All-Story Weekly, Vol. 112, No. 1 — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

SHE ONE GIFT, icles of man before New York, or Chicago, er California, were dreamed of. ‘“T carried the girl to the camp,” said the chauffeur. ‘I turned her over to Carlo. I beat it back- to wait for you.” . Did she fight ?” The chauffeur used the Seminole word meaning “ much.” “You didn’t hurt her?”’ “cc Naw! P) o “ How did you manage?” “We found her where you had steered her—and lost her—and told her you was worfied about her.” ‘‘What did she say?” ‘She seemed to be mad you left her. We told her you had got lost yourself, and was over to Professor Studebaker’s camp —just the way you told us to—and that Professor Studebaker was down from the New York Museum collecting wild-flow- ers.””, “ And she fell for it?” “Like a ripe coconut. So we get her over to camp and turn her over to the pro- fessor—Carlo, that is—and he offers to take her back to her papa’s house-boat ‘in his car. And she falls for that, too. She was not suspicious, but by the time she begins to get wise I’ve got her ’way over in the Bad Hole country.” “ Then what?” ° “ Carlo slips a bag around her head.” “Tf that ginny spoiled her looks, I’lHH—” ‘He didn’t spoil her looks,” said the chauffeur laughing. “ She fights and _ hol- lers, ojus/ And finally she Jumps out of the car and starts to run.’ ‘‘ And you caught her again!” -“ Net right away. It would have killed you laughing. Carlo says to me in Spanish to let her run. We just sort of trailed her —in the car—just enough to keep her run- ning until she was out of breath. Savvy? Ail-same you catch-em wild hog!” Shuiski himself had to smile at the chauf- feur’s humor, but he softly cursed Carlo’s sense of fun. “Damn such rough work,” he said. “She might have gone into a sink-hole. She might have kicked a snake. And what good would she have been to us then?” 19 “Tt was better than hitting her over the head with a club,” the chauffeur retorted thoughtfully. “That girl sure can fight, and the other side of that! Holowaugus! Holowaugus to heli!” He indicated a scratch on the side of his face. ‘‘ She give me that just when we thought she was all in. ” There is an unexplained mystery in the reactions of man to his surroundings. There where nature is most beautiful man so often is most cruel. Where the flying- fishes play ever blue waters, there look for the wrecker and the black ensign. Or yonder bit of paradise may prove to be a cannibal isle. There was a reminder of this now in the country through which the so-called Prince Shuiski and his dark-skinned chauffeur rolied. No country could have been more beautiful. There was a succession of level meadows, turfed to an emerald green and spangled with a million flowers; these meadows shading away into parklike groves of scattered, slender, lofty pines—each pine a picture in itself—or glades of palm that shone like silver; and ever the background of forest—the dry forests of hammock, or broad-leafed growth, and the dense strands or rivers of cypress, these in the distance looking like far mountains. Once or twice, or oftener, every year, this whole country was under water except for the scattered pine and hammock islands. But these annual inundations kept it in- credibly sweet and clean, lush, and un- spoiled. All this, said the Indians, was in the design of the Great Serpent. Whenever need be, the Great Serpent would spew out the waters of the underworld and cause the white man to flee. How otherwise explain the absence of white man stili—when the white man had fought for years over this very land to take it away from the Semi- nole—had spent other millions and other lives to make it a place where the white men could live? The Seminoles had a secret. Among their‘number was always one man—one medicine-man—who could summon the Great Serpent at will—cause the waters to come gushing up from the underground cCoOmiclbooks C©