Adventure Magazine Cover, December 10, 1922 — page 155: what you’re looking at

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

An Unpleasant Episode window framed the red, beefy face of Joe, the second of the Lukens brothers, who instantly addressed himself to the man on the ground in a stream of crackling profanity. The latter sat up and stared dazedly. Ah Kow; chattering with amazed terror, recognized him as Lafe, the youngest of the trio. : : Meanwhile Bud Lukens’ small eyes gazed on this domestic drama with a mild inter- est. He spat leisurely and listened with critical approval while Joe divested himself of some particularly virulent obscenity. “What'd he do?” he drawled as his brother came to a breathless period. The face in the window seemed to swell visibly and became even redder than before. “Do?” shrieked Joe. ‘‘Why, the cock- eyed hop-head stole our likker; that’s what he done. For two cents I'd rip the guts out of him, the dirty, lousy, thieving bum.” Bud Lukens’s face underwent a swift change. One corner of his thin, hard mouth lifted in a snarl. “T’ll learn him,” he remarked briefly. Stepping over to the boy on the ground, he dealt him a terrific kick in the stomach. Lafe’s young face knotted with a spasm of pain. He made a futile effort to get to his feet. His brother watched him coolly for perhaps five seconds and then delivered another kick. The boy sank back white and limp. “That’s the stuff,’ shrieked Joe from the window. ‘Hand him another.” “Don’t need no more,” asserted Bud, watching the white face Critically. ‘That’ll learn him.” For the moment he had forgotten Ah Kow. By the time he remembered and turned to deal with him there was no trace of the old Chinaman. The second kick had broken the spell of terror which seemed to root him to the spot, and the old man ran as he had not run in years. JUDGE BALLARD was a kindly and a patient soul. For more than . an hour he listened to Ah Kow’s recital, couched in the most incompre- hensible pidgin and endlessly repeated in its more striking details. At the end he would accept no fee. “What I’m telling you is fact, not law,” he explained. ‘‘You’ve got a case in law. a 149 You’ve got a clear enough title and over thirty years undisturbed possession. “What I’m getting at is this. ‘The Lukens boys are bad medicine, the worst kind. There’s hardly a man around here would want to sit on a jury and decide against them. Besides, you know it’s pretty — hard to get a jury in this part of the country to decide a land case in favor of a Chinaman. “I’m sorry,’ he added kindly, touched by the dumb misery in the old man’s eyes.’ “T’d help you if I could. -But if I was you I’d just forget it. The land don’t really amount to much anyway.” Ah Kow rose impassively, paid the judge ~ a courteous compliment in droned Chinese, made his ceremonial bow and was gone. The white man’s way, the law, had failed. There seemed to bé nothing for Ah Kow but to fall back on the age-old methods of the Orient. A white man in like case would probably have at least considered a plan to dispossess the intruder at the point of a pistol. Ah Kow, the product of a long line of non-re- sistant philosophers, never thought of such a thing for an instant. A city Chinaman, a merchant, might well have entertained the idea of employing hatchet-men. ‘This again never crossed the mind of the old. market-garderter. Neither, on the other hand, did he give way to despair. As a last resource there are always the gods, many and malignant and extremely useful to those who know how to invoke their aid. Where they fail nothing is left but the calm of resignation. But they seldom fail. To the temple, then, Ah Kow betook himself, duly rehearsing in his mind the four and twenty examples of filial piety. To select the proper joss for his purpose was the work of an instant to so devout a worshiper. Having performed the prescribed rever- ences and droned the necessary invocation, he proceeded to lay upon the Lukens family the curse of the Thousand and One Malig- nant Devils. This is an excellent curse and will do wonders if properly applied. Squat- ting on his heels before the shrine of the smoke-blackened joss, Ah Kow laid at on to the last letter. Huan Kik, the fat priest, could not have bettered it himself. The gods, however, help those who help themselves, and Ah Kow, being of a practi- cal nature, realized that a curse, while an excellent thing in itself, is infinitely more Eomicbooks (eoy