Adventure Magazine Cover — page 74: what you’re looking at

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

638 “Tt is no use for me to try to tell you the fun I had out of chose two little chaps in the next month. After they had got a line on the percentage of mortality they didn’t mind a fight. We took twelve towns with- out the loss of a man and they began to like war. They picked up Spanish faster than I ever saw men pick up a language, and as the army got bigger and our requi- sitioned supplies increased I put them to looking after the accounting and adminis- tration of the commissary. I have often wished since that I had just one commissary clerk as good as either of them. “T kept them well supplied with silver so that they would not have to flash any of those ‘phony’ notes. I only had about a hundred thousand left when we captured our second provincial capital and I was thinking about taking them into my con- fidence and trying to get them to exchange nine hundred thousand or so they held fora couple of twenty-dollar gold pieces when suddenly, one night after we had captured Boca del Tocas, they went into a gambling- house and got pitched out of a second- story window for trying to cash one of the notes in a game. It seemed funny that neither one came around to see me and I concluded that they had put the blame on some peculiar peevishness of the game- keeper which they, being strangers in a strange land, did not understand. I ought to have known better, I suppose. Any- how, I was getting a little bit too busy to bother much about them, with five thou- sand men to handle and old Ladriz trem- bling in Carrido in his palace as we drew steadily nearer. ‘““At Boca del Tocas we heard the news that instead of General Ramirez, our candi- date, being on the way from the west with another body of men, Ladriz had arrested him the seeond day after we had landed and when he had him in jail had fixed up a com- promise with him. Ladriz was to keep the presidency for two years, Carvalho, the vice-president, was to be kicked out and exiled and Ramirez was to be made vice- president with the ways greased to have him succeed to the presidential chair. They had forgotten Mena-Mena and me and our republic-builders. To date we were doing so nicely that I told Mena- Mena we might just as well go on and clean out the lot and make Mena-Mena president himself. | Adventure “The only thing we needed was a force to capture Puerto del Nogales, the one good port, just as near to us now as the capital. If we had control of the custom- house and could also land arms there to equip our recruits, it would be all over but the shouting. Half the republic was ours; every day he held the army in the capital Ladriz weakened his hold on the people. He must attack us, and we could afford to wait. ‘It was the end of March before they tried it. They had even taken poor old General Torres out of his chair in his peace- ful patio and put the good old warrior on a horse to command the army moving on us from the north. Ramirez, the dog, took command of the other wing. ‘““A thousand men could hold my en- trenched camp on the hill in the south side of town and I decided to take the others and go to meet Torres. I expected not only to turn him back but to take over most of his men. Then I could go after Ramirez,— chase him straight into the capital and may- be capture him before he could get there. Then it would be all over. ‘The night we moved out of town I was riding up to the head of the column when I saw two men in each other’s arms. It was the brothers. One had been ordered with us without my knowledge, and they were saying farewell. The next day I saw it was Abie who was with me to uphold the honor of Rivington Street. “Well, it’s a good barrel that don’t have one rotten apple. We got in touch with Torres the second evening. The cunning old fox had me flanked before daylight and opened up as the sun showed with Gat- lings handled by Englishmen who had come on for some fun from Puerto del Nogales. By noon it was a rear-guard action and I had lost four hundred men. “Early in the day I had swung my re- serve around on a hill to meet his flanking and I got a sight of Abie. He was right in the front of the fight, pushing on to glory. It actually took my breath for a minute— T'was never more astonished in all my life. And I couldn’t help feeling a little bad, when we struck the Cristobal River and I got my men across safe and prepared to hold the ford during the night, to find that among the four hundred back there was A. Berkintowitz and that somewhere up in little old New York a bride who had been S| GomicdooksEeeo