Avon Fantasy Reader No. 11 — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

“Oh, all right, I grant you they may make simple signals with their chat-4 tering.” ‘And they steal our girls and marry them!” “Very well, I don’t believe it, but Pll grant you—” “But, brother,’ protested Mokato earnestly, “they do steal our girls. One of them stole my cousin Luomo and ‘they lived together for five years.” “Impossible !” “Yes.” “Then what happened?” “Why, Luomo came home again; the wood-men sent her away so she had to come home. But that is why she understands everything they say.” “Well of all fantastic—all right, I grant you that, too, they may chase women like a man but, Mokato, that doesn’t make them men, They're just gorillas.” “Brother, what does make a man?” inquired Mokato simply. _ “It's psychological,” said Mogglesby, leaping to the safety of vagueness. “There is a mental gap between men and animals, Mokato, that 1s impass- able. The human race has drawn so far away from the animals that it 1s perfectly all right to kill and eat them. It’s just like eating a—vegetable or a nut.” ‘God has no love for the wood-men he made?” At this the doctor.piped up with— “Oh, Mokato, Mr. Mogglesby doesn’t believe—” The big man snapped off his satellite with: “Shut up, will you, Doctor? I'll explain my beliefs and disbeliefs. He made them for our benefit, Mokato. He made everything for the benefit of man, the animals to eat, the trees to shade him, the oranges—’’ The black man nodded. “Yes, Dr. Spence told me all that. And I have thought that He might have made the lions and boa constrictors much smaller and weaker, and fish not so hard to catch—but, of course, as Dr. Spence says, it is good for us to exercise our bodies by avoiding the lions and our wits in catching the fish. It all improves us.” “The Reverend Spence will be disheartened to hear how you felt about a dead gorilla, Mokato,” reproved Mogglesby, edging away from this mat- ter of justifying the universe. “And then for you to desert us on our way to the, uncivilized Baloongas, that would be shirking your duty, Mokato.” This last impressed the black man. The group returned to the trail through the jungle where the mules were still restive from the odor of the burnt flesh. As they started forward again, the doctor fell in quietly at the black man’s side. ‘Just how does it feel, Mokato,” he asked curiously, “to sit in on a dinner Jike that? Is it the taste, or—or the murder—or what is it?” “Listen, brother,”’ shuddered the Negro in a distressed tone, “don’t think about such things. Put them out of your heart. O Lord, put such terrible thoughts out of my soul. Let me guide these white men to the Baloongas and then go back home.” 42 Comicbooks.com