Adventure Magazine Cover — page 137: what you’re looking at

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

The Spider whence he comes—for a man _ usually carries the weapons made in his own land. Now you two Americans, I have noticéd, carry with you that flat pistol made by the Senhor Colt, which you say was used by your army in the war in Europe. There is about it a square, solid look which fits well with the things I have observed about you and with what I have heard about your great country. Also, the shape of that pistol is such that it seems to say— “T do not seek trouble with any man, but if any man wants it—I am ready.” Your Winchesters, too, have something of that same air of solid readiness. The guns of the Spider had a much different appearance. The pistol looked venomous; it leaned forward from the ugly butt to the thin muzzle, as if always eager to kill. It reminded me of a striking snake. The name of it, he once told me, was a Loo—let me see—ah yes, that is it, senhor—a Luger. The rifle, too, looked wicked, but I can not remember its name; it does not matter. But that pistol and the look of the spidery man who carried it were such that, when he was following behind me in the bush, I got a cold feeling between my shoulder-blades, as if death were about to strike me in the back. My mates, too, said that they had the same feeling when he was behind them; yet he gave us no real cause for it. He did not bluster nor threaten us by word or act. Indeed, he was very quiet. He had the spider’s way of remaining still in one place for a long time, watching everything and making no move. It might be our work that he watched, or it might be something in the jungle that arouséd his interest; but whatever it was, you felt that when he stopped looking at it he had seen everything about it and remembered it all. One thing that amused us was his habit of watching other spiders—real spiders of the bush, which we often met. No matter what sort of spider it might be he would study it and learn its.ways and how it lived and got its prey. When he did this we would wink at one another and laugh behind our hands, and one of my mates named Pedro—a tall, handsome young fellow who was very droll—would pretend to pounce on something, and then say under his breath: 3 “Take care, little spider, the big Spider will eat you!” 123 It seemed very funny to us at the time, But later on things came about which made it not funny at all. After he had been among us for some time, another boat came. It brought us welcome guests: the coronel’s daughter, who had journeyed all the way from Rio to visit him, and her cousin, a gentleman of Rio, Senhor Affonso da Fonseca. Every year the Senhorita Flora made this long trip from the great city where she was receiving the finest education the coronel’s wealth could give her, to see her lonely old father. And though he would never allow her to remain very long, lest she become ill from the climate or meet some mischance from snakes or other things, we all knew that he looked forward to these short visits of hers as the brightest days of all the year. We knew, too, that he planned eventually to make his own home again in Rio, where he had lived until his wife died. And we knew also that Senhor Affonso, who was somewhat older than the senhorita, had a deeper feeling for her than that of a cousin, and that, though he accompanied her partly because he was interested in our rubber country and partly because he felt it his duty to protect her on the long jour- ney, he came more for the pleasure of being with her. We were glad of this, for she was a handsome, gracious girl—the true daughter of her father—while the senhor was every inch a man and would make her a fine husband. The coronel himself ap- proved the match. 75) NOW it happened just at this time eee] that I met with a rather bad acci- “dent in the bush—my right leg was cut by a machete—and so I had to go back to headquarters to let the injury heal. My old coronel had a very friendly feeling for me because in past days I had done some dangerous things for him which many men would not have done. So, while I was recovering from my hurt, he often had me come to the house and sit and talk to him, and, being there, I saw a number of things. For one thing, I noticed that the Spider stopped going into the jungle so much. He stayed around the headquarters, sitting quiet for hours in that spidery way of his and watching the senhorita or Senhor Affonso. Sometimes he talked, in his comichooks.co