Adventure Magazine Cover — page 52: what you’re looking at

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

The Bear-Tamer’s Daughter 51° when, at what stroke of the whip, the thing was accomplished. When Margarita was fourteen years old it so happened that her father’s catches that Spring had been only mortaciu- nas, dead ones, kittens. It was a pity to waste cowhide on them. The Winter had been a very long one after a very wet Fall and the; bears were.so weak from pro- longed hibernation and hunger that they looked more like sheep than man-eating beasts. ; Margarita had hoped every day for a “real live one.” But no. Mortaciunas they were, every one of them. While her father was away she stalked, whip in hand, from’ one bear to the other, teased them, hit them, now gave them pieces of raw meat to awaken their taste for blood, las- soed the playful cubs from their mothers to stir their savagery, but of no avail. Occasionally some female would shoot out a paw and give a tug at the chain, one end of which was dangling from a ring pierced through the nose. Margarita’s hopes would rise and she would scream her joy in a dozen endearing names, yet a sec- ond application of the whip would hardly stir the bear from its place. And when the Spring came to a close and the bears left the gullies and valleys and climbed the tops of the mountains - for sheep, deer and wild goat, father and daugh- ter had no excitement that season. The taming done and most of the bears sold, Costa went a-browsing from inn to inn, from village to village, drinking, carousing, play- ing cards and fighting with other Gipsies, sometimes on the Rumanian side of the mountains and at other times on the Hun- garian side, working up some excitement for himself by outwitting the frontier guards posted on either side of the Carpa- thians. He returned home once in a while to in- quire how things went; if any of the bears needed private schooling. But if such a thing had come to pass Margarita had al- ready attended to it and there was nothing more to be done. Margarita was far from being satisfied. She could have picked quarrels with her brothers, who came occasionally to visit her, or with the husbands of her half-sisters, but they were all “old women,” well-fed, satisfied traders. Nor was there any fun in quarreling withethe Tziganes who came to buy tamed bears. She threw insults to their teeth. “Why don’t you hunt for your own bears? You only want tame bears because you are tame men yourselves. You are tame men yourselves.”’ They did not answer her. They told her she had pretty eyes and beautiful teeth, that her arms were round and _ brown. Some playfully inquired how she would like it if they would buy her from her father. But that was all. ‘Sell me to you? Sell me to you? Sella tiger toa lamb. I would tear you to pieces. No, I would not. I would just spit at you. Like that, na, piut.” “Well, no, I would not buy you. I would not take you for a gift,” she was answered. “Of course you would not. You are afraid. I dare you. You are afraid. You buy tame bears. This one here, I tamed him. You could eat from one plate with him now. Or better buy this one here. He was born tame. As you were. His father was a lamb as yours was. That’s the kind you want. You buy them tamed. Even your women you buy tamed. Why don’t you hunt for them? You are afraid. You buy them at the end of a rope. Tied, cowed.’ She teased, she dared. In vain. Men looked at her from the corner of an eye but avoided her and no one ever inquired seri- ously of her father whether she was for sale or not. ‘> hes ONE early morning, the time of the ~ brumal air,-when frost, the’ shadow of Winter, sits on the fox grapes and plums, Petrackio, the son of Ursu the bear-tamer, entered the gully where was the home of Costa and his daughter. Ursu the bear-tamer was an old competi- tor of Costa’s. His establishment was twenty miles from there. The two bear- tamers were deadly enemies and it was known if the two should ever meet alone in the mountains but one would return. That Ursu’s son, Petrackio, should venture to Costa’s gully was the height of audacity. What brought him there was the fact that his father had been away for more than two weeks and none had seen him. Sure that Costa had killed him, the boy came to avenge his father. Petrackio and Margarita had never seen each other. The COMmmcooolkkSse© “ vear leaves were fluttering in the |