Adventure Magazine Cover — page 114: what you’re looking at

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

ri2 feet on his undulating neck and surveyed the three bipeds before he concentrated at- tention on Perro, struggling in Petrie’s arms. Cole put a Winchester slug clean through its head and it lunged blindly forward, the thrashing body half inside and half outside the burning logs, the smell of its burning flesh nauseating, lashing out in wild con- tortions, sweeping the ground in breaks of its constant coils, involuntarily clearing a way for their hasty exit, hurrying between the boughless, leafless tree-trunks, guided by the glow of the fire to a drier, less ex- citing spot. It was a long time before any of them got drowsy. Perro was restless, directing his attention, not toward the snake-infested swamp but to the dark aisles of the wood. It kept them on the alert. The dim trail, they argued, must have been made by the blacks and a tribe might be near them. Or Reynolds’ hunch about Dango might be correct. Several times during the day’s march they had suddenly wheeled. about and tried to see something to account for Perro’s per- sistency. The naked trees gave clear view enough, they thought, for them to have seen something of any natives who might be observing them. There was no ground cover; the distance between trees was con- siderable; it seemed as if they must have seen figures as they leaped for cover. This mystery appeared solved when Per- ro, lying by the new fire, couched with his head between his paws, sprang up, bristling and made the bare forest send his voice echoing weirdly back. . Too far from the firelight for anything to be visible but eyes and shadowy forms shifting position, noiseless, mute creatures gathered and gazed at them with orbs the hue of the flames of burning alcohol in which salt is dissolved; lambent and green- ish, spectral. “Dingoes,” said Reynolds. ‘Like your western coyotes, Cole. Cowardly. They won’t attack a man. But you can tame "em. Curious as a monkey in a fruit store. Natives find ’em in hollow trees when they’re pups. Give ’em a name, let ’em sleep with the family, kiss °em on the snoot, pick the fleas off ’em and eat the fleas. Fact. “I’ve seen ’em carrying the dingoes on their shoulders. They get tired hunting Adventure and won’t go any farther unless they’re carried, like a kid. Leave ’em behind and you lose ’em. They’re one-man _ brutes though, at that. Never bark, got a wonder- ful scent and kill game on the run. If Perro wasn’t along we might coax ’em in. It’s a cert some of ’em have been tamed— if you call it that. They nearly always run off in the breeding season and never show up, though they’ll breed with dogs readily enough. Spooky, ain’t they?” One handsome female, reddish yellow with a white breast, came in close to the fire and stood waving her plumy tail. Perro stopped barking and sniffed, then whined. “Perro’s got the call of the wild,” said Petrie. “Look at her vamping him.” “Think he’d go, if you weren’t holding him? Think his affection for you would offset the mating instinct, Petrie?” The artist looked quizzically across at Cole. | “Hard to tell.” “Go to sleep, the pair of you, while I take first watch. Ill amuse myself by watching the dingo lady vamping Perro.” IN the middle of the night some evil genius opened a flood-gate in the sky and tons of water descended, not in regular rainfall but in unbroken bodies of water that utterly drenched them, extin- guished the fire with one despairing hiss, satisfied the parched earth and turned it into a shallow lake under the trees within an hour. The wood seemed haunted with misfortune and the unkindly element seemed resolved that they should have no assistance from its foe. All efforts at making a fire failed. It was pitchy dark and the felling of a tree a riddle for better woodsmen than them- selves to solve, as they stumbled about, trying for higher, drier ground, bumping into each other, trying to salve their pos- sessions; while Perro, wet and whimpering, wandered with his master and friends. They ran into trees and fell over roots and found no fallen wood, while the only boughs of that stingy growth were far beyond ax reach, and unseen. The downpour changed gradually to mere javelins of water rather than cas- cades. ‘The ground seemed to steam, but it was cold and they shivered as with ague. The blackness was absolute and they called MICLOOOK C@