Adventure, February 20, 1922 — page 132: what you’re looking at

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

130 too quick. I go talk Mas’ Kellyer. time sad.” It was several afternoons later, however. before she actually went in search of Danny Kellegher, the beach clerk, whom she found in the oil-yard, seated at his deal table-desk and looking if anything sadder than usual. Danny had not been born that way. Seg- wanga and a man named MacPhail had made him so; which, as Danny himself would have explained with no small empha- sis, was another story. “‘Wha’s matter?” Ilona asked, bringing He all _ forth a “book,” or check, which called for the payment of several iron chop-pots. “You wife done die?”’ Danny’s eyes lifted and cleared. Like everybody else, and in spite of his dis- gruntled attitude toward life in general, he found Ilona good to look upon. “Hello! How’s Benny?” Ilona carelessly tightened the twist-knot fastening of her gleaming yellow over-cloth, glanced in the direction of a bush Sobo who was boiling a calabash of palm-oil to get some inadvertent rain water out of it, then lounged attractively against the table and said confidentially— ““Mebbe so Benniba go die. So I be sad, too. I be married only li'l bit.” Danny felt sorry for her at once; told her he was sure it was not as bad as she thought it was, then asked if she had discovered who it was that had made such a treacherous at- tack upon Benniba. Ilona shook her head dolefully. “Them time it happen it be dark too much. We no look nothing. You pay book now?” : Danny thought he could, and glancing at a voucher the girl handed him, he called a ~Kroo-boy and they repaired to the general store where the cooking pots were kept. It was a large store, built of heavy corrugated iron upon a framework of steel, and the floor was of concrete—a fire-and-white-ant- proof place as far as the structure itself was concerned. Its contents were valuable and varied, for _ the most part having the appearance of large unopened cases and bales, which would disgorge their riches like a cornucopia when broached. The iron pots stood in an alley formed by two solid lines of cases, and when Danny told the Kroo-boy to get what was wanted, Ilona sidled toward two large, oblong, dust-cov- Adventure ered cases that lay, one upon the other, at the end of the store nearest the door. ‘“Mas’ Kellyer,” she called in her softest tones, “‘this be him?” Danny looked and saw that her hand rested on the topmost of the two large oblong cases. “That’s it,” he agreed. “What’s the matter? You think Benniba go use him plenty too quick?” “‘Mebbe so,” Ilona said resignedly. “TI no savvy dat.” She hung lingeringly about the case which contained Benniba’s coffin. ‘‘T nebber see this coffim yet. You fit to let me see him now?” “Now! What do you want to see it now fore If your man’s goin’ to die——” Danny stopped, feeling that that was not the most tactful thing in the world to say; and Ilona reminded him of a greyhound— the sort that wins the Waterloo Cup— something with real class; a thoroughbred, that was it. You couldn’t think of her as just a Jakri, somehow. “Well, you see— Oh, all right. You generally get what you want, don’t your” Ilona smiled. “You my frien’, Mas’ Kellyer. I ’mem- ber you long time.” Danny paid no great heed to that; but, to please the girl, ordered the Kroo-boy he had brought with him to fetch several other boys so that the case in question could be lifted down and opened. While the boy was gone Ilona indicated the case beneath the one belonging to Benniba. “This be Chief Oagadi box?” Danny nodded. “You look him?” Ilona asked. Danny shook his head. “T’m no undertaker. I don’t get any pleasure out of lookin’ at coffins.’ — Ilona did not quite grasp that and said so, adding in a gentle voice— “You think so Oagadi coffim be better coffim?”’ “T don’t know. I never opened the cases to find out.” “We go look him now—you an’ me?” Ilona suggested in a voice that purred. ‘‘No man know. Mebbe so Benniba coffim be better, then Benniba wife—me, Ilona— be happy too much.” Danny laughed. — “You have a queer idea of what’ll make you happy,” he said, then dropped into Eomicbooks:co Ss “ ! a . - . ~« < ~~ wr > ae | < . — ~~ & . a. oe ee ie = _ -