Adventure Magazine Cover — page 167: what you’re looking at

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

Gilford the Gifted He poked his head in suddenly at Soliden’s window and, for a moment perhaps, halted there agape. Not much more than a yard away, Soliden stood with his left arm outstretched, the hand close to the back of Yuleela’s neck. In his right there was a hippo hide thong. Gilford did not quite know why Yuleela stood so still at arm’s length with nothing to prevent her escape except two fingers and the thumb of Soliden’s left hand push- ing into the back of her neck. Then Gilford caught a glimpse of the girl’s face just as Soliden raised the hippo hide again. “You ruddy thug!” he whispered hoarsely, more to himself than to Soliden, and leaped into the room. Soliden turned his head, jumped back in surprize and released his grip on the thin black noose about Yuleela’s throat. The girl swayed drunkenly and sank to her knees just as Gilford’s first punch took the half- caste neatly on the point of the jaw and ~ flung him back upon his heels against the mat hung wail. For several minutes Soliden received the thrashing of his life, It was a thrashing that carried him cowering and whining from one end of the dim little room to the other and back again. Doubled up with a left that searched his vitals, he was almost im- mediately straightened with a right upper- cut that seemed to lift his head from his shoulders. Then Gilford would smash him without any discount on the nose, tilt his chin into position with a lifting jab, and then wallop him on the jaw again so that he spun like a wabbling top until something stopped him. It was not a fight. Simply a thrashing, administered by a man who understood his business so well that he thought nothing of it and would not consider that part of the story worth the telling afterward. Yuleela staggered to her feet, plucking the thin black noose from her tortured throat, and thereafter huddled near the window and watched the amazing spectacle of Soliden being struck again and again without even attempting to strike back. Then she saw the half-caste sink to his knees, his right hand clutching the hippo hide thong in a fury that, momentarily at least, was as impotent as Soliden was sick. And he was very sick. He shuddered convulsively with pain and rage and the 161 lamp in its stand in the far corner was like a tiny match flame that was ready to flicker out. Gilford dropped his hands and learned how tired they were.. He was breathing . heavily, too, and he waited a little while . before he tried to speak. ‘““You—you , murdering hound! You ruddy yellow thug!’’ Gilford took another breath. ‘“‘What sort of way is that to treat a woman? I don’t give a hang about your family differences, but when your squabbles wake me up and ask me to look at a per- formance like that—why, you yellow dog! You’re worse than any Ijo bushman! I’ve a good mind to tie you up and flog the fear of into you and change the color of your liver. Give me that hippo hide!” Soliden did not stir. His reeling senses were coming back to him and a vengeful ferocity was creeping up and up into his dulled brain. Into his little red eyes there came a slowly brightening light. Gilford turned to Yuleela. “Go bring headman. Make quick.” Yuleela hesitated, and in that second, while Gilford’s attentionswas directed else- where, Soliden leaped and struck. The hippo hide curled about Gilford’s head like a band of fire that passed scorch- ingly across his eyes. And the hght went out. 6c you!”’ Gilford’s hand went up to his eyes instinctively as the first lightning-like stab of pain shot through them. ‘You’ve blinded me! I can’t see! I can’t see!” He lurched against the wall and heard Soliden laugh. Yuleela screeched something in Bini, and the sounds came out of a pain- wracked blackness that was punctured with stabbing points of light. The hippo hide followed them. It fell viciously upon Gilford’s head, about his ears, across his shoulders, and the savage hissing breath of Soliden’s mad fury echoed every blow. The suit of pajamas Gilford wore offered but little resistance and there was no way in which he could defend him- self. There was a searing strip of flame before his eyes that transcended all else. Nothing was sure save that. Soliden’s brutish pas- sion and the relentless ferocity of his revenge was such that the hippo hide cut Gilford’s pajama coat in strips across the shoulders and bit into his flesh until his neck and back COMICoOo Cc SS (C@