Adventure Magazine Cover — page 146: what you’re looking at

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

136 followed the rustling, fresh-smelling hay eagerly. The water was nowhere over waist deep and offered no difficulty. When the long string of crowding animals was finally in the dry-wash on the Mexican side, Joash gave instructions about how to proceed. First Hunt, in the lead, was to tie securely some of the big and some of the smaller firecrackers to the burros’ tails and to drag- ging lengths of rope. He was to tie four burros neck-and-neck and fasten firecrack- ers to them, and ride them up the hill at the given signal. At the rear Jim was to do exactly the same thing. Joash helped them: When the plan was ready eight burros at each end were held in a group so that the firecrack- ers could be lighted quickly before they began exploding. Each man was to turn four burros loose to scatter through the herd, and keep four under control to rush up the hill to the village. “Coons got the crackers in,” said Joash, “for the Mexes to celebrate Cinco de Mayo with. They never saw such big ones before T’ll bet. They’ll make the Mexes think they’re besieged with! machine-guns. Oh, scat!” The old man danced a step or two and slid his Panama across his sandy head. “T’ll go on now and locate ’em. Give me fifteen minutes. When I hear the hoofs a-pattering on the rocks and the crackers a-crackin’ [’ll sing out to the Straddler and his gang, wherever they are, that the Yankee cavalry is coming. And they'll listen a minute, and beat it helter-skelter!’’ “What if they don’t?” asked Hunt. Joash shrugged. Now that he was doing his duty he felt pretty good. “T’d just as soon get hamstrung on this side of the river as on the Texas shore,”’ he said. “One of us anyhow is certain to get back to tell Bud Milroy what’s hap- penin ) teach did not add that he was honor- ably getting the burro-killing scheme off his hands, or that he would go broke with the scattering of the burros, or that in his heart he thought it a pretty silly plan. He didn’t care. He was about to be free once again, from any burdens. As they were on the point of separating, Jim began to sniff the air. “TI smell barbecue!” he thrilled. becued goat! Let’s go!” ‘“Bar- Adventure “You poor starvelin’ wretch!” sympa- thized Joash. ‘Give me fifteen minutes to get up there and then come along, whoopity- bang. Maybe you can find some o’ that barbecue. You both got matches? Well, here goes nothing!”’ And Joash scrambled past the burros crowding around the lobe of hay, climbed the bank and struck out for the village and the lair of the Straddler. FOR two years the Straddler had ~| been the king outlaw along the Rio Grande, and for more than a year he had been ‘the coveted hombre of every State and Federal official engaged in hunting criminals. He got his name from standing spraddle-legged, and further from the habit, as the Americans said, of strad- dling the Rio Grande—first on one side, then on the other, thus evading capture in either Texas or Mexico. The Straddler was the leader of at least three successful raids on the Texas side. He was vengeful and cruel, burning and destroying and killing with a savagery that grew out of one thing—his terrible fear of the gringos. He knew that if ever they caught him his finish was at hand. His great fear made him hate greatly, and nothing was too cruel and wanton for his hand. It was as if he wished to have revenge for his own passing while yet in the land of the living. The extent of the Straddler’s fear and cruelty had got abroad because of an inci- dent that was talked back and forth wher- ever border affairs were discussed. At Ojinaga an American youth had been pushed into taunting, or had possessed the simple audacity to taunt, the Straddler with what the gringos would sometime do to him. “They'll put a rope around your neck,” the youth had shouted, ‘‘up there in some Texas jail, and let you drop six feet. Tick- tock, just like that.” The Straddler—so the tale went—had turned gray under his brown skin, had tot- tered on his outspread legs and had put shaking hands to his throat as if already he felt the tightening hemp. And then, in fury at the way his fear had betrayed him, he had seized the youth and killed him with his bare hands, for the Straddler was a brute in strength. Old Joash had heard this story, and cConiclbool o(CO)