The Argosy, March 27, 1920 — page 36: what you’re looking at

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

186 she might have felt at the sight of him was the impress ef horror—such a look as one might wear after having touched something unclean. Etienne Dubois knew what that look of horror meant; he had read the too-full lips and the narrow eyes of Buldoc when first they met. He knew. And as his imagina- _ tion took hold of his knowledge and turned it over and showed him the infinite misery of the thing he knew, his soul again went down into the deep places. This time he was obsessed with the de- sire to kill, He pictured his fingers sinking into the throat of the foreman—pictured his hoots beating against the hated face. But even as those days and nights in the mountains had brought him back to his normal life—brought him back and given him strength to meet Jeanne face to face once more—so now the thing that had been dene to him asserted itself, When dawn came, haggard and gray as the look with which he met it, he was able to put the tragedy outside of himself. He could be calm. He could swing the hammer and hold a drill and gaze into the eyes of Bolduc without breaking, It was something almost like peace that filled him with self-confidence as he went to work that day: something akin to peace and victory that had given him a new semblance to the eye of the beholder—as though a kindly hand had wiped away from his face the ravages of his passions and remolded it with a gentle touch. It was like this that he met Bolduc, just after the whistle blew. Triumph had filtered away from the fore- man. Etienne did not know whether this had happened overnight or whether he him- self had just that day been given eyes to see. However that might be, he was as sure of the lack of triumph as he was of the hatred that seemed to come like a hot, sick- ening wave from Bolduc. Before that day was ended the intuition of Dubois was proven sound. He had come out from behind an angle of rock after a blast when hobnails grated beside him and he turned to find Jacques Bolduc so close to him that their arms almost touched. “Tm going to give her a grave to think about instead of a man!” THE ARGOSY, The words were spoken in a tone so low that they barely carried to the ear of Du- bois, but in them ‘was all the ferocity of which the tremendous will of the boss was capable. Etienne halted and looked into his enemy’s eyes almost with indifference, and yet with readiness to protect himself. He looked steadily until Bolduc decided to go on. Now, Dubois knew definitely that he had to guard his life every hou of every day, for it was inevitable that sooner or later some accident of the work they did would give the boss a chance to bring about his death with the appearance of innocence. He had speculated as to whether Bolduc might develop such a hatred for him and he was glad of the warning. But the cause? How did Jacques know she was thinking of him? Or was it imagi- nation? He had no way of telling. Nor were they to be answered for a long time, to Dubois. After the threat weeks and months passed uneventfully for him and spring came again to Visitation. The vik lage, with the intimacy of a French-Cana- dian hamlet, had settled to the conviction that Jeanne Bolduc was unhappy, that her husband was getting richer every day, and that Etienne Dubois was a fine fellow. Dubois went to work again in the quarry as soon as the melting of the snow permitted it to open, but he had begun to wonder whether it would not be well to change his occupation. The malignity of the now all- powerful Bolduc cut him off from hope of rising above the grade of workmen and the constant strain of guarding himself had be- gun to tell. But before the slow moving life of the country would permit him to put this thought into action the consummation of Bolduc’s hatred came. Seven charges had been fired almost to- gether. The whole great pit of the quarry, which was shaped as though a giant's por- ride spoon had scraped a hole in the earth’s surface, was filled with smoke and the clat- ter of still bounding fragments as the men came out from their hiding places. “As usual the foreman was in the lead of the scattered groups and this time it happened that Etienne was within a few feet of him. The force of the explosion had ripped off comicbooksscom