Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 17, 1924 — page 49: what you’re looking at

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

THE SENTIMENTAL BLOKE, Jet you go, you may remember things about the place which must be forgotten. You can go to your hut now, if you wish, Red Head. And if you want to go into the hills at any time, you are free to do so if four watriors go with you. But if you try to go alone, thinking to escape from this place, you will die. My warriors will see to that!” ‘What is your name?” Hardwick asked. ‘“My people call me Inkoosikaas, Jim Hardwick. I am their queen. But you shall call me Katje.”’ Then the pose of authority left her and, jumping excitedly to her feet, she danced toward Hardwick, her eyes sparkling mis- chievously. “ Come along, big man,” she cried. “ We go a hunting.” She caught him by the hand and dragged him—a not unwilling prisoner—from the room. “ Gor blimme!” Ginger Dick muttered as he followed slowly after them. “ Ain’t she the hellion?”’ VII. Tuat first hunt was one of many, and for Hardwick the days passed rapidly, because happily. The girl was an enigma, the solution of which constantly eluded him. He knew about her just as much as she wanted him to know—and that was very little—and all his clever questioning of herself, and of such natives he found in the hills who could speak English, ‘brought him no further in- formation. Her age—he sometimes thought she must be in her early teens, at other times he thought she must be at least twenty-five—was elusive, as elusive as her true self. He could not determine whether she was a queen of a savage race playing the part of a young girl, or a white girl playing the part of a savage queen. In both réles she was equally convincing. True it was, however, that the natives of the kraal and of other kraals located in the group of hills, worshiped her and were ready to obey her slightest behest. And he had continual evidence of her foresight. Although apparently allowed to wander about unmolested, unattended, there were certain trails he and Ginger Dick 199 could not take—finding the way barred by armed warriors—there were certain things they could not do. Neither were their re- volvers returned to them, although on such occasions as Hardwick accompanied the girl on a hunting trip he was given a well balanced gun and cartridges. But the gun and such cartridges remaining unfired were taken from him as soon as the hunt was over and the homeward journey began. So it was that two weeks elapsed and the two men were as ignorant of their whereabouts in relation to the diamond town, as on the first day of their arrival. And Hardwick was quite content. Every morning the girl held court in the big room of her house and passed judg- ment on such complaints as ‘were brought before her. It pleased her to have Hard- wick sit beside her at these hearings and, as she swiftly translated the salient points of each case, he marveled at her shrewd insight of the black man’s psychology and the fearless wisdom of the sentences she At such times she was truly regal and seemed very aloof, very unapproachable— so that Hardwick forgot the incongruity of her attire, or wondered that she should al- ways be dressed in the same tattered gar- ments, But as soon as the court session was over her attitude immediately changed, and she became a happy, trouble free, pleasure seek- ing girl; a creature of bubbling buoyant spirits; a sprite of the chase who leaped up the steep kopjes, seemingly tireless, barefooted as she was; venturing along nar- row ledges which offered scanty foothold” even for the klipspringer, the tiny buck of the hills. Hardwick was a good shot—but she ex- celled him. And always, after sundown, she vanished ‘inside her house and they saw nothing more of her until the following morning; and with her went Hardwick’s happiness, though he dared not seek too closely the reason why this should be so. : ‘““She’s a vampire, cully,” Ginger Dick protested. He laughed at Hardwick’s rather embar- CORMGCDOOKS “She’s got yer hin ’er net, she ‘’as. You bloomin’ fool!” (C@