Adventure Magazine, Mid-September 1917 — page 71: what you’re looking at

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

The Ninth Man had lost more than the others from the jagged wound in his neck which had punc- tured the jugular. He fell upon his face. Yet he arose again and again. “(One more, one more,” he kept gurgling as his hazy eyes peeped through the sights and he fanned the trigger of the carbine. The poison of the darts began to affect them. It was made from putrid liver kept months for the purpose. Its infection was quicker and more deadly than arsenic. They began to fall upon their faces. The guns slipped from their grasp. But as the Indians surged forward with a yell they arose by a great concentration of will and fired volley after volley from the red-hot carbines. _ The white man is absolute. The will to live is strong within him. He dies harder than any other animal in the world. There were not more than a dozen Indians left alive, when the last of the eight Americans fell upon their faces and did not arise again. These few watched stealthily for move- ment for a few minutes and seeing that they were dead came forward and ‘removed the heads with quick, deft strokes of their fire-blackened wooden knives that bespoke long practise. This is how Tom Harte, Lon James, Jack Brewer, Harold Bibb, Charley Orender, John Carnes, James Willis and Dan Mur- dock went to their deaths at the hands of the Jiveros in Eastern Bolivia near the Brazilian frontier. They died fighting like true men with their faces toward the ene- mies. No man can do more. They were white men and they were absolute. But they were overwhelmed by numbers. They were Americans of the type that built up the country of their birth. They lived gloriously. They died gloriously. God rest their souls in peace. oh to be exact it was two years and —“@ nine months—that a strange crea- ture crept around the base of Mount Cor- covado and peered down into the city of Rio de Janeiro. It was nude except for a strip of ragged blanket wound about the waist and loins. A great mat of gray hair covered its head and shoulders and its face was hidden behind a mass of gray beard that covered it entirely and matted and twisted upon its breast. VI IT WAS a long time afterward— wise inch by inch and foot by foot. and began to run. Its feet and legs were swollen with beri- bert until they resembled the feet and legs of an elephant as the leg was swollen out even with the ends of the toes. Its arms and the parts of the body that were visible were covered with jagged white scars where jaws had eaten deep into the flesh which then had healed. It was a nightmare of a creature. It was something like the shapes that fever patients see in their delirium. Yet it was real. It was human. It wasa white man and its name was Hughie Gibbs. He had lain behind the boulder and seen his comrades killed. He had peeped forth as the Jiveros were bending over them to behead them. He had his carbine and could have potted the entire crowd of them with- out exposing himself to danger. He could have saved these brave men from the in- dignity of having their heads hung in the lodges of savages to become yellow and smoke-blackened. He owed it to these men to avenge their deaths after what they had done for him on the trail. Yet he lay there cringing with fear until the Jiveros had borne away the dripping heads of the men who fought with weapons of noise and fire. They had gone back to tell the women and children of the great battle and soon they would return with them to help carry home the bodiés of their men for the funeral ceremony. And when they had gone and Gibbs was quite sure, he started crawling away belly- When he had placed a hundred paces between him- self and the scene of the tragedy, he arose Fear gave him the strength and wind of many men. He ran as no man had ever run before. He dashed away his guns and his revolver. He knew he would have no use for them as he would be afraid to fire lest he attract the attention of the savages. He flung away the contents of his blanket roll but carried the blanket over his shoul- der. But he was carrying weight. In the rawhide skin wrapped as an orange is wrapped in paper, was a bulk of gold as large as a water bucket. This he had slung across his shoulder and he ran stooping with the weight but sprinting like a Mara- thon runner on the stretch. For days and nights he ran. He did not know in which direction he was going nor did he care. He only wanted to get further COMmMiClooks 69 ©