Argosy, Vol. 123, No. 1 — page 76: what you’re looking at

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

66 -Perhaps those very rocks had been brok- en off by the hammer of some prospector who had wandered up the Chiluah equipped with a set of drills, a mucking-spoon, and a single jack, ready to read the secrets of the stones, and hunting always for gold. How many had gone up this same valley on the still hunt for treasure, but finding their happiness more in the pursuit than in the actual possession of the metal. He had heard tales of those hardy men follow- ing a brave to-morrow around the world. Sometime, he decided, he would take time off and learn the signs of the rocks. And he would know what the varying colors of the soil meant. At this point in his musings he stopped and listened to the lazy sound of the church-bells welling up from La Blanca, far, far behind him, and spread- ing in small waves, and breaking upon his ears with soft and irregular plashings. That sound died out and again the silence crept about him. He began to feel a mysterious sense of content—intimacy with nature. CHAPTER X. THE WHISTLER, T was, indeed, the most silent forest he had ever seen. He knew the hush of woodlands, but usually there are little sounds and noises which creep into one’s consciousness by dim degrees. Once noted they continue—buzzing of insects, and bird- voices diminutive in the distance. None of this here. It was not until he had lighted his second cigarette and paused with the thought of turning back that the hush was broken. It was a musical duet of two whistling birds, sometimes long, solitary, inviting whistles, sometimes quick, down-pattering bursts of twittering. Toward this sound, cautiously, for sometimes ‘it seemed near and again far off, Tyson made his way. It was at one of the times when the whistling seemed furthest away—indeed, when he was about to give up the futile hunt—that he found a farther reason for turning back. A little creek, half a dozen paces in width, came murmuring across his path, sent from some spring in the hills above. THE ARGOSY. As he turned to leave, however, the whis- tling broke out again, near, loud, and, glancing up sharply, he saw one of the two birds perched in the top of a slender sap- ling—a top so slender that even the meager weight of the bird kept it swaying here and there, and it was necessary for the bird to steady itself with frequent spreadings and flurries of the wings. Never had Tyson seen plumage more brilliant. He made out yellow legs and a blue body, with a breast of gold and crim- son and green, and wings shouldered with scarlet and commingled yellows. These were the details of the colors, but as the songster balanced with flurrying wings on the sapling top, the sun shifted and blended and mixed the colors till sometimes it seemed a solid flash of gold, then a blur of blue, then a glow of scarlet and again a ‘mixture of all those rich colors beyond words to describe. The feathers of his tiny crest were now so ruffled. that they stood up almost on end, and as Tyson watched, the bird started that sharp scolding, looking down at the ground. Tyson followed that glance and his eyes fell on a girl seated on the further side of the creek. It startled him almost to fear, at first, for it-seemed so inscrutable to him, and it struck on his fancy as if the girl were in fact the other bird turned to human flesh. But obviously enough she was plain wo- man, and busy now with the most womanly of occupations. She had been washing her hair in the soft waters of the creek, appar- ently, and now she dried it in the sun—a black and silken mass so long that the hand | with which she combed it could hardly reach to the ends. She was a brown beauty. It was impos- sible to imagine a hat on that wild head, and the strong sun had tanned her deeply. Not her face and throat and agile hands alone; her dress was chiefly rags and tatters, a single garment, and where a thorn had rent it at the shoulder the skin looked out as dark as the hands or face. thought her an Indian girl, but there was too generous a width between the eyes, the forehead was too broad and low, and, above COMICLO© S He might have C©