Adventure Magazine Cover — page 110: what you’re looking at

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

TOO cast a fearful glance about him lest indeed Gran’ Mobi might have come upon him even then—either in the form of a man who had no face, but only a scarred, puffy and featureless visage that was ever bloody under a wild tangle of snaky hair, or as a woman wound about with hissing serpents, or as a great flaming snake whose forked tongue could lay hold on a man and drag him to destruction. No; one must not think of these things, particularly when one had othef pressing things—like breakfast—to think about. Beo the Indian was hungry; and that crav- ing at least he could satisfy. To this end he picked up a stout club and _ strode swiftly across the little clearing where stood the palmetto camp, to the. near bank of the pirogue ditch. Here he picked his way cautiously into the swamp. This caution he increased as he heard a resounding ‘“‘kata-thunk’” ahead of him. Stooping carefully, he slipped through the rank swamp vegetation and over the sodden ground like a shadow. Carefully he raised his club, and when he brought it swishingly down, he grinned. Reaching down over the grassgrown lip of the ditch-bank, he picked up a huge bullfrog, stunned but still twitch- ing. The frog must have weighed fully a pound, and Beo was still grinning as he tied the stunned animal to his belt and crept farther along the banks of the pirogue ditch into the swamp. Beo the Indian was lucky. Four of the large frogs he killed—a plentiful breakfast ° But © for one who was not overparticular. far better, he had come across two muskrats and a bull mink, caught in some one’s traps. To Beo it mattered little whose traps they were, and before he set about cooking breakfast he skinned the mink and the two muskrats and stretched the pelts inside out on the arched springs of three bent twigs. Then he cut himself another twig, slender and straight, sharpening both ends. On this he spitted the legs of the frogs he had killed and the loins of the two muskrats. The rank flesh of the mink not even Beo the Indian would eat as long as there was other food. Over a tiny Indian fire, which sent scarcely a wisp of smoke into the still, heat-laden swamp air, he broiled his kill and feasted. It was after the meal that he devoted his attention to the three pelts. His prob- Adventure lem was now simple. It was a question of finding a pirogue. Those three pelts would bring him at least six dollars, and six dollars could be translated freely into enough boot- legged brandy to satisfy the craving within him. But the six dollars—and the whisky— could be had only in town, where to be sure money and spirits were plentiful be- cause the bootleggers just then were using fishing-smacks and oyster-schooners to bring Cuban rum and Mexican brandy from the Gulf islands over the passes of the south Louisiana swamps. However, town lay somewhere off to the east, and to reach it Beo the Indian must ‘traverse three miles of pirogue ditch and twelve miles of Bayou Sauvage. Quite literally Beo the Indian winced at the thought of attempting to cover that distance across the swamps afoot. But good fortune had not yet tired of Beo the In- dian, for at this moment there was borne to his ears, across the still swamps, the crashing of undergrowth. : little runabout. The basket con- tained his lunch, a can of fresh shrimp, a tin box of odd hooks and lures, some artificial minnows, a bottle of white pork-rind, and some spools of braided line. His jointed steel casting-rod he stowed in a flap fastened to the inner surface of the runabout door. Then he cranked, jumped in, headed his little hopper joyously toward the Westwego Ferry. Leaving the ferry at the western bank of the Mississippi, he rattled past the grain- elevators and distilleries of Westwego, and then headed out over the open country. It was-early Spring, and dry, but even so the roads were none too good. However, Pierre Laroche, with the prospect of a good day’s fishing ahead, cared little for the jolting he received. Ever westward he sped, through the cypress swamps about Paradis, and across Bayou des Allemands with its hyacinth islands, and finally across the fertile fields that bordered Bayou Lafourche. Here he turned off, on a barely distinguishable prairie-trail. At a clearing he ran his car into conceal- ment, picked up his wicker basket and rod and trudged across the springy mud toward the swamps. The trail lost itself altogether, DOOLK S ©