Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 3 — page 193: what you’re looking at

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

n LAND OF THE SHADOW PEOPLE. unas require little more than the transfer of a maid.from her parents’ malocca to that of her swain to establish a marriage, poor Jim found himself hard put to it to remain a bachelor. calls on every possible pretext, fairly haunting the neighborhood of his domicile and several times showed an inclination to share it with him after “curfew” which required the most tactful kind of hinting to _ discourage. Tomas found all this amusing enough, if Jim did not. The big Aymara, squatting on the malocca floor and pulling solemnly at his long pigtail, ofttimes would wink slyly as he translated Lanao’s fervid protes- tations, which were not without their poet- ry, witness a sample: “Tell my white lord that Lanao loves him as the flame-vine loves the sapucaya tree (only think of it sezor—sometimes the vine strangles the tree); that his face is bright, to Lanao as is the sun’s to the weeping forest when he shines forth again ‘after the great rains.” . But Tomas when he did his winking was mighty careful to see that Lanao’s great black eyes were fixed upon her sun-god’s face. He had a well-founded suspicion that the girl, had she comprehended his pleasantries, would have slit his throat with as little compunction as she would have peeled a plantain, even though it had cost her.the services of such an able in- terpreter. Jim’s continence was incomprehensible to Tomas, who made it no secret that he would have been glad to have the white ‘man’s chances. In fact, Tomas -looked upon Jim’s continued refusal to accept the offered charms as a danger, seeing that both their lives might well be forfeit to it. So, with no small stake in the game, he ventured to advise, even to urge. “* The girl is comely, senor, and, Madre de Dios! she is more than willing. Why not take her? It will make matters easier all around. So long as you remain unwed, just so long will this accursed curaca sus- pect that we mean to give him the slip. “What matter about the girl, senor? She is only a Chuncho. Carramba! my- self, I would wed with a dozen such, and a Digitized by Google : For Lanao paid him. 475 gladly, and yet leave them all without a thought when the good time should come. Take her, sefior. Let me tell lier to fetch her beads and mats, and have done with all this talking of rains and suns and flame- vines. ”? But Arnold’s code forbade that he trifle with the affections of even a Chuncho maid. No matter where it was performed, or how unorthodox, a marriage was to him a till-death-do-us-part affair. Besides, there was Nee-Nah. The influ- ence of that beautiful anomally was too fresh and pure in his heart to allow him to enter into a ason with Lanao, even had he been less scrupulous than he was. “It’s no use, Tomas, old hombre,” he said. ‘ Can’t do it. for good and all; and that doesn’t appeal to either of us. But if you can persuade the lady to take a tender interest in your per- son, and leave me in peace, I'll buy you the best rifle outfit in Huarez, if ever we make the old burg again.” -Where was Nee-Nah? Gone on to her hidden city of marvels, Jim supposed, in company with the men who, well as he had known them, always seemed more a part of a weird dream than of reality. Could Zalmon have been right about Jones? If so, where was he? What had been the fate of Katherine and the Mar- tian and little Don Castor Oil? "What was his (Jim’s) future to be, should he by chance escape from his present predica- ment? There could be only one answer to that question: he would take up the search for the lost Paititi, and would find it and its priestess, or he would grow old and die in the searching. Ah, if he had not lost Nee-Nah! Just a few more weeks, per- haps days, and he was sure that she would have turned to him. | So his vagrant thoughts were straying— he was sitting one moonlight night in the If I do, here we stay doorway of his malocca—when Nee-Nah came to him. Two hours before, the life of the village had murmured into silence. Vacant-eyed, Jim was gazing over the big, circular patch of sanded ground which lay between the maloccas and the gate, and which served QO SS CO INGVe