Adventure Magazine Cover — page 36: what you’re looking at

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

30 ~ Scrambling back to the fire, we snatched blazing sticks and ran to our canoes. Up and down the stream we ranged until our lights went out. We saw nothing but black water, heard nothing but the little wash of ripples along the bank. The pazé of Andirah was gone as if swallowed by some water- monster. “T am afraid the fool has drowned,” Pedro grumbled. ‘‘Not that I care what became of him, but now we can not make him talk.” ‘We could not make him talk anything but lies while we had him,’ I replied. “So we have lost nothing.” But I was down-hearted because that In- dian had escaped from us before we could scare him into telling what he knew, as well as angry with myself for letting him get away. We knew no more than when we had taken him from his hut—except that we now were certain he was a stubborn liar. Yet, as I thought of this, I realized that even that small knowledge was a gain; realized too that he must have some powerful reason for lying so doggedly when he believed we were about to torture him. And, thinking further, I felt that his reason must be this— his fear of the consequences of falsehood was less than his fear of what we might do to him if he told us the truth. When we reached Senhor Tom again I spoke out this thought. He nodded slowly, and for a little time he said no word. When he did speak he did not reproach us for our carelessness. It was never his way to fume over what was past and done. “You're right, Lourenco,” hesaid. “And so were you right, Pedro, when you said the pajé was at the bottom of some trickery. Now let’s boil down events so far. “We know a prisoner was taken. And in spite of the word of Andirah and his payjé, we have every reason to suppose that the prisoner was our Lady Marion. She must have been somewhere in the maloca when we were there. She must have been there when you fellows returned this afternoon and found the tribe all inside. She may have been inside that bat-mask you saw going to the priest’s house, or she may not. If she wasn’t, she must have been tied up tight in the maloca when the gang went into the woods. In that case she certainly would be there when you, Pedro, spied into the maloca soon afterward. And you saw no sign of her.” Adventure “No sign, senhor,’’ Pedro echoed. “TI crawled up to the rear, worked a hole in the wall, and stood there watching. I saw only Indians; and those Indians did not act as if any one else was there. They were doing the usual things—cooking, resting, working | on weapons, talking. ‘What they talked about I do not know, but they showed no excitement or sign of anything unusual.” 0: Then she must be in the hut of the pajé or He hesitated and shut his teeth. ‘““__or dead,” he finished. “And I don’t believe she’s dead. I won’t believe it until I have to. Tucunas aren’t butchers. They’re a good bunch, on the whole, and friendly to whites. Of course they differ among themselves, just as any people do— some good, some bad: and things are upset now because of the anti-white war that measly Black Hawk tried to start. But I’m betting our girl is alive and in that priest-house.”’ “We both “But where?’ I protested. looked everywhere——”’ “Maybe not everywhere. Remember that house belongs to the pajé, who is a wizard and so on. A house of that kind is likely to be full of tricks. I want to go over that house inch by inch, move everything around, poke into the walls and the roof and the ground and—I was going to say ‘into the jars,’ but you tell me you looked into all of them. Come on, let’s gov’ He arose with as much snap as if it were broad day and his sight were perfect. We looked at him, at the black jungle around us, and back at him. To travel through the darkness would be slow work for us, though to him night and day were all the same now. Yet, after reaching the house of the pajé, we should have all night in which to search it undisturbed; for none of the Tucunas was likely to come there. And we too, though we could not imagine how that hut could conceal a captive, became eager to search it more carefully. So we gathered bamboo torch-wood, killed our fire, and started. Though we had our own trail to follow on this second journey, our progress through the gloomy forest would have been slow even without Senhor Tom. As it was, we advanced only by using the same plan as on our first trip to the maloca; I went ahead, bending over to watch the footmarks, while Pedro led our companion. (€(0) IOOKkK (E@) 3