Adventure Magazine Cover — page 167: what you’re looking at

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

The Way of Sinners fashion that, to his challenge, I replied with my name and style; and made to pass him. He ran, as was his duty, to the front of my horse, placed the point of his pike against the brute’s breast; and in a resolved voice that trembled somewhat nevertheless, said that I must wait while he whistled for the guard, which should escort me to the tent of old Matteo. Coolly, quite resolved, I dismounted. “Ts this, then, the custom with you,” I asked, “that a captain of free lances, visiting another, should wait in the rain for a guard, like a bumpkin desirous of turning spy? Ha?” “It is the captain’s order,” says the sentry. “T will discuss it with him,” says I, and sprang upon that sentinel. He opened his mouth to call aid,*but had no more time than sufficed him to draw his breath; I struck him between the eyes, and he fell down and rolled; deadly stunned for obeying of his orders, yet I pitied him not. He had withstood me, and I was not to be withstood on this my journey toward the future; he had fallen; it was well. Now there was Matteo Scarlatti with whom to deal; and as I dismounted at his tent, marked as such by its sentry and the flag at its door, sure enough was I that he would not halt me, either. This sentry had not the time to challenge; a mist overhung the camp in that gray of the morning; and when I loomed out of it, there was a pistolet in my hand, trained full upon him; moreover, he had seen me before, and the recognition seemed to rob him of his wits. His jaw dropped, and he made a blind motion with his halberd as I vaulted from the saddle; then his eyes met mine, and before he could recover himself, I had passed the curtain of the tent and laid a violent hand on the shoulder of the sleeper within. ““Aggerh!” said Matteo Scarlatti, writhing in slumber (meantime, I heard the foot- steps of the sentinel receding at the run). I shook him again, and he opened one eye. But it was dark in the tent, to one just awakened, and he closed it again; and he gave a grunt, and wrapped the skins about his shoulders, and as it were burrowed himself into his bed like a coney, with intent to sleep more at all costs. Whereupon, I seized his coverings entire and wrenched 11 161 them away, and flung them on the floor; ex- posing his lean and gray-haired carcass naked to the chill air. Never have I seen such a glare of dazed astonishment on a face, as when old Matteo sat up and stared at me; he was beyond speech, and even beyond thought; so in a few words, I expounded to him the matter at issue between us; whereupon, still eyeing me as might a mathematician the spectacle of two and two making eight, he licked his lips. ‘So!’ says Matteo Scarlatti; and began to comb his beard with his finger-nails. This, with him, wasa sign of the very worst; as I did not then know, but as, with my ex- alted wits, I did suspect; moreover, his eyes wandered to the entrance of the tent, as if he awaited aid. Meseemed proper, accordingly, to show him my pistolet; at which, to do him justice, he looked without perturbation; and so we sat for a moment in silence. He cleared his throat. “I have seen more of those things, and pointed at me too,” said old Matteo at last, “than ever thou hast, young man.” ‘But the thing to be observed here,” I said in a low voice, “is not the pistolet; rather the face of the man holding it. That, by the fact that thou’rt still alive, I do be- lieve thou’lt find unique.” He looked at me; and I thought he was going to smile; but he did not; nay, his face set into lines of high displeasure. ‘Is this the way to come seeking aid, Signor Captain?” he rumbled furiously out of the depths of his great chest. “Aye,” I answered him; and beyond a commencement to breathe like a winded horse, he made no reply to that. We sat in silence again, while I wondered why the sentry returned not with the guard. In sooth, the poor fellow, knowing what would be his fate for failing to arrest me, had taken to his heels and fled; neither was he ever seen again by Scarlatti or myself. Ofa surety, the stars in their courses were upon my side in this affair; the thought of this lifted my heart so high, that I began to talk reasonably to the old man. “It is vain that we should be thus situ- ated, Signor Scarlatti,” says I, more warn- ingly than pleadingly, ‘‘and that we are thus here, in great peril, and wasting time, is the fault of thy vanity. It seemed to thee that there was an insult by a former COnmiclboooks.c©