Adventure Magazine Cover — page 36: what you’re looking at

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

26 who claim there never was and there never will be such a thing as a miracle. This, of course, is not only folly, it is ingratitude. They do not consider the trouble the sacer- dotes have taken to suppress these aberra- tions. These scientists claim to believe in law. Smite a scientist with a miracle and he clings with a sort of pathetic trust, that it all happened through law—an unknown law, that -would work ex post facto if ever discovered. This, surely, is madness. Laws are not allowed to work ex post facto; the United States Supreme Court is very clear on that point. Scientists may Justly be called a sect of men exercising blind faith and wilful disre- gard of the truth against all the cafions of reason. Yet among them may be found many lovable and child-like characters. However, Lassiter was not a scientist. He had no such sustaining faith in a myth- ical law. He was a hard-headed financial agent, a promoter, an opportunist, who seized on the passing face of circumstance and made the most of it. He acknowledged a miracle grudgingly when he saw one. And this was a miracle, this rope lead- ing down into emptiness. In an effort at rational explanation, his brain attacked the problem with rat-like persistence. Even if the rope had been of the most ordinary human origin, the probability that the ex- pedition would have stumbled upon it was remote—but for a horseman to bring a lariat, glue it to the cliff and disappear thus leav- ing Birdsong a mode of descent—— Lassiter stared around the vast burnt pass up which he had clambered; the enor- mous scarp of the volcano became tinged | with a nightmarish quality. Ezekiel Birdsong, on the other hand, was not even curious about what his comrades were investigating. a matter of fact. Colombian— “Praise the Lord, Brother Nunes, you’ve found the way down.”’ Then he walked to the edge and sized up the situation from a mechanical point of view and said— “We'll have to tie loops on these bundles and slide ’em down. I can’t climb back for every pack.” Nunes and Birdsong cut up the harness of the dead mules to make traveling loops for the packs. Lassiter sat and smoked and tried to Euclidize the problem before him. He simply said to the He accepted it as_ Adventure The man who killed their mules escaped by means of this rope. He did not use a flying-machine. The theory of a wonder- wy advanced civilization was probably alse. The assailant probably came up out of the abyss—with his horse. Killed the mules and retreated back into it—with his horse? Was dragging a dead mule to the abyss—what for? Was mule an article of diet down there——? The Stendill agent flung away his cigar. He was getting nowhere. At this moment Nunes looked up from his work on the loops. “T don’t see how Sefior Lassiter will climb down if the precipice gives him the vertigo?” Mere thought of such a climb threw the promotor into a sort of panic. He began casting about for objections. ““How’ll we get out after we get in?” “Ride out, sefior, just as the man did who killed our mules.” “Ride up this precipice?” ““Seror, you know the man did not ride out up this cliff. He came out by some trail to attack us, and slid down the rope quickly because I was firing at him.” This was a more nearly reasonable ex- planation than Lassiter’s own. “How did he know we were just here?”’ “No doubt he saw our camp-fire last night.” Lassiter thought up another objection. “Ym afraid that rope won’t hold us. It’s merely glued to the stone. That’s all —a little pat of glue.” “You know, Brother Lassiter, it’s bound to hold one man up, if it will lower a gaucho and his horse.” “But look here, Birdsong, how under high heaven could a man and a horse get down that rope?” | “Just leave that mystery to God, Brother PB] Lassiter, and accept his blessings “Confound it, we’re leaving too many mysteries—this thing’s getting on my nerves He stood staring into the emptiness of the crater, and presently added— “No man on earth could lower a horse a hundred-and-fifty feet without a derrick!” “But, sefior, we watched him do it— Ehue. If I live to get back to Quito it will be a proud day when I can say that I, Dom Pedro Balthasar Nunes, saw the King of the NOOK (C©@