Adventure Magazine, December 10, 1924 — page 136: what you’re looking at

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

114 and you may believe me, who know, that it will kill a man very completely at forty paces. It will cost you two quills of gold.” “Good,” said the man. ‘That pistol is worth anything at all to me. Show me now how to use it.”’ So Gabriel waddled back to his chair, for standing was a pain to him, and ex- plained the loading and the care of the weapon; and he told the man: “Look now! This is my advice. Since you have no practise with the pistol, the way to shoot straightest is to rest it, so, over the crook of your left arm to steady it. And when you shoot at a man, shoot not at his head, which is small; but at his stomach, which is large. He will surely die just the same, though it will take longer and hurt more, much more. But that—ho-ho—that is his misfortune.” See) AND he showed him, further, how he should score a cross in the | nose of the bullet, which was a talisman of luck and would also cause the ball to break apart in the wound and. do deadly damage. And he told him, too, how he should press slowly upon the trigger and not jerk it in firing the shot. All the use of a pistol he taught him; and he loaded it up and gave it to him, saying: “That pistol, my friend, is cheap for only two quills of gold.” The man looked at the weapon. “This pistol is well worth two quills of gold to me” he said. And he stood there in the veranda in front of Gabriel and rested the barrel on the crook of his left arm and pointed it at Gabriel’s great naked stomach and pressed slowly upon the trigger. Gabriel’s great body squeezed back in the chair as if struck with a great weight. His eyes opened in wide surprize, and, “Como?” he muttered thickly. “Como? How—how?” which ended with a groan as of a bull at the thrust of the matador, and his body slid down further in the chair. But the eyes remained open and full of wonder and the fear of death. I leaped to seize the madman. But he pointed the pistol at me. And, as I stood back, the full madness came upon him. He tore the amulet from his breast, a grue- some thing, like a dried mushroom threaded upon a thong, and thrust it in Gabriel’s face. “Look at it!” he grated hoarsely at him, Adventure for his voice could:not shout. : “Look at it and remember! The other one is eaten away with the rest of my face; but this dried one they wouldn’t eat. Can you see still, Zambo? Look! Look at the thong! Your own thong—with the ear of Joselito threaded upon it! Can you remember yet? You said it would take long to die. Look at me and remember.” “Deus da Gragal’’ I cried. dead one!” He looked at me and grinned recogni- tion, and turned then again to his leaping and thrusting of that horrible dried ear in Gabriel’s face. “He knows me,” he hissed. ‘“Theophilo knows. Look at my face, Zambo, and know me too. Not the smallpox, Zambo; not the rotting sickness. Ants! Formigas do forno, the fire-oven ants of an inch long! “They followed me, those fiends of the Chima jungle. Though I lay in the slimy creeks with the caimans, they smelt out my trail. In an ant tree I took refuge! In many ant trees! Madre mia, what a forest of ant trees is in that jungle! “Look at my face, Zambo, and judge what I have suffered. What the ants left, the blood poisoning completed. To die of a wound in the stomach is no suffering at all. And you will surely die, as you promised, even though it takes longer and hurtsmore. But that—ho-ho—that is four misfortune. | = “Many more things I have to tell you, Gabriel, who will soon be an angel of the devil. But your people press round. I must chase them off. Wait for me, my angel. Do not die yet. Swiftly will I chase them and tell you then all the things that are in my soul.” It was time and high time for him to turn in his own defense; for the men of the sitio crowded the space in front of the veranda, waiting only the necessary man of initiative to lead them on to a rush. Joselito reached under the stricken man’s thigh and took the other pistol that the peo- ple knew so well. Standing then with both of them in his hands, the pair of deadly things which had been ‘his father’s, he stepped to the front of the veranda and croaked his defiance at the crowd. And as the pistols pointed, the men whom they singled out melted away. In an incredibly short space of time I could see canoes being launched by ones and “Tt is. the Comicbool< A) CO 5}