Adventure Magazine Cover — page 64: what you’re looking at

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

54 “No!” cried the promoter. ‘No, I don’t! Iwant her just as she is. She has a pretty faith. It—it suits her!” “Her faith suits her!’ the colporteur broke into unwonted temper. ‘You say it suits her—it’s graceful and pretty! That’s while she’s graceful and pretty!” “Here, Birdsong, don’t go too far “But when she’s wrinkled and old, it won’t be so graceful and pretty,” rushed on the revivalist angrily, “then you’ll take up with a new girl, Mr. Lassiter!’ You know you will! I know you will! You ain’t got no set principles about neither women nor God! You don’t care what happens s’long as it panders to the filthy lusts of your——”’ A flush ran over Lassiter. “Birdsong, you say another word “Tl say this,” drawled Birdsong, grimly, “I’m going to do what I can for the pore child’s salvation. I don’t believe you believe she’s got no soul!” “Confound you, I don’t know and I don’t _care!’’ cried Lassiter beside himself. ‘‘She’ll never pay any attention to you! She de- spises you already!” A look of horror came over Birdsong’s face. | “Mr. Lassiter, I do believe you’re Anti- Christ! My God, I do believe you are! That Beast that sets on the hill with the blood of saints dripping from its jaws! You are Dagon! You’re the Brute with Seven Horns! You'll swoller this girl, God ha’ mercy! Ill pray God to rescue her from you! Oh, merciful God!” The colporteur’s earnestness was terrific. His face grayish. He turned from Lassiter as if from contamination, and veered north- west to circle around the lake to his mission- ary field. Nunes followed his teacher, shivering. © de vaca forest furiously angry. The colporteur had insulted him with fan- tastic insults, and yet, strangely enough, Lassiter found himself in a defensive mood. Birdsong’s reference to the,Beast, the Drag- on and Dagon disturbed Lassiter. They were disturbing anathemas. Lassiter had never attended a country revival in the southern United States. He was not aware what a treasury of maledic- tions the rustic evangelist heaps upon the slightest object of his disapproval. Besides being unnerved at Birdsong’s eh Mee be] THE promoter continued to the arbol Adventure vituperation, Lassiter thought twice as to what effect the colporteur’s prayers might have on the girl. Experience had taught him that the colporteur did not pray in vain. Certainly all the answers Birdsong had received were purely by chance, but it was chance grown into a sort of habit. The thought of losing Tilita went through Lassiter’s midriff with a sort of spasm of pain. He began to sweat. He was so agitated that: he hurried on down to the cow-tree forest, peering through the boles long before he could possibly have seen her. His anxiety mounted as each empty aisle stretched itself before this eyes. At last, with very real relief, he saw her stand- ing near the tapped trees, drawing the milk into the calabashes. She was leaning this way and that, peering through the forest for him, because he was overdue. Lassiter waved and shouted at her. So she had not been caught up in a chariot of fire, or a whirlwind, or translated away. He hurried up and kissed her far more fer- vently than usual. He asked with a certain concern if she were feeling well. Under the subterfuge of caressing her hand, he secretly felt her pulse. It was going a trifle fast, but under his extra gust of caressing, that was natural. . With his anxiety appeased, the promoter made himself comfortable and sat watching the girl drive an obsidian chisel into the cow-trees, then insert a joint of cane and catch a tiny rill of vaca sap. The liquid would flow for ten or twelve minutes and then dribble out. Tilita might have had a dozen canes dripping at once, but she contented herself with one. She was as unhurried in her work as the movement of the sun in the sky. | Her deliberation always spread a certain impatience through the New Yorker, and yet, somehow, it was provocative, too. As he watched her, his own nervous force always concentrated itself in a desire to sweep her into vehemence. Usually after an hour or so of such observation, her dila- toriness. goaded him into one of those out- bursts of fondling that occur with a certain regularity among lovers, and are based, no doubt, upon some nervous periodicity. Lassiter was in the midst of.one of these ebullitions; he had just lifted Tilita in his arms when he glimpsed the figure of a man at some distance, half hidden behind a cow- tree. MICLOOOK C@