Adventure Magazine, April 10, 1924 — page 90: what you’re looking at

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

\oe NGS ae Dart i Aste O. frie! Author of “Thicker Than Water,” “The Thirty Gang,” etc. The first part of the story briefly retold in story form. . Back to back, three white men—McKay, Knowlton, and Ryan—fought doggedly against foes half seen. They had poor targets—a glimmer of steel; an arrow streaking from a clump of broad- leaved plantain; a dodging movement among a tangle of lianas. It was an uneven fight, and when fierce yells announced the arrival of another party of savages it seemed that the white men were doomed. And then the firing in the jungle diminished. From near at hand came sudden splashes, earthy thumps, grunts and snarls of grappling antagonists. Running feet padded and the jungle erupted a figure as grisly as a buccaneer of the Spanish Main. Indians all armed with spear and rifle, smeared with the blood of foemen, hard-jawed and slit-eyed, followed close behind him. “Tt is José Martinez!” cried Knowlton. “Tt is true,” yelled José, his teeth flashing. “Welcome back, my companions of days gone by. What a killing you have made here!” ‘Yeah! And now ye come hornin’ in and busting up the game!” snorted Tim. “Then you shall j join mine,” retorted José. come, I must move.’ “But A little later, after much bloody fighting, the four white men sat in the big hut of the conquered Jivero community, scowling at the roof-pole from which hung a score of human heads. “We're looking for Rand,” McKay said presently. “Rand!” exclaimed José. “Your friend and mine. I have not forgotten. It was he who first brought you three into this part of the world. He disap- peared while traveling in Brazil and you found him alive, but crazed by a bullet, among the canni- bals of the Rio Javary, in Brazil. And you cured 5 s lise King of No Man's Land," copyright, 1924, by Arthur e ve e “ a 83 his craziness by hitting him over the head with a gun.” Knowlton nodded. “He’s disappeared again—we’re afraid he’s gone back to the jungle.” One of José’s men brought in one of the women captives. She was not a Jivero woman but a prisoner brought from the country of the Huambizas, away to the southeast. She spoke Spanish perfectly and—was very beautiful. Around her neck a gold cross was suspended. Her name, she said, was Nuné. She refused to answer José’s searching questions but the next morning, proving that she was not ill- disposed toward them, Nuné saved their lives by warning them not to eat the food prepared by the captured Jivero women—it had been poisoned. By noon the party started pack for José’s strong- hold. Five suns slid across the great green abyss and vanished behind the colossal wall of the Andes. Five nights whelmed the forest in blackness through which moved only the creatures spawned to prey in gloom. On the sixth day they came to the wonderful domain José had made his own. A stronghold which was practically impregnable; a fertile} sunlit plateau peopled by healthy, intelligent people who called José ‘‘king.”’ “On the level now,” said Tim Ryan after Jos¢ had explained his system of government and his ambition to make his White Ones so powerful that they could exterminate the murderous head-hunters of the jungle; ‘On the level now: Don’t this king business make ye feel sort of tied down?” “I ache for the voices and laughter of my own people,” José said sorrowfully. “I am a white man. Iam not an Indian. Yet among the Indians I must live; in the jungles I must die.” He laughed harshly. «af DOOLK (©