Adventure Magazine Cover, December 18, 1919 — page 69: what you’re looking at

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

/ The Shehu Wants an Armorer his burnoose now fluttering in rag strips, he at last topped the plateau. Already his scoffers were there to mock his labors from their comfortable saddles. They had bared their faces, for the harmattan had died down with the declining sun and the need to filter their breathing was re- moved. They opened black, cavernous mouths showing gleaming white teeth and then burst forth intorock-roaring hilarity. Tearing his sweat-soaked turban from his matted head and casting it away, the smith teetered ahead like an automaton whose clock-work was running down. His legs pulled after him as if they lifted the whole world; his sandals cloyed the earth ; the calves of his legs knotted pain- fully ; his muscles seemed to have no re- silience; from thighs to knees, flesh and sinew were stiff as boards. The mount obscured the position of the sun which his fearful imagination placed on the rim of the world. He tried to hurry—to get out of the shadow, but when he had done that, he was sorry, for he got the full glare of the sun. In his morning’s calculation he had aimed to have the sun-glare at his back on the last lap, but the swerve after the mirage and the bluff had confused his direction. The sun rolled low in the horizon, its slanting rays poured full into his tor- tured, burning eyeballs as he panted up a shght incline toward the ant-hill. In his distress it seemed a steep mountainside. He looked directly into the monstrous, swollen red disk of the sun, molten in the saffron fires of its play of colors on sus- pended dust clouds. His eyes seemed to tunnel into an inferno. He swayed drunkenly toward the ant- hill etched against the fires, toward the quiet figure of the troubadour, seated as he had been in the morning which now seemed a hundred years ago. It was Issou, his friend, companion of the trails and hardships—ah, yes, but the com- — panion who had beguiled him, tricked, cheated, trapped him. He could not un- derstand that. He had trusted in Issou. He was hurt inside—hurt in his heart somehow, someway, he didn’t just know. He was now so beset with physical pain, tiredness and the struggle that he could not think. The inferno beyond seemed to confuse him. He struggled on. — Now there were but two hundred yards between him and the goal. Likewise there were but a few inches between the rim of the world and the lower edge of the sun. Then, too, between him and the hill was a gash ‘of yellow clay—a rain gulley. He could'not see very well be- cause of the weird images, the bright colors and grotesques of the retina— colors and grotesques that swam into his brain. He stumbled, caught himself, dragged on. Out of the air fell the stac- cato of hoof-beats and the guttural- throated proverb. “Kabu datsia, kargum bago”—The day being finished, there is no medicine. They filled ‘his nightmare world with thunderous ‘laughter. He hadn’t the energy to curse. The color grotesques filled his brain bwilderingly. It was a nightmare—the mounted tormentors hell- shapes, ‘Frankenstein monsters. Night- mare paralysis held his legs ; they refused to obey his will; only by prodigious effort could he budge them a few inches; the ant-hill was there, so near, but heart and blood and will and muscle could not bring him to it. He stood on the brink of the rain gul- ley. The Kanuri guffawed. “Ho, ho! Our shehw will have a strong armorer.” His heart went dead within him. It was not a wide gulley, it had seemed nothing when he noted it in his morn- ing’s buoyancy, but now it was as un- achievable to his dead legs as the Grand Cafion of Colorado. He stared stupidly down at it, down fifty feet of crumbly clay; then he lifted his eyes to the sun, to the half-sun sit- ting on the rim of the world. He swayed there, a pathetic picture of utter helpless- ness, while the Kanuri rode round and round in cantering circles, taking the gulley in easy, teasing leaps, riding tail to tail, their flapping burnooses fanning his hot face, their black faces taunting. “O Strong White Man Learned in the Magic of Metals, why do you wait? Look! The sun goes. Why do you wait? is thine.” He felt’ their burnooses in his face. UDDENLY a desperate, half-crazed hope came to him. He flung both hands to a flying stirrup. His arms GEomichbooks 2 But a little way and the domain — (E@)