Adventure Magazine Cover — page 121: what you’re looking at

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

pan Toyama old faithful nurse to death with long, heavy, thorny stems of cactus. Mariquita shuddered and froze white. “Oh, mi pobre mamacital”’ she gasped in dry voice. ‘Oh, poor Tia Chonita, the good little mother of me!’ Her father had sworn, a strange rare e thing for the Ashy One to do. “Your pardon, Xina, mi carina, but it is all so abominable, so detestably vile!”’ He thought it the atrocious work of that son of misfortune, that renegade Serafin Dicenta, who had been among the first to bolt the Aa- cienda and who was leading, now that Orozco was beaten and his Colorados dispersed, a marauding band of these guerrillas with the red hearts on their blue jackets. If the AShy One could only drive his cattle and sheep across the plateau of Chihuahua and down the sandy plain to the Rio Grande and the safety of the American border, El Cenizo would quit Mexico himself and the Hacienda del Cazadero forever. Mariquita burst out weeping. The shock of the cruel death that had befallen her old nurse was finding outlet in tears. But her father, man-like, misjudged the cause of her grief. He laughed shakily a bit, with an unrestrainable undernote of bitterness. But never fear, he assured her, there was small chance of him undertaking the fleeing project. Chihuahua was a very nest of brig- ands, overrun by a‘scourge of fiendish Colora- dos and barbarous Villistas, and he could never hope with all his herds, to win through. Mariquita’s continued and disconsolate weep- ing shook the man of iron more than the girl could have understood. He saw then, not so much what he himself had been contemplating relinquishing, but all he was losing for Xina, the soul of his life. Her patrimony, given into his trust by old Wenceslas Jirasek, was about to be thrown to the four, nay, forty winds of revolu- tion. It must not be! He would yet cling on for the sake of his poor little one, and manage thankfully enougb with bread and butter until the good Dios sent the jam. He did not object so strenuously as hitherto when, in tan knee-boots, military cord breeches and bolero jacket of deerskin, with a belt about her waist bristling with cartridges and weighed down by two Colts, Mariquita came to him and proposed returning to the Colegio of Zacatecas. Goodness knows, he admitted, it was hard on the brave little mia, alone in the gray stone house while he went out to beat off, with few and fewer followers, the sporadic attacks of that retero, Serafin Dicenta, Perhaps it wou!d be safer for her in the cole- gio, after all, than here in the mountain fastness where he was ever the objective of an heredi- tary hate. And in the colegio, too, her mind would be occupied with studies. Should he be II! killed in the meantime, she would yet remain, a Jirasek and an Arillaga, to escape alive out of the holocaust. This was perhaps the outcropping of the slag © in the cold austere mah of iron. He was weak- ening under the constant buffeting from every hand and from behind. There was ever a dull beaten look in his tawny eyes nowadays, — but still was he contained and markedly — im. Ere he left her in the reception room of the colegio, he gave her certain instructions. She was to assume the riding-habit she then wore and afiect as much masculinity as possible, should he have to send for her or should any- thing befall the colegio in his absence. This hombre, Zapata, was riding the roads close about and he was_filled with fear for his little ~ one. Also, there was little use depending any more upon the railroad which was seesawing continu- ally from the hands of constitutionalists to the hands of revolutionists and was forever being torn up by the ousted parties. He made ar- rangements, therefore, in the carefully concealed corral of the college, ‘for the stabling of Mari- quita’s horse, which was to be well fed but never brushed during its stay, lest some glimp- sing soldado be tempted to covet and confiscate. He had one more injunction. Should Mari- quita receive at any time three pebbles wrapped in a bandanna kerchief, she would know that he wanted her, dearly needed her, and she should ‘ride to him as fleetly as her horse could teva: CHAPTER XXII THE MESSENGER "TBE country of tragic shadow faded away; once more the glare of sand and sage was blinding my eyes; and I saw the cause of the in- terruption to the girl’s story, the balbriggan- striped priest Metztli riding toward us, his heavy fetlocked bay churning up the sand into small following balls of dust, his mud curls sweeping behind like stiffened snakes. “La Caballera del Sol,’ he called question- ingly, as he came up, “is this hombre to be sent back? Or do you agree with me that he speaks truth, that he is a friend of the Guiacuras and as such and because of his own private grudge should be allowed to accompany us?” The elusive olive tinge of the girl’s cheeks deepened into pink flame. She remembered her harsh suspicions of me and instantly, in un- expected and decisive answer, snapped open the flap of the holster on her left hip and drew forth and handed me the Colt. “Behold, Metztli, O Reflector of the Sun,” she replied. “I trust the caballerete now im- plicitly. He is all I believe that he told you.” She glanced at me with shy eyes from under S CORMICLOO (C@