Adventure Magazine Cover — page 128: what you’re looking at

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

- than anything else. so that you might come the sooner and sprinkle a little holy water therein ere we brought to it my poor father’s coffin.”’ The priest shook his shovel-hatted head. “Ah, my poor little one, I fear it is all one vast plot! If this yellow merchant has gold, it is because the Colorados have brought. their spoils to him. ‘His shop is more a bodegén, a tippling-house, He keeps aguardiente, anisette, mescal, tequila, pulque, all manner of fiery liquors, some of which he brews him- self and all of which he stores in the back of his shop. “The frightful Colorados always halt there to drink and to blaspheme and to talk blusteringly. But they never confiscate the liquor nor touch a beam of the den, a hair of his black:head. And that is not of a piece with their usual wantonness. It is more than strange; it is marvelous. Myself, I think this Japanese is some sort of agent or fence of the Colorados.” 5 THEY had reached the iron-barred gate ee, of the casa which was rattling, to hollow The priest looked down the dimness gusts. of the portal. On the stone flagging bits of dry rot were performing rotary spirals in the swirling wind. But-there was no one lurking — within to overhear what he was about to say. “Mariquita,’’ he said, ‘‘on the raid before this last tragic one, the Colorados brought with them an army trunk, one of the new sort, no bigger than a good-sized portmanteau, flat and oblong. It was slung on panniers to a sumpter- horse and when, to bring it into the shop of the Japanese, they removed that chest, it seemed very heavy for all its smallness, requiring four men to carry it, one beneath each corner. I was watching their every move through a crack in the door of my vestry and they must have spied me; for that was the time, child, that they burned my house and my church. “As soon as they shook the dust of the village from their heels, I climbed the hills to inform your father, the brave Don Jorge; and it was because of his suspicious occurrence that he came down, alone and single-handed, into Guadalupe. “He went into the cantina to interview this Japanese and determine what was in the trunk, why it should be brought there, what connection this yellow man must surely have with the frightful Colorados. “The Japanese proved very urbane and gracious, inviting your father to drink with him, showing him all through the place. Politely but firmly, however, he denied ever having seen or heard of the army chest. It was some wild hallucination of the women, he said. “Your father was persistent, having faith in the source of his information, and the Japanese echoes, in the occasional vehement. Cae ee ge gs some time. Meanwhile the ee man nk word somehow to these Colorados. on a sudden, that the wolves skulked into the town and shot and hanged your father like a poor sheep. “But. why!” the girl cried out, her mind a débacle, rended with conflicting thoughts, puke He must have sent word, because it was then, and all with one more violently clamorous than al! hee d e rest. “Why did sou not cut down my father after the Colorados left? Oh, Padre Pio, why did you not do that and save my poor father and me from all the machinations of this — Dicenta!” a 2a There was pained and stunned astonishment 2 in the lean somber face of the priest. Then quickly his long bluish jaw clickéd shut and protruding. to him every false word of Dicenta, he saw through it all. His eyes became pools os pellucid calm light. “Child,” he said, ‘“‘you know your Father | Pio speaks truth And I say it was I who did © cut down you good father; yes, Padre Pio — alone, within a half-hour of the departure ofa these fiendish Colorados. No one would aid a Clearly as if she had oes a me; the women were too fear-filled; and it hurts — a | me now to think that when your poor father slipped from these feeble hands and thudded to the ground, it may have hastened his death.” She was swiftly contrite. “Ah, forgive me, Father! I might have known. But I am all so harassed by lies and deceits, my thoughts are a mad whirl. I only feel, Padre, that instead of harming my poor father in the fall, it was your courageous act that gave him the lease to live till my coming.” The calm pools of the priest’s eyes fluttered — with the emotion of his thanks. ‘Then up into the hills I went,” he continued, “to rouse the ancianos who, with all the tenaci-_ ousness of us old ones.for the little things we have won in this world, still clung on to their farms. living-rooms of this Japanese as they were the best quarters in town, miraculously untouched by the pillaging and burning endured by us suffering Christians. “When I returned with five of the old men, I heard to my astonishment that Serafin Dicenta in Carranzista uniform had unexpectedly put in an’appearance. When I would have gone into the sick room, the Japanese stopped me, — blandly telling me Dicenta was in there.” “And Dicenta told me he himself had cut down my father! Oh, mi pobre padre: he must have told you the same smooth lies as you lay too weak to move! Lies, all all lies! Oh, the vile sneaking /agarto, the skulking rat.” “Hush, my little one,” the priest quieted her. “Remember only that he who digs a pit for his brother will himself fall into it. It was Dicenta’s I had left your dying father in the. COMICLOOKS