Adventure Magazine Cover — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

figures of mice. ay 102 Late in the afternoon they trarrped away across ,the desolate, cactus-covered sand dunes. By signals we learned that the ship was the Taisaz Maru and. that the yellow people were to become cooks and camp-followers of Villa. Jim and I dis- believed this, and our alarm increased when later in the evening we found that the Morleys had de- serted us. Through the gathering dusk we saw them boarding the Tazsaz. We burst open the treasure chest; the gold was still there. A thick fog arose, drifting around us like a gray, impalpable wall. We weighed anchor and tried to escape. Useless. Our propellers had be- come entangled in the thick, lush seaweed of those Southern waters. A moment later we were boarded by the Jap crew, whose naked yellow bodies had been greased with oil, At the first attack Jim fell wounded. Again and again I emptied my revolver into that writhing mass. The struggle was too unequal. Our crew were beaten and I, with a knife-hash in my leg, was forced back against the rail. It gave under my weight and I found myself swimming desperately toward shore, through shark-infested waters. Once on land I made haste to put a safe distance between _ the treacherous Morleys and myself. Suddenly from out of the darkness I heard a strange cry— _ “Gov’ment agent.” An instant later a Japanese, one of the advance guard, hurled himself at me. As I crouched low he catapulted over me. Flinging myself on his back, I beat his face into the stony ground until he lay motionless. Again I fled and again I heard that weird cry. A figure arose by my side. It was the Mouse-Man himself. He offered me no violence but in broken English tried to persuade me to return to the ship. CHAPTER XIX THE WOMAN SCORNED HE recollection of the swift events which followed is rather jumbled in my mind. On the back of Mariquita’s passion-accentuated words came such a whirl of agitation and action that I should experience no little difficulty in attempting to relate its exact sequence. -There was a vibrant shouting from the priest beside me, an eery keening from the women listening in the dark huts, a scurrying hither and yon of terra-cotta-hued Indians, a long roll of the drums and a blood-tingling fanfare from the buglers stationed below at the foot of the adobe stairs. A war-party was being formed, I gathered, to attack the intrenching Japanese and their white allies. Probably it is all so strenuous and mixed in my memory because the while I was in a great pother over the abrupt change in the girl, her obvious disdain of me for some unworthiness she must have detected in my character. I felt it came of that hypothetical return of the Mexi- can lieutenant, Dicenta, which she no doubt Adventure I protested that I was not an agent of any govern- = ment and meant his people no harm. As I talked an odd thing happened. Believe me or not as you will; one of the mice embroidered on his robe moved! It crawled slowly up his sleeve and disappeared. As I stared he said again— ‘You must return to your ship, please.’ As we walked forward, the Japanese, whom I had knocked senseless, hurried up to us, his fore- head still bloody. i bg el 4 el Quickly in his own tongue he whispered to the _ Mouse-Man. I was able to understand only that he was telling of the raid on our ship. Much dis- turbed, the priest hurried toward the shore, leaving me with the man I had recently struck down. We marched on through the night. A knife held at my back warned me that escape was futile. Suddenly we heard a sound froma near-by thicket and I thought I saw.a moving figure. Without a word my captor dashed forward and disappeared * in the shade. A moment later I heard a cry, pierc- ing and terrible. Running toward it in a panic, I stumbled over the Japanese, sprawled out dead, with an Indian knife in his breast. A moment later a crushing blow descended on my head. When I recovered consciousness I found myself in an Indian -— camp, among the followers of Mariquita. She her- © self bound up my wounds and assured me that I had no cause for fear. The Indians desired only to know the meaning of the sign of the mouse, which they had worshiped from prehistoric times, and to hear whether the Japanese meant them harm. _ As we talked I felt my suspicions of the beautiful girl slipping away, and could not believe the evil I had heard of her. My distress was great therefore when later she rushed in with flaming eyes, and in a passion-choked voice cried that I had betrayed them to the Japanese, who were marching toward their village under the leadership of Morley, who, she insisted, was no other than Serafin Dicenta! judged I had known all the time and purposely concealed. I was almost morally certain she had made a sad mistake and from the courier’s feverish description had pictured the chubby-faced, chunky traitor Kit Morley as none other than the blond, dapper and beardless teniente, Sera-~ fin Dicenta. The appearance of the other woman with the supposed Dicenta had placed Mariquita in the toils of the primal triangle. She was not aware that. beyond a shadow’s doubt the other woman was Morley’s wife. She was the woman cast aside, relegated and scorned. That had in- flamed her quick Latin temperament with con- suming jealousy and violent hatred, fused. her with passion, fiery, feline and ferocious. I saw her now, without wasting another with- ering glance upon me, swing the Sable Star sharply about and go galloping up the cow-path toward the chasmy break in the cliffs, the spank of the stallion’s hoofs rataplaning through the cafion like musketry fire, her cloud of storm-. black hair tossing behind her as if she were some fleet dark nymph on an urgent errand of Diana. The zebra-striped priest beside me, his snaky COmicloookKs com