Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 4, 1922 — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

THE BANDIT OF than twelve hours unconscious. With that, remembrance came creeping back. Little by little he recalled everything up to the ‘moment of the escape of the fugitives, He must have been shot by the policeman who had aimed the carbine at him. He had toppled back into the hole and disappeared from view instantly. Either the police had thought him dead, or they had not been able to find him among the many gulleys that ran through the cracked earth in every direction. Feeling a little stronger after a few min- utes, Dean staggered to his feet and es- sayed to clamber out of the pit. After several attempts he succeeded, by dint of digging his toes and fingers into the stiff clay, in reaching the top. There, after scraping the glutinous material from his hands, he rested, and presently made his way down to the river, through a jungle of palms and tropical growth that had suc- ceeded the thorny scrub of the high veldt. He flung himself upon his face and drank greedily from a pool, after which he pro- ceeded to make his way across the sand ridges of the river bed toward the farther shore. It was a two days’ journey to Santa Maria, the capital of Batakaland, but there, Dean felt sure, he would be able to obtain news of Lois and her father and ultimately to rejoin them. He felt that fate had linked their for- tunes together, and he believed he would be able to right the wrong done to Sir Philip. Buying food at native stores along the way, he succeeded in covering the distance in two days, and a little before sundown saw the iron roofs of Santa Maria dancing in the mirage before him. He entered the town as it was growing dark. Santa Maria was certainly raw. The town consisted in the main of a great mar- ket square, formed out of the primeval veldt, with single-story brick houses front- ing it on each of the four sides, except here and there where a two-story structure reared its head proudly above its neighbors, as if looking askance at the questionable company in which it found itself. The side streets were occupied almost BATAKALAND. 351 entirely by wattle and daub cottages, and everywhere were the “ ice-cold drinks,’’ and the old clothes shops, at whose doors bands of filthy natives stood chaffering with the proprietors and fingering their renovated goods, examining the lining of the arm- holes for signs of previous wear with a Sapience born of contact with civilization. Behind these shanties were shacks, dot- ted sparsely about the veldt, which seemed to have no appreciable boundary, but un- derlay and threatened everything, like an unconquerable brown flood. The square itself was hardly more pre- possessing. It was crammed with wagons and oxen, whose owners were preparing to retire for the night into their canvas- covered wagons. Natives were lighting lit- tle fires everywhere and swinging pots over them. Above all hung a cloud of dust, and miniature sandspouts, caught into being by erratic gusts of wind, traveled from side to side, involving occasionally dinner-pots in ruin. But Dean perceived that something was astir in Santa Maria besides the dust. Crowds were collecting at the street cor- ners, talking together in excited tones. There was a general suspension of ordinary interests. Here and there a street orator, mostly in prospectors’ dress, was har- anguing a crowd, who shouted emphatic approval. And, as Dean watched, there came a simultaneous movement of the crowd toward a corner block. Before this two or three hundred men were already gathered, shouting something unintelligible to Dean. Caught in the movement of the crowd, he presently found himself wedged in tightly in front of the building, which he perceived to be the of- fices of the Batakaland Company from a large brass plate on the door. The mob, which now blocked the entire street, was bellowing at the top of its lungs. Dean turned to a man who stood near him. ‘ What’s the trouble?” he asked. The man, letting the breath go with a. gasp out of his red face, turned on him in- dignantly. ‘You mean to say ver don’t know what’s up?” he demanded skeptically. ‘“ Where d’ yer come from?” COmiclbooks.Gornn