Western Story Magazine, May 12, 1934 — page 92: what you’re looking at

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

90 Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine one good way, I reckon, to put a stop to that. A married woman is = The girl said quickly: “That’s just the trouble—it’s—it’s Ab. You see, both Alf and Sam were courting me before I married Ab. They say I’m good as widowed now, already; that Ab will lose his trial and swing. They—they forced themselves in on me, when I try to keep them out.” Jade got up groggily to his feet. Something inside his chest had seemed to shrink and leave him strangely empty. “You mean,” he asked, “that you ain’t Ellen Seams no more, but Ab —Ab Ferris’s wife?” The girl’s eyes flashed; her head raised proudly. “I’m not ashamed,” she cried. “I love him, love him. dearly, even if he killed a man, the way they claim. If—if Ab was here, I'd not need any stranger to defend me.” And then the proud head fell, the hot blue eyes dissolved in tears. Jade stood and looked at her what seemed a long, long time— stood ‘motionless, his two hands hanging limply by his side. And yet he was not seeing her so much as looking back along three lonely, bitter years, seeing a young man, scared and heartsick, crouched in a mountain hide-out, longing with every fiber in him to get back home; seeing that same young fellow toss- ing and feverish on his bed of boughs, during the long, long months when the infected wounds across his face refused to heal; see- — - ing him, well at last, practicing with infinite patience to change his stride, his voice, the very motions of his hands; seeing him riding home at last, joy in his heart. Ab Ferris was a cur and scoun- drel, no doubt of that. Whether he’d killed a man or not, Ab de- served to hang. But this girl had loved him, married him. And be- cause she was a jailbird’s wife, and soon to be his widow, she was being persecuted. And he had said to her, a little while ago: “They'll never bother you again, now that I’m back. Again Jade’s blue eyes stared— looking ahead, this time, into the long years that stretched out .end- lessly behind steel bars. Just two days, now, he’d been at home on his own beloved soil. Two days, and he had promised her who lay up yonder in the Spruce Hill burying ground that he would stay here all his life. Yet, after all, it was the thought of Abigail Holloway de- cided him. “Ma’am,” Jade said, “Just help me lift this carrion crow and pack him outside there where I can tie him on his horse. Ill take him back — to town and turn him loose. I don’t believe, if what you say of Ab is true, and he’ll look out for you, that this skunk here or any other’ll ever bother you again.” The girl said dully: “Why, yes, why, yes, of course. And thank you —thank you just the same, for what you did to-night.” There was such dull surrender, so little hope in her quiet voice, Jade almost told her what he meant to do. Instead he smiled a little. “Come on,” he said. “Buck up. Have faith. T hat’s what my mother used to say.” And Jade repeated it, a little later, to himself this time, when with the still unconscious Alf across the horse he led, Jade reined his own nag up, and paused a moment where two trails met, one leading to the Circle Dot, the other to the town of Little Pine. commicbnoolze-carn