Adventure Magazine, April 10, 1924 — page 109: what you’re looking at

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

The King of No Man’s Land “Huh! Whazzamatter, Hozy? Got a cramp or somethin’?”’ They were entering. José turned to them a face startling in its gray pallor. **St—I have worse than that!” he rasped through his teeth. ‘“‘Listen! Days ago the Huambizas attacked a Jivero place—killed all its men—left the women behind—came east! One boy escaped. He says the Huambiza force was the greatest ever seen. It is led by a black-bearded savage who seems a white man and who fights like a demomo. He and his head-hunters are kill- ing all men. They command the women to await their return or be killed whenever caught elsewhere. And they are striking toward my own country. S¢%, they may be already in it! “While we have been on this Yana Yacu that force has passed us somewhere in the forest. While we have sought a way to reach David Rand and save him, David Rand sweeps down on my helpless ones with an army of the fiercest murderers in the. world! ——! May his body rot apart while still he lives! May his soul burn forever!” 3 His strident voice rose to a yell, and his wan face blackened with passion. “Cripes!” breathed Tim. ‘“Dave—ol’ good-feller Dave—goin’ on the war-path ag’inst Hozy’s women and kids! ’Tain’t possible!” . McKay stepped forward, lifted his am- munition-belt from his couch, and buckled it on. “I take it that we'll be moving,” was his dry comment. : ‘(Sif We move now! We move east!’ Striking the quiet Hatun aside, José shot through the doorway. And as Knowlton and Tim slid into their harnesses and grabbed their rifles, the voice of the King of the White Ones tore across the clearing like the scream of a maddened puma. “Aillu! Curac!” CHAPTER XX RETREAT ONCE more the village of the Jiveros was under control of its own people. The devastating storm of lead and steel which yesterday had overwhelmed it now had swept away, leaving behind it a brooding silence and a vast emptiness. 107 Not that it was actually empty. Among its huts moved human figures, passing to and fro and round about; but they moved in a lost, aimless fashion, as if dazed and un- seeing. They were the women of the place, freed for the first time in their lives from male dominance, and utterly at a loss as to what to do with their sudden liberty. Of all the men who on the previous morning had been their mates and masters only one remained—the wizard. And he was no longer the master of any one—even of himself. His impotence was due directly to the fact that Curac and Aillu were gentlemen of fixed ideas and ruthless efficiency. On receiving their king’s urgent orders to em- bark their men instantly for a return east- ward, they had paused long enough to inquire— “Do we take with us the Jivero men?” To which José, seething with rage and hate, had snapped— “To the —— with them!” It pleased those implacable warriors to interpret this as a command and to put it forthwith into execution. So the wizard and the refugee now lay side by side in the house where they had spent the night, gazing sightlessly at the roof and speaking not at all. So far as the wounded youth was con- cerned, the sudden drop into oblivion un- doubtedly was a stroke of mercy. His un- tended injury was so gangrenous that not even the wizard could have saved him. And as for the wizard himself, the only good Jivero wizard is a dead wizard. ' To this lifeless pair of men the women drifted in groups, standing and staring in dull apathy. Then they drifted away, to congregate at the pile of ashes into which all the rest of the men had vanished, and under which the deep-buried head of their last victim still grinned in the fire-baked clay. Whenever some woman should take the initiative, the wizard and his companion would be carried into the forest and left to the mercies of the tiger-footed Chaqui- cuna, and thus would disappear the last fighter of the tribe. Socn their bones would be obliterated by the jungle débris as perma- nently as the last relic of Montez had been swallowed up by the earth. And when the winds and the rains should disintegrate the ash-heap, no marker would be left to show where Montez lay. There had been no COMmiclboookkSs.C© S|