Adventure Magazine Cover — page 140: what you’re looking at

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

130 “Got my nose full o’ gut-stink around them slaughter-houses in K. C. Don’t like to see this heah man’s country stunk up. But since we got ’em and got the money in- vested in ’em, sooner we slaughter and sell the better, I reckon. Sooner we eat, too. When do we begin the killing?” So the sore problem was confronting Joash again, standing up in front of him and looking him square in the eye. He tilted his hat to the other side of his head, but before he could make answer the boy remembered something. He went tense, startled. “Say,” he thrilled, ‘I’m so starved hungry and glad to get home I forgot to tell you something. Say, Joash, you’d better be realizing quick on these donks or you ain’t likely to realize at all.”’ “Whye” “Listen. I got to the Mexican village over there yesterday. The Straddler’s there!” “You don’t say!” “T walked in on ’em and heard them plotting and the Straddler throwed me into the dungeon room at the end of their long ’dobe.”’ “T peeked in it once!” ‘He left me there in the dark, starvin’ and thirstin’. I felt around and found a tin pan and big old saddle-girt buckle with a long tongue, and used them to dig a hole through the wall. I didn’t get finally through till they were sleeping their szesta this afternoon. Then I busted out and snuck over here. But, Joash, all the time when I listened I heard what they were doing.”’ “What, boy?” “They were cleaning their guns and sharpening knives and filling cartridge- belts and singing songs that they made up— raw songs about coming over here and clean- ing us out, hide, hair and toenails. Joash, the Straddler is aimin’ to raid our town tonight and kill off all the Americans!”’ 7m RODELA DEL SOL, which the sun meee beamed down upon just about three << hundred and sixty-five days out of the year, was one of the scattered mud- house towns that give the Rio Grande Valley the appearance of a foreign country. The adobe dwellings sheltered six American men and about two hundred Mexican men, women and nifios. Otherwise the place evidently had no purpose in the scheme of the world. Adventure There were two small general stores; a moving-picture show operated Saturday and Sunday nights sometimes; a restaurant with a dirt floor, and a tiny post-office that floated the Stars and Stripes day and night the year round, and that was reached twice a week by a mail hack from the railroad. But these people and things were ample in the way of gringos and loot to arouse the killing and plunder lust that burned so hot and red in the infamous border raider. There was no telephone wire to connect Rodela del Sol with the outer world; no automobiles, because of impassable sand- flats; and it was seventy miles to the rail- road and guns and soldiers. Old Joash—nobody knew whether it was his first or last name—and Jim started down the stony slope with drawn faces. They talked in jerks. Joash scanned the Mexican village across the river but could make out no sign of life, and he said so. “But they’re there all righty,” asserted Jim. ‘“Twenty or so, all armed with short saddle carbines and automatic pistols.”’ “Twenty! Lad, we ain’t got the shadder of a chance. Them cutthroats are the fightingest on the border. Savage as red Indians.”’ “Talk I heard, Joash, when I laid in the dungeon starvin’ and listenin’ was that they’re aimin’ to hamstring every American they get their hands on to.” Joash mopped his forehead with a blue bandanna and pondered in mental anguish as they stumbled along. Suddenly he broke out— “‘These news would panicky-ize the town, 1? ‘“‘The Mexes over there,” continued Jim, driving the grim information in, ‘‘they were tying gunny grain-sacks together to make saddle-bags to pack the loot back in, four sacks to each man’s horse. They aimin’ to carry the heads of us gringos on sharp poles.”’ Joash groaned. “Jim, them bandits. will drive off my burros. Then we won’t have any tallow, bones, hide, hair er hoofs for paperweights.”’ “Or money for you to start your photo gallery with, Joash. Or your shoe-repair shop. We got to give the alarm and organ- ize for a battle.” - “No, no!”’ denied the old man. “If we give the alarm the news will panicky-ize the whole population. They will turn into GO DOOLK 1@)