Adventure Magazine Cover — page 135: what you’re looking at

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

He that Prepareth the Way whether you and I have been chasing a swarm ol bees or a cloud of beetles. I shall drive right back to the city with this bag- gage and wait for you and your news in my jail-cellar. Off with you, Osman! Think of the stake and don’t lose a minute!”’ But hardly had Osman vanished down the road when Selim Effendi realized the complexity of his situation, for inside of two minutes he discovered the immediate reason for the rice-merchant’s making away with his horse. One of the two mules that was to drive him and his prisoner to Tetino was lame and would not budge an inch! It was growing gloomier every minute. A thick pulpy fog was settling all around. Mud-bespattered peasants with their char- coal-laden donkeys kept passing down the street, all bound for Tetino, to sleep in the city and be on time bright and early for the Wednesday bazaar on the morrow. A couple of them stopped for a moment or two in front of the stable and stared at the puz- zled police magistrate. In a flash the Turk had reached a decision. He jumped at one of the peasants whose donkey looked the sturdier of the two: ‘Here, you, come with me!” The charcoal was accordingly dumped on the street, the rice-merchant’s mule and ’ the peasant’s were mated to tug the rickety carriage, and the charcoal-pedler turned driver. The latter needed only to look from the barrel of Selim’s long revolver to the bound figure of the man in cassock right inside the door to lose any idea of opposi- tion which may have at first suggested itself to his peasant brain. The Turk lined his conveyance with Stanko’s bottles; and then a Mohammedan fancy suggested a move characteristic of his failing for the humorous. ‘“‘Here, you priest, listen to me! Wasn’t there a bishop once that rode into Jerusa- lem on the back of an ass?”” There was in his voice the scornful note of pretended ignorance. The Poliany schcolmaster did not look p. “You don’t answer, cur? You, charcoal dirt, can’t you talk either?” “Once I heard the priest chant some- thing about that, Effendi.” “Well, this time we'll have the Devil himself riding into Tetino on your donkey’s back!” And the charcoalman had to assist the Effendi while the latter piled the bulky 699 rame of his prisoner on the donkey’s back and fastened him on like a load of Livady charcoal. For the first time Dascal Zoeff of Poliany loudly proclaimed his identity, but the Turk would not listen. “T don’t want to hear another word from you till we enter my cellar! Shut up!” and he pulled out a dirty, greasy rag from inside the stable and gagged his helpless victim. “Now off with you as fast as you can drive, right straight to Tetino!” he yelled to the charcoalman. ‘‘T’ll hold this revol- ver pointed at your neck, so don’t you dare play any dirty games on me!”’ The peasant’s donkey announced the departure of the improvised train in shrill, plaintive whinnies. V Bea “SO YOU are a charcoal-pedler, f@eg ch?” The team was at the out- "Skirts of the village. ‘““My face would give me the lie if I said nay, Effendi!” The peasant spoke in the Payak dialect, a mixture of Bulgarian and Vlakh, which the Effendi understood but did not speak. A tawny charcoalman he was; his sooty, smoky face, plastered with the carbon dirt of a hundred charred pine- trees, bore but a distant resemblance to a human countenance. <A_ black, greasy sheepskin kalpak covered the major part of his cranium. Sunken beneath his singed eyebrows, a pair of glassy orbs blinked with the colorless stupidity that only five cen- turies of thraldom can stamp upon the phys- iognomy of a race. He was taciturn, and conversed readily only with his donkey. The rickety patter of the carriage dis- posed the Effendi for the taste of Stanko’s vintages. Bottle after bottle dropped by the roadside. The last bottle would have followed its predecessors, but the revolver slipped by the roadside instead, without the Turk’s being any the wiser. The brandy and the Prespa wine were a stupefying combina- tion. Selim could think of nothing but Tetino, and his tongue rattled continually: “Tisten here, look, how is it now, how is it—far to Tetino? Is it far to Tetino? —Tetino, look you, or I’ll blow your brains out for you!”’ and the Effendi brandished the empty brandy-bottle. The charcoal- man noted the weapon, and answered in his Payak drawl: GoOmicbdookseeo