Adventure, December 3, 1920 — page 78: what you’re looking at

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

68 ’ I did so, and felt the knife come into my “Slip it into your pocket. Oh, don’t worry about me—I’m heeled. I’ve got a sweet little automatic inside my shirt, under my left arm, where they never thought to look. Now let’s get outside and smoke and look innocent.” The guards scowled and lifted their weapons as we stepped out. But we showed them that we only wanted to rest our backs against the wall, and they made no trouble. Squatting and smoking, we talked things over. he had said to the chief. He had ex- er plained that he was not of Peru, but of a great country far to the north, and that he had come across a wide water to reach this place. Then, knowing that the chief felt un- friendly toward him because of the idea that he was a Spaniard, he had tried to help us by saying we were not countrymen of his but men of Brazil, and that we were not even his com- — but that we had met on the river just ore our capture. “You fellows think you’re in my boat,”-he went on, “but I’ve got something to say about who rides with me when I’m heading into the rapids, and don’t you forget it. If I’m due to hit the rocks that’s no reason why you should drown too. Get me?” We made no protest. The thing was done now, and it was useless to wrangle over it. “What were you trampling and spitting on?” T asked. “Spaniards,” he laughed. “I played that card clear across the boards. I told him my country fought the Spaniards twenty years ago and mopped up the earth with them. That’s true, “But I made it stronger by telling him my people still hated all Spaniards, and that when- ever we met one there was a holy riot; that we kicked their pants off and stamped their faces into the mud. That’s not true at all, of course. But it’s up to me to convince him I’m no Spaniard myself, and the best way to put that over is to let him think I hate ’em as much as he does. “T don’t know whether he fell for it or not. But what interests me more is the mystery of little Red-Bird. How the Sam Hill did she ever get here? She’s as white as I am, and if she isn’t American or English by blood I'll eat crow. Yet she speaks only Quichua, ap- parently, and she seems as thoroughly a native as the copper-colored girls. What do you fel- lows make of it?” We made nothing of it, although we argued until women came with food for us. The food was good and there was plenty of it—a big clay t of thick meat stew, broiled fish wrapped in leaves, bananas, and nuts. We ate so FIRST the Tucandeira told us what Adventure : much that we were sluggish afterward, but we were not too sleepy to talk. We asked the American what had been said between the chief = the girl when she looked at us so thought- y. “T didn’t quite get that,” he admitted. ‘‘The old boy seemed to be asking her whether one of us would do, and she didn’t know. We've been roped and dragged here for some pur- pose, but I can’t dope out what it is. There’s Googoo now, .I say, old squirt, come here a minute.”’ The big-eyed Indian, seeing him beckon, came to us. The two talked for some time. Googoo smiled a little, but his answers did not seem to be very satisfactory. After a while a man came out of the chief’s house and called to him, and he went at once to the doorway and disappeared inside. “He says the girl is the Golden One,” the Tucandeira told us. “She came to the chief years ago when she was very small. The chief was then a young man and had just become chief through the death of his father. It was the time when turtles lay their eggs, and all this tribe had gone to a big sandy praia, on a river west of here, to get these eggs. “The chief went away alone to bathe, and while he was doing this a great turtle covered with gold arose in the water before him with the Golden One sitting in its back. It came straight to him, and the little girl jumped off and up into the chief’s arms. Then the golden turtle sank and was not seen again. So the chief brought the Golden One home with him, and she has grown up as his daughter and bosses everybody, including the chief himself. “That’s Googoo’s yarn. Of course that golden turtle stuff is all bunk invented by the chief, but Googoo believes it, and no doubt everybody else does. But I think the rest of it is partly true—the chief found the little girl at that time and place, and she sure does seem to be the big noise around here. And she is to decide what happens to us. “‘Googoo sidestepped when I tried to pump. him on that point. All he would do was to grin and say that what is to be will be. Here he comes again.” Googoo approached and spoke. The Tuc- andeira rose. “Come on, you chaps. We’re invited to at- tend another powwow.” =f WE WALKED inio the house of the mys chief, finding him sitting in a hammock, oe The Golden One was beside him, gazing steadily at us and unsmiling. When we stood in a row before him the chief spoke to me. I showed him I did not understand. Then he addressed Pedro, with the same result. He sat then for a moment watching Senhor Locke. The American turned to us. COPMICLOOKS (C@)