Adventure Magazine Cover — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

I20 and the canteens. The leader tossed the tobacco at the two blacks who took it and started off back to the unmarked spinifex trail that led to the mountains. Brown handed over the canteens. “T can’t do a thing for you,” he said in a low tone. “I tried. They’re a lot of murderers. They'll do me up.” “Quit your jawin’, Brown.” Brown gave the leader a deprecatory look. Though he, through his sister, was the source of their first information, it was plain that the three bushwhackers did not consider him worth much consideration. Cole fancied that Sievers too had to walk carefully with the men he had taken in- to nefarious partnership. The fancy was promptly emphasized as Sievers came toward them, vituperative and vindictive. “Tf I thought there was a charnce of your gettin’ through,” he said, ‘“I’d head you for right this minute. I’ve done you in proper. Made poor suckers out of you. Go on and eat grass and sand, blarst you, while I’m pickin’ up gold. Tl be spendin’ it when you’re rotting, what’s left of you. You poor suckers! Shoe’s on the wrong foot, ain’t it? Yah!” He was like a cur yapping at a cripple’s heels. It was clear that he only wanted an excuse to use his gun, that the memory of his humiliation by the fists of Cole still rankled. But the leader curtly ordered him to get busy and the bully obeyed with a promptness that suggested previous argu- ments had proved that the authority of the gang was not vested in him. Two of the men stood watching them with rifles across their arms as they filed after the two blacks, their spirits low but their heads up. T heir exaltation had turned to bitterness. The wine of success had been at their lips and changed to gall that they had been forced to swallow. <q THEY had no weapons with which ’ to defend -themselves against the two natives who had disappeared in the spinifex. It was true that they had nothing left to reward them. But Dango and his mate would think that they might be held accountable for having guided the party which had robbed the three white men of the mine. They knew enough about rights to realize that here was a deliberate theft in which they had taken part. There was the matter of the dog in which they a vicarious form of murder. Adventure had been balked. There was their fear of some reprisal from the men they had wronged, even though they were unarmed. It would not be a matter of reasoning, Reynolds told himself, but a series of im- pulses all leading to the conclusion that the best thing for them to do was to kill off the three and to revenge themselves on the dog. The clothes the whites wore pro- vided temptation enough for a dozen murders. They were tacitly encouraged by the bearded men whom they recognized as types of the whites they knew, the sort of men who themselves killed blacks, cap- tured their women, hunted tribes for amusement; men who were always on top, to be feared and placated. It was not necessary for Reynolds to voice this conclusion. All three felt sure that the sending of them away was merely With only water in their canteens they could never hope to cross the desert or reach the snake infected woods. The blacks could thrive on grasshoppers in the desert, snakes in the forest. They could underlive the white man. There was scant choice between starva- tion or a savage spear. The latter might prove the more merciful. Yet none of the three was made of the stuff that gives up. They had served through their baptism of fire and hardship before they entered on this adventure. Their resentment against the treacherous blacks, against Sievers and his bearded bandits, spurred them to an attempt to retrieve their fortune, lost before they had barely laid their hands upon it. Alec Brown was merely a miserable tool. Yet any attempt against such an armed force seemed purely suicidal. They trudged on, with the sun nising, beating down their strength, sapping their energy as_ they shuffled through the soft sand toward the bristling spinifex and flung themselves down in the shade of a great clump of the unfriendly grass. Petrie was in bad shape again. “T’m a bit bucked,” he said. “You two had better make it alone. I may be able to make Perro go with you. I’d like to see him get through. The heat takes it out of me,” he gasped with a wry attempt at a grin as a spasm seized him. “IT suppose you think the dog is a better pal than we are,” said Reynolds after the MICLOOOK C@ in