Adventure Magazine, Mid-September 1917 — page 57: what you’re looking at

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

Longhorns evaded or nullified all his adversary’s efforts and more than once narrowly missed putting down the puncher. Both men were dripping with sweat. They panted through clenched teeth. The muscles in their necks stood out taut and hard as stretched ropes. This way and that they wrestled and reeled. They banged into the table. This useful article of furniture promptly capsized on top of the senseless Rime Tolliver. Two dozen assorted dishes and a greatly prized milk-pitcher were shivered to bits. Rime’s nose was also broken, but the fact was not apparent till later. . Chuck flung a leg sidewise. A kitchen chair skittered across the floor and boomed into a dishpan, which, in falling from the wall, overset a bucket of water. Incident- ally Chuck’s shin received a healthy crack from the corner of the chair. The sharp pain spurring him to greater striving, he propelled Cutnose clear across the kitchen and against the stove. Cutnose, the oven-ledge catching him below and behind the knees, inadvertently sat down where the stove was hottest. Then Cutnose went berserk. He tripped Chuck and went to the floor with him and they wallowed in the water from the upset bucket. Cutnose was a man of exceptional strength, and that strength was augmented by his fury, but Chuck matched every move. He had to. Almost any man can perform miracles when he is fighting for his life. Over and over rolled the fighting pair. Now one was on top, now the other. They bit, clawed, struck, pulled hair and ears, and kicked in precisely the fashion of men of the Stone Age. They were fast in the grip of primeval passions. The reversion to type was but natural. It must not be supposed that Jane was idle during the progress of the combat. Not at all. Rime Tolliver had not been able to free her before Chuck struck him, but he had loosed the lariat sufficiently to permit of her completing the operation. This she did in panting haste. Once free this girl who had never in her whole life struck a blow in anger, wrenched off a table-leg and dodged round the out- skirts of the fight, her earnest purpose being to club Cutnose. But so rapid were the movements of the two men that she could 59 not strike a blow without endangering Chuck. It was after the conflict had descended to the level of the floor that Jane suddenly crouched, her blazing eyes on the doorway, Then with equal suddenness she fled be- hind the door. It was at this juncture that Chuck, mo- mentarily on top, glimpsed his six-shooter not a foot from Canter’s writhing shoulder. His clutching fingers swept it up, and he struck downward savagely, again, and yet again. Cutnose Canter went limp as a wet towel. Chuck, sitting humped above Canter’s beaten body, turned his bruised face toward the door just in time to see a brown- bearded man in white Angora chaps, push- ing two six-shooters ahead of him, spring through the doorway and receive a smash- ing blow on his black and gold-banded hat from the table-leg in Jane’s hands. The man crumpled down in a huddle. Bang! A gun cracked outside, and Chuck, forgetting his hurts, flung forward to inter- pose “his body between Jane and possible danger. ‘“€°T’s all right,’’ Henderson’s calm voice declared: from the darkness. “I got the other one.” Chuck turned bewilderedly to Jane. She dropped the table-leg and took an un- steady step toward him. She swayed on her feet, her hands groping in front of her. “T—I think,” she said with a pitiful at- tempt at a smile, ‘I think I’m gug-going to faint.” With a little sigh she fell forward into his arms. ue «TTS all right to kiss her, Chuck,” W: said the Rainbow, who had arrived ewes ten minutes after the close of ac- tivities, “it’s all right to kiss her, but how am I to bathe her face while you’re taking up all the room?” Yet after all the bathing of Jane’s face did not matter a great deal. For at that moment she opened her eyes. An instant she stared in dismayed bewilderment at the battered countenance so near her own. Then with an adorable little smile and quite as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she slipped an arm round Chuck’s neck and put up her face to be kissed by the bruised and swollen lips. COMGHOO ©