Adventure Magazine Cover, December 18, 1919 — page 95: what you’re looking at

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

The Seven Cities of Cibola and your>name will live in story—so! Gently into the water now, good horse!” She moved along the high bank above him, while the stallion at the full length of the rope moved gingerly among the stones beneath her, delicately nuzzling pool after pool, always moving up- stream as horses do, till he was immedi- ately below her. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw her guard standing within arm’s-reach on the very edge of the bank where it was five feet high, leaning on his bow. Bending as if to tie her shoe, she handed the man the end of the rope. In- stinctively he took it, as people will take anything that is handed them, and in that moment, rising to her full height, Mercedes threw her whole weight upon him. With a startled shout, he shot over the edge of the steep bank and fell upon his face among the boulders of the creek bed, every vestige of breath knocked out of him, sick and bruised with the heavy fall. Before the shout had died away, Mer- cedes, gathering up the slack of the rope, ran to the edge of the bank above the startled horse, slipped into the saddle that for four days now had never been displaced, pulled up his head and raced him up the rocky stream-bed at a break- neck gallop. ° Around the point of rocks they went and then up and out of the arroyo, head- ing for the low hills to the north. In _and out through the brush crashed the startled horse, heading always north- ward to top the ridge, while behind them shrill yells and shouts told Mercedes that the camp of her enemies was thoroughly alarmed. VI PEED was now her main dependence. She knew that she must circle that camp and head south again, but she did not know that once she had circled the camp she could trust the red stallion to take her wunerringly into the Spanish lines. If she had known that she would have been spared much. The instinct of one pursued is to run always at full speed; the fact that the pursuer is but human and can not pursue 6 SI at top speed is lost sight of. By conse- quence, the girl, urging her too willing mount with heel and rein, fled for hour after hour at top speed across mesas that spread out like sheeted silver in the misty moonlight, up and down arroyos, now scrambling down some _ declivity that would have been impossible by day, scratching hands and face in the thorny mesquite, again clambering wildly up some steep slope slippery with falling ~ shale. ~ It had been almost dark when she got away. In an hour night had fallen, and she plunged on through the blackness. -Occasionally she drew down to a walk to breathe her horse and to listen to the voices of the night. Coyotes, wailing like lost souls in the distance, a weird, eerie yelping that heard from the safety point of Spanish walls had meant no more than the yelping of dogs, took en imagin- ary dangers when heard among these cold northern mountains. Once a coughing rumble sounded near her. She did not know it for what it was, a bear disturbed in his search for roots, but she fled on instinct. Later, toward daylight, as the great circle of the moon swung clear of the ruck of clouds that filled a notch in the eastern mountains, she saw a wonderful sight, for there against the silver disk as hard as iron in outline she saw a great moun- tain lion, one foot on a deer that it had killed, its tail moving slowly frem side to side as it eyed the frightened intruder on its mountain lair. ‘Mercedes flogged the tired horse into a trot—it could do no more—and turned into the first arroyo that she came to. By now she had lost all sense ef direc- tion. plainsman, set down in a new ceuntry, to find his way unerringly. She did not even know the general trend of the mountain ranges that hemmed her in. All that she knew was that her ewn land lay, or had lain when she started, some- where off to the south, behind her, but now she had turned so ‘often and fled so rapidly that she had lost even the vague sense of direction that she had had when she started. When the sun came up it seemed to the startled girl to be rising in the west. When a person finds that he is lest, he Gomichboo It is no easy task for the trained. Si = aa