Adventure Magazine Cover, June 20, 1925 — page 71: what you’re looking at

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

Medicinal Methods as being beyond him. .He allowed the remark of Luis to pass unnoticed, as one ignores the babbling of a child. Alfredo Moreno looked up from the tiny charcoal stove where he was busy transfer- ring the last of the platanos fritos to his plate. “You are a fool, Luis,” he observed. “Do you not know that our patron has been honored this day?” . “Honored?” “Si. El piloto, the mate of the Carib Chieftan, asked him if he was an Andaluz!”’ The four went into paroxysms of mirth, for Pancho was a Gallego of northern Spain; and Gallego and Andaluz are as near oil and water as two branches of the same nation can be. Pancho did not join in the laughter. It was a poor jest and showed how little is needed to arouse the laughter of some. “In that there is nothing of humor,” he observed severely. | . He reached in his pocket and brought out a square of some dark-brown substance. “You speak of el piloto, my brave mari- neros,’ he said airily, ‘and well you may. See what he has given me—a piece of the eating tobacco of the Americans.” In the sudden silence which followed Pancho could feel the growing respect of the others, and he expanded under it. “El piloto and I, we are close friends,” he said. “‘We are men. I gave him a bot- tle of Bacardi, nothing more, and he pre- sented me with this. He has promised to teach me the boxing, if we have time when next his steamer comes to Caimanitas.”’ Pancho looked straight at Luis as he said this, and Luis became greatly interested in the soles of his canvas alpargates. Pancho sliced off a large chunk of the plug and began to chew. JOHN O’KEEFE had been many . things in this world before he s9 entered the employ of the Carib- bean Line and was sent to Cai- manitas as local manager. He was of that rare type of man which may spend long years in the tropics without great loss of original energy and vigor. Most mornings found him afoot before five, and all the native employees of the line, from the stevedores on the ships to the carpinteros repairing the two lighters hauled out on the beach, worked under the disquieting realization that el jefe was more than likely to material- ize from nothing at all at any time. 33 They still tell the tale of how in the early days of O’Keefe’s régime a certain gang of half a dozen of the dock laborers decided that there was no harm in their taking a quiet siesta in the middle of the afternoon, and of how their disillusionment was great and sudden. These characteristics made O’Keefe of great value to the line, and his worth was further enhanced by his ability to get along well with his native subordinates and with the local merchants, and his perfect com- mand of Spanish as spoken in Cuba. For the rest, he drank but sparingly, was scru- pulously honest, and was a man of great and varied resourcefulness. O’ Keefe was sitting at his desk in the one- story building that served as both office and residence, reading a week-old New York newspaper. He was waiting word of the arrival of the lighters bringing in the general cargo from the Carib Chieftan, and had just begun to wonder why they were delayed when there came hasty footsteps outside. Then the door burst open and Don Pancho Urrutia entered. To simply say that Pancho entered is to give an entirely false impression, as he cer- tainly could not have done so alone and un- assisted. His face was a greenish gray, his head hung forward, his knees bent under him. If he had not been supported by the strong arm of that prince among men, his wife’s own cousin, Luis Raola, he would surely have fallen. O’Keefe hurled aside his chair and crossed the office in three strides. “Que pasa?” he snapped. “Senor,” moaned Pancho, “El padre should be sent for. I die!’’ and a paroxysm shook him. O’Keefe ceased to look for a knife wound and surveyed the mess Pancho had made of the clean tiles of the office floor. For a moment he thought of a similar incident in his boyhood, an incident closely connected with some very green apples. Inspiration came to him, for Pancho’s swaying to and fro had made the plug of chewing tobacco fall from his pocket to the floor. O’Keefe was about to tell Pancho that he was no nearer death than millions of people have been after their first attempt to chew the weed; but on second thought he changed his mind. It was one of O’Keefe’s character- istics that he sometimes followed devious ways to an end. He stepped forward and comiclboooks CO