Adventure Magazine Cover, June 20, 1925 — page 91: what you’re looking at

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

The Teeth of McClure 72 refined, not by long odds. In those days it wasn’t unusual for different villages to de- clare war on one another, have a fight and end up with a cannibal feast. McClure didn’t like that, because during these fights—and when they were drunk with kava—they did a lot of damage to the coker- nut palms and that meant so much less copra. Still, he didn’t like to interfere with them, not knowing what might hap- pen if he did, and I won’t say he wasn’t wise. If they wanted to eat one another, it wasn’t any concern of his, but he cer- tainly did get rattled at the loss of so many good palms. But, as I say, he couldn’t do anything—not then. “And now I’m coming to the strange part of it. McClure had a complete set of false teeth. [ve heard say that he’d picked them up second-hand in San Francisco, but I don’t believe it, myself. But whether he bought them first or second hand, he was mighty proud of those teeth, was McClure. And sometimes, when palavering with the natives, he’d astonish them by clapping his hand to his mouth and taking out his teeth. They couldn’t understand it at all, and at first some of them were a bit fright- tened, never having seen such a thing before. “Well, the fame of those teeth spread and natives even came from other islands, just to see McClure take them out of his head and put them back again. It helped his business quite a lot, for outside natives would come and trade with him just for the sake of seeing him take out his teeth. It never struck McClure at the time that the inhabitants of Atimara had made up their minds that these teeth of his must be a sort of demon or god which could act, so to speak, independent of him. He thought they looked at it as a sort of novel conjuring trick, and him as a mighty clever fellow for being able to do it. “Now it was McClure’s habit to take his teeth out every night before going to bed and put them on the veranda rail to air, as you may say. And it used to puzzle him why, when he went to fetch them in the morning, there should be half a dozen or so empty cokernut bowls lying under the veranda. He couldn’t make it out at all, McClure couldn’t, until one day his atten- tion was attracted by Jake. This Jake was a young goat of that name which had been given him by the skipper of a trading schooner, and McClure had grown most astonishingly fond of it. I don’t think I ever saw another animal with such a baleful and wicked look in its eyes as that goat had. And apart from hating everything and everybody he, this goat, was all horns and appetite. ‘However, there’s no accounting for tastes, and McClure certainly did love this wretched goat, notwithstanding it tried to butt him every time he came within range of its moorings. Now one morning, as I say, when he went out as usual to fetch his teeth and wish the time of day to Jake, McClure noticed something funny about the goat. At first he thought it was ill and wondered if any of the natives, who all hated Jake like the , had been trying to poison him. But the more he looked, the more sure he was it couldn’t be that. And at last he got the right answer. Jake was drunk. Yes, sir, if ever a goat was soused, that goat was Jake. “How did he get drunk? McClure tried to figure it out—and you'll allow it was a pretty tough conundrum—and, while he was doing it, he happened to notice the usual empty cokernut shells lying on the ground below the veranda. Well, he started putting two and two together, did McClure, and presently the answer came to him in a flash. The natives, he reckoned, must be in the habit of coming to the store at night and placing offering of food and Rava—that’s the native tipple, you know— down opposite where the teeth were airing. And Jake, his chain being just long enough to reach the spot, had lapped up the lot, food and kava as well. But to make abso- lutely sure, McClure had the chain short-. ened so that Jake couldn’t reach the spot where the offerings were placed. And the next morning he found them there, little cokernut bowls filled with food and kava. “As for Jake, there wasn’t a madder goat in all the Pacific. I suppose he’d got to hike his little drop of drink, but anyway he tried all he knew to butt McClure and, when he couldn’t do that, he tried to butt the store down. So always, after this, Mc- Clure left him a little bowl of Rava over- night—which shows you what a fool he’d grown to be over that goat. ‘Anyway, that’s how he came to learn what the natives thought of the teeth, but whether they reckoned the teeth them- selves were a spirit, or were just used by a COMIGDIOOKSEEO