Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 174: what you’re looking at

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

And he reached out and picked up the tusk. “You are sure that this is one of. the tusks of El Carnicero?” he demanded. “Look how great it is, senor,” I cried. “There is but one king danbué in all the Boton that carried such tusks, There is but one who could so deeply slash Chief -Augustin’s son as you saw. from the jaws of El Carnicero.” _ He stared at the thing as though deep in thought. Then he shrugged his shoulders, and thrust the broken tusk into his pocket. “Then I have part of this pig devil of yours. And, by Heaven, PH get the rest of him. [ll carry it on every hunt, and it will give me good luck. Ill need the pair of them. Tl show those—* And he broke off into a stream of most blasphemous words, in which I made out the name of _ Lieutenant Douglas, who had first dared ~ him to kill El Carnicero; and also the name -of Chief Augustin whom ‘he now hated because he spoiled the poker game in which he had not won as usual. — Aye, what a— brute! Then he suddenly turned to me. = - *"Where do we camp for the night?” I told him that we must first cross the meadow, and enter the bosque again, and that with a quickness we would come to =a = 2 good place. He did not speak any more from that = time until he rolled his blanket and rubber poncho about him. And then ¥ heard him mutter, as though in his sleep: “Following us, by heaven! Tl get him —Ii— 1 wonder—why—following us— me—” And then he began to move about rest- — _Jessly. But he spoke no more. And I too, as I piled up bamboo for the fire that would make the ground at our = feet warm through the cold of the river- bottom night, wondered much. That the tusk: this Barlow had shot off was none other than one of El Carnicero’s, I had no ‘doubt. But had that devil pig been follow- ng us? And if so, why? Or a truth was that El Camicéro in-- == = = by the evil one. Of truth it is” ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, _ With the first gray of the new morning did we arise, I to make coffee and boil — water for the canteens loaned by Lieuten- _ ant Douglas of the destroyer, this Barlow . to rub his eyes and sit unwashed, handling the broken tusk and bringing down the maledictions of all things that are good with. his foul cursing that came muttering to me above the rushing of the stream. Half an hour later, the breakfast was finished. And I wetted down the fire and repacked, and we made for the hunt. But in that were we disappointed. Not a baubui did we see, or even hear. It would seem that the maiming of the king of the Boton baubui had become a news to the whole of his kind, and they lay hidden in the bosque in fear. = ‘Yet to me it seemed that the fear should not so much lay with them as with us. This I cannot explam, sewor, but as I say it so it was There was a something in the air, a feel, that £ cannot put into words. Nou have. felt days, senor, when your ship was lying in Canacao Bay near the yard at Cavit’, when though there was nothing visible to fear, yet was there a something ~ in the atmosphere that bade you wait—wait for something that was just behind the horizon, and coming, coming, coming, and coming not for good. A stillness in the air, a brooding of all things, when even the mosquitoes were not humming about your ears, and when the fishermen whose baneas were tied to the propeller guards at your stern fetched up not a single fish, but only those things of evil, long and brown with markings of poison yellow, and cruel little black eyes, the deadly ajas tubig. - Aye, well you know. And thus it was on this morning. Nothing to greet the ear, the very monkeys being silent. Nothing to greet the eye, the very leaves of the bamboo drooping as though in fearsome waiting. Only this—this feel, senor. And what foulness did this paymaster say! I looked to see the buen Dios strike him dead at any moment. But this He did — not, awaiting Himself perhaps for the moment when His vengeance could be more. suiting and complete. =~ At Jast we made for. the ‘tiny, group of buts that was the village of Chief SEE: Oo =—€om Choo Sx