write myself.” It was a tattered, dog-eared pamphlet she had taken from the dead man’s shirt, wrapped in a dirty cloth as if it were some- thing precious. The bailiff read the title. pe aa. iT Be —s ~—- st — ~ 29 “Tt was Avary,” he said. ‘But you lose the reward. The law does not pay for a dead pirate.” Avary’s treacherous friend gloomily sur- veyed the cover of the chap-book: The Piracies and Cruelties of Captain Avary Who Married the Daughter of the Great Mogul, Capturing her after Great Slaughter by His Own Hand and the Gain of Much Merchandise, Gold, Gems and Ivory. ““Avary?” said the old woman. ‘Him Avary the pirate? Him, what married the king’s daughter?” She laughed shrilly. “Him, what had millions and now without: a shilling to buy a shroud! And owing us his rent. The dirty villain!” “Get down, woman!”’ said the bailiff. “He - needs no shroud. Quicklime is the winding- sheet for pirates.” The Warriors of the Pecos Frederick R. Bechdolt Aut fais of “Cochise,” “The Passing of John Ringold,” etc. HE little town of Lincoln, New Mexico, lies drowsing under the pale flanks of the El Capitan Mountains unchanged by time; low gray adobe buildings scattered along the road which follows the windings of the canon bed. You can see the bullet scars in the walls today; and men who are still hale will tell you how they fought here when the - lead was flying thick, how the red light of flames fell on the faces of their comrades, dying grimly with their boots on. Customs change swiftly, and it is the years that drag; there are those living in firm friendship, calling one another by their first names, who in those wild days endured bitter hardship seeking one another’s lives. And every one of them still declares from his heart that his was the just cause and that his leader—outlaw or sheriff as the “The Warriors of the Pecos," copyright, 1922, by Frederick R. Bechdolt. COMICLMOOoks (C@