Adventure Magazine Cover — page 57: what you’re looking at

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

56 | ~ Adventure taming him. And: not with a cowhide whip. Not with red-hot coals and a piece of sheet iron on which the bear was com- pelled to dance. No, no, with another weapon, an invisible weapon, a sharper and more potent one. She would have screamed for joy but she controlled herself. Silence added to the sting of the weapon. More than that. It was the weapon. rents in the canvas of the tent. A = few last screeches of a preying owl, then the clicking of wild pheasants pro- claimed that the sun was peeping over the mountaintops, like a red-faced boy over a high garden fence. He, Petrackio, was calling her. He was calling her. But she would not answer. There was a last appeal in an “Oho, oho!” coming from behind her tent, then there was silence for a while. After that, and before there were too many sounds in the valley, Margarita heard the hoof-beats of a departing horse. Tired, feverish, she fell asleep. “Ho, ho, ho!” She awoke suddenly, hearing her father’s voice outside her tent. ‘The sun has gone to Hungary and you are still sleeping! Was the wine too strong for you? What?” “Yes, no, yes, no, fatuca. Let me sleep. I want to sleep. My head aches.” “That comes from washing your hair too often,’ the father answered before leaving. After that he muttered to himself, ““When the time comes, they are all like that.” She heard her father approach her tent several times before nightfall but she made believe that she was fast asleep. -He left some food near her cot. But, as in the days when they had a real one to tame, she felt no hunger, only a horrible thirst. An hour alter sunset Margarita was listening for the hoof-beats. She heard none. Her pain was now sharper than yester- day’s joy. She waited and listened until midnight. Not asound. She went out of her tent and looked at the sky. Her whip, the weapon in which she had had so much confidence all the years, was at her feet. She scorned it now. It was a weapon as crude as a child’s plaything. After she had waited and listened for many weary hours she whistled loud and long. The sound reverberated, thrown p | DAYLIGHT was coming in through from one mountain wall to the other and back, until it died in some distant gully. It was like the call of some wild animal. — She waited silently. There was no answer to her call. But when she lifted the flap of her tent at daybreak she found the two braided tresses lying across the cot. Startled, shocked, mad, speechless, Mar- garita took one of the tresses in each hand and rushed out again. Nobody to be seen. The dog was peacefully licking his chops. Wild-eyed, the girl looked around her. Seized by an uncontrollable rage, she went for her whip and began to lash the dog with its thongs. ‘So, ha, ha, you will let thieves go and come as they please, will you, will you, ha? Take this and take that.” ‘Why do you hit the dog?” asked Costa, coming out of his tent, awakened by the animal’s howls. | “Why? Why? Because, look, look! Look at my hair. Some one has entered my, tent and sheared them off while I was asleep. And he did not move, did not bark, nothing.” “What? What is that?’ Costa screamed. “Who did that? Who did that?. If I did not know that Ursu was lame, by fire and water! Margarita—my poor girl—my poor girl—who could have done it? I will go to the end of the world to find him.” “A thief, a coward, a triple coward, one who dared not fight me in daylight,” screamed Margarita at the top of her voice, knowing that Petrackio could not be too far to hear her words. Costa was soon on his horse. “T shall not return before finding the thief, the coward,” was all he said before riding away. : Costa was hardly out of sight when Pe- trackio showed himself emerging from behind a tree only a few paces behind the irl. “Well, I heard you calling me a while ago, so I arrived astride an eagle and dropped your tresses on your cot through the air-hole on top of your tent. Why have you called me?” “Called you? I called you?” “T heard your whistle!” “That was for the dog.”’ “Be it as you say,” Petrackio grinned. “Well then, I may go, Costa’s daughter. I gave you back what I took from you.” He turned to leave her. “I was sorry, EComichooks.co