Adventure Magazine Cover — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

14 through these miserable villages, and some- times singing the hymns so popular with rural revivals. The Arkansan’s penetrating nasal yowl- ing and his bell formed a clamorous intro- duction to these villages. As he passed through at the tail of his mules, anything was likely to pop out of the huts to view the disturbance—a pig, a milk goat, a dog, a game-cock, an Indian woman followed by the rest of her tenants, for all held equal tenure in these motley domiciliaries. The Indian housewives who heaved them- selves up into the cold mountain sunshine were invariably shapeless creatures, weav- ing ponchos for their lords out of vicuna wool, or a Panama hat, with the fibers spraying off at the point of labor. The housewife was always ugly with an ugliness that was appalling, but among her brood, there would be almost surely two or three dark-eyed, sad-faced girls, who came out with the pigs and goats and stood staring at the strange procession. It was these girls coming out of the crev- ices in the rocks that made this groveling existence human to Lassiter. Often these girl faces held that strange quality of wist- fulness that belongs to youth and maiden- hood. Of what they dreamed, Lassiter could not imagine. What they were to become, he saw too plainly: Hags in a hole, used and shapeless, flowers crushed in a sty. And Zeke Birdsong came along and gave them little Spanish Testaments. The futility of the gift, the fanatical earnestness of the giver always struck Las- siter with a sad irony. Sometimes he would wonder if by any possible means the little Testaments could be of the slightest moral or intellectual value to these girls. He never thought of any of the other denizens except the girls. Their faces always gave him the impression of some- thing delicate and precious being wasted. Birdsong, however, had much wider sympathies, no doubt because he was a father of both boys and girls. Between villages, trudging at his mule’s tail, he would talk of his beneficiaries. “That was a fine chunk of a boy,” he would say. “I hope he will read that Testa- ment and grow up into a preacher.’’ Or— “That was a good-hearted old woman with the red shawl. I hope she sees the light and I meet her in Heaven.”’ Birdsong used this last phrase so much, Adventure one could say he tramped at a mule’s heels through the Andes}. extending invitations to Indians to meet him in Heaven. Lassiter looked on Heaven as medieval nonsense, but Birdsong, through his inter- preter, talked of it so earnestly, so concrete- ly—apparently he was acquainted with the pearly gates down to their hasps and hinges —that at intervals a strange fancy drifted across the financier’s mind, that maybe, somewhere, there was such a place—some- where—and he would look up at the icy peaks freezing against the abyss of the sky. WITHOUT Balthasar not one Bible could have been given away. The first village they entered refused to accept a single book. The Indians thought it was some new trick of priests to bring down on their heads new and devastating ecclesiastical dues. However, Balthasar’s eloquence reassured them. He explained that these men were good American bank robbers who were giving away Bibles as a penance for their sins. The Indians, thus assured that they were dealing with simple cutthroats, gained confidence and took the little books. : By the time the expedition had camped two nights on the trail, word, somehow, had passed ahead of their penitent and benevolent mission, and the colporteurs found the Indians eager for the Testaments. In fact, on two occasions, the little books themselves had been passed on ahead of the expedition. In one village, the men found an Indian who had a bullet wound in his arm. He had bound one of the Testaments tightly over the place. He declared to Balthasar that all pain left him when he applied the book. On the following day they discovered an Indian woman, who was expecting con- finement, drinking a tea made.of Testament leaves. Birdsong caught these patent miracles to his heart, and overflowed with thanks-. giving in both prayer and song. He saw himself an evangel attended by the hosts of Heaven. miracles through Ecuador and prepare the way for—as near as Lassiter could get the idea—for an enormous revival. For a while Lassiter argued mildly with Birdsong about the authenticity of these miracles. He attempted to explain to Bird- song that the patient was probably healed MICLOOOK He would stretch a string of (C©