Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 179: what you’re looking at

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

Ethics as well as the clothes he wore that Mexico City night, but he was as erect and youth- ful in step as ever. To my astonishment, he stared at me as if I were a ghost. “Vou!” he exclaimed. “Why not?” I smiled. pass,’ you know.” It was odd how my presence seemed to startle him. “Why not?” “Tlere?’”:: ‘¢ Ships that “‘That is so,” he said. We shook hands. “By and by we must talk,” he went on. “There is no Don Porfirio now to send for meée—poor man.” He hurried in to secure a room; there weren’t many, and competition was keen. After supper we sat by his window and smoked. It was our first moment alone. From outside came the murmur of voices, all discussing the day’s crop of invasion rumors and alarms. A detail of cavalrymen, fagged and dirty, had just ridden in, and was sur- rounded by curious townsfolk. I told him briefly my business in the coun- try. There was a pause when I had finished. Then: “T have come down to join the hunt,” he said rather queerly. “I was in Santone. I seek excitement. Today I have a com- mission to repel invaders.. Tomorrow I go out—to hunt.” There was silence for a moment. “To hunt,” he repeated. “T had an impression you were connected with one of the juntas,” I said. “Tom Birch—you remember meeting him last Spring—told me so.” ' “Ves,” he said. “Yes. I have been. I am.” Another pause. “There is much in- formation to be gained thus that is not gath- ered in other ways; and a fair living; and chances for excitement; and opportunities for——” His voice trailed off. “Well,” he said presently, “somehow I feel like talking tonight. You recall Ed Moore?” Quietly he pronounced the name, but harshly. I nodded. “He was a hound,” said Fritz musingly. “You remember I went to Buenos Aires?” I nodded again. “He had gone,” he went on. ‘‘He—he didn’t marry her. She—what could a girl do when she had been left like that? Ex- cept what she did. Then, after awhile, she 177 died. I was there.” “Ves,” I said. “So I went on about my business,” he continued, almost:as if he were telling the story of some one else. “It was a long time ago. Eighteen years next month since Ban- nerman held up the Wanderer before she had even lifted to rough water. We are getting a bit middle-aged, Holden. “I went on about my business,” sumed. ‘‘My business is adventure. It always has been. It always will be, I sup- pose. I really don’t know any other busi- ness. Sometimes I make money and some- times I lose money, but I am not a business man. I have to have excitement. My an- cestors all——”’ He trailed off again into silence. minutes later he continued: Some “AWAY back, before you and I ever met, more than twenty years ago, I saved Ed Moore’s life. It was in Caracas. They had him a prisoner, and would have stood him up to the wall the he re-_ next morning. I led a party; it was a bit desperate. We got him. “T have the scar on my ribs now of the knife I got in that fight. I came near dying. But I saved his life. After that the life be- longed to me, didn’t it? That used to be the idea, anyway. It wasadebt. I had amoral right to collect it.” He relighted his pipe and smoked slowly for some time. “You would think I ought to kill Moore, wouldn’t you? SodidI. But I would not murder. Queer how a man can kill people in the course of his day’s work and not make up his mind to do it in cold blood. “There was that crooked faro-dealer at Tonopah. You saw that. He had a thou- sand dollars of my money. I couldn’t get it back. They ran me out of town. I hated him for a thief. But I couldn’t kill him for that, tho’ it would have been easy enough. “And it wasn’t that I was afraid. I am never afraid. Consequences—that is, legal consequences—don’t count with me. Per- haps I am afraid that dead men would ' haunt me if I murdered them. I don’t know. However—— “He was in Cuba during the Spanish- American war, spying for the Dons. If I had met him in the field it would have been all right to kill him. I was with Gomez. “Then he fought with his own people in Gomichbooks (9) (E(8) ed oe 1a pe Sk a ify py ny $85 ey Bs