Adventure Magazine, December 10, 1924 — page 135: what you’re looking at

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

The Trail Smellers the Muniwas, hoping almost that they might send their young men to make a raid on the sitio Gabriel to take vengeance for a man the son of a woman of their tribe. But they took counsel and said: “He is not of our people: He is a white man. And why for a white man’s sake should our young men attack a sitio where there are guns?”’ Which, after all, was no more than was to be expected. So I came on down, think- ing that this was but another case of a good man destroyed by the complications which hang round the skirts of a woman. I considered him as dead. Yet the next news that I heard of this Joselito came while I was at the sitzo myself. I was delayed there a full month by reason of an attack of the malaria terciana; and while there, there came one day a man in an uba, a dug-out of the smallest size. So little and so low in the water that he looked, as he paddled up the river, exactly as if he sat in the water and progressed. He grounded his craft on the beach right in front of Gabriel’s veranda and came up to talk with us. And as he approached, Gabriel fell from his chair with fright; and I, too, muttered a defende me Deus, and prepared to back away to a distance. For the man’s limbs and face were all deeply pitted with little scars and eaten away as by some frightful disease. He guessed what was in our minds and made haste to reassure us. He grinned a lipless grin and called out in a thick lisping voice, as if the tongue, too, had been affected: “No, it is not the small pox; nor that other. It is but one of the mischances of the jungle.” And he came into the veranda and stood before us. Truly he was a sight to inspire horror. He wore garments of the fapa cloth, which is made by beating out the bark of a certain tree, scanty enough to show the terrible pitted scars on his body. But the worst was his face. “God have mercy,” I said to myself. “That such a mischance does not come to me in the jungles.” The man’s nose was gone, eaten down to a hollow such as one sees among the lepers of Villa Sancta. The lips showed gums and teeth in a perpetual grin. The ears were just waxy patches, like a macaw’s; and from the midst of the wreck glowed the eyes, small and red like a parrot’s. 8 113 Yet he seemed to be full of a considerable satisfaction; though in truth it was difficult to tell whether this man grinned or scowled. There were no features left to express his thought. “Meu Deus, amigo,” said Gabriel to him, when he had sufficiently recovered from his fear, ‘“‘but the jungles have treated you more badly than most.” The man grinned—apparently. ““Not so badly,” he lisped. ‘‘Look.” - And from his girdle he produced quills. Thick wing quills of the jatiru; a whole bundle of them. And they were all filled with gold sand. ‘“‘And I know where there is more of it,”’ said the man, “a riverbed full. But I need outfit. Provisions, medicines, weap- ons. need for weapons. A machete, long and heavy, and a pistol, the biggest in the land; for they are a terrible people where that gold is.” | Gabriel was ever eager to make a trade; and especially was he eager when he knew that his customer had dire need; for then his price mounted according to the need. So he heaved himself out of his chair and waddled to his storeroom with the smile of benevolence which he always prepared for the charming of his customers when he told them his prices. 7 “First the pistol,” said the man. ‘For that is my greatest need; and you must show me how to use it, for I am unaccus- tomed.” ““Meninho!l”’ muttered Gabriel. ‘“Unac- customed to the use of guns; and are you not afraid to venture back where mis- chances like yours happen?”’ The man thrust his hand beneath his bark shirt to finger an amulet which hung from a cord, and crossed himself and barked what was meant for a laugh. “Tt am nowadays afraid of nothing,” he said with hardness in his voice. ‘Show what you have.” So Gabriel produced a great revolver of Colt and told him: ‘Look! This is a pistol of the finest. It belonged to an Americano who came to live among the Indians and who died; and the pistol came to me then in trade. That Americano could hit with it the head of a lizard at forty paces. Its accuracy is of the best. This is the finest and largest pistol that I have. It is the mate to the one I use; CoMmicbook Particularly is my first immediate © 5}