Adventure Magazine Cover, October 30, 1924 — page 72: what you’re looking at

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

62 Hampton strode along in grim silence, careless what might await him if only he were allowed to live until night. Thor- oughly as he had plumbed the depths of the deliberate and diabolic cruelty of Dias, this last evidence of the man’s dev- iltry had scored him sharply and left a deep and ineradicable hatred which was beyond expression, filling his whole spirit, burning in his tortured brain like a white flame. Other guards assembled, and stolid half- Indian women. Then, near his own sleeping- quarters, Hampton was suddenly tripped and flung to the ground, and four men sat on him. Others drove stakes in the sun- baked earth, and in ten minutes he was being spreadeagled and lashed by wrist and ankle to the four stakes. Ramon came up with some thongs of green hide, which were eagerly seized and applied to the work. Then the tall Yaqui commanded that a fire be built up, and at once a storm of questions arose. “No,” said Ramon. ‘The gringo is not to be killed—yet. This is by the master’s order; it is only a little thing.”’ So Hampton guessed, rightly enough, that he was now to pay for that blindly furious attack on Dias the previous after- noon. Pegged out in the hot sunlight, unable to endure the brazen sky overhead, he closed his eyes and lay silent, oblivious to the re- marks and jests of those around. Time passed; what was preparing, he did not know orcare. Between blistering sun above and scorching ground below, he was in a burning heat, but scarce felt it. The green rawhide thongs that tied him down were gradually evaporated in that flooding sun, until they shrank tight and ever more tightly cut into his skin, dragging out feet and hands toward the stakes. He remem- bered having heard of such Indian tor- tures—given a few more thongs to each extremity, his limbs might well be pulled from their sockets. A sudden burst of laughter and a storm of jeering exclamations went up. Half open- ing his eyes, Hampton saw, bending over him, one of the silk-clad Chinese servants from the house of Dias—a wrinkled, satur- nine fellow, whose very grin bore anticipa- tions of torture. In one hand he held a brush, in the other a small pot of paint or ink. He made some remark to the crowd Adventure in Spanish which drew another outburst of mirth. Ramon leaned over the pegged-out figure and tore away the front of Hampton’s shirt. In this act, the eyes of the two men met— Hampton putting into one swift look all the things he dared not utter. The Yaqui started violently, half-whipped out his knife, then rose and turned away with a shrug; none the less, Hampton smiled a little, knowing that his message of hatred had been understood. Then he gave a sudden grunt, and found the Chinaman calmly seated upon him, brush in hand, drawing a diagram on his naked chest. Hampton had no need to ask what it was—those same two characters were embroidered on the silken blouse before his eyes. A cackle of mirth broke from the celestial, and he looked at the staring crowd who had gathered close. “Look!” he exclaimed in very good Span- ish. ‘Observe the beauty of this writing, which you do not understand! But I will show you what it means. Here above is the character tan, which shows the sun just above the horizon; it means the morning, or what you call dias—it is our word for the name of the master. Now below it you see me writing the character named 7, which in the ancient writing of my country shows an arrow fixed in a target. It means that something has been done or finished, and the two characters together mean that our master has approved or done this thing— it is a seal made for our master by the eminent Yu Szu Lo of Canton.” The yellow man concluded his writing and his exposition at the same moment, and then rose. Hampton was vaguely micloool © inn