Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

a COLD STEEL, 307 cursed me and told me to mind my own business, I went back to a table near the rear door and laid my head on my arms and went to sleep. : “When I was awake again, Vorse and Gordon was holding me up by their table, and Jim was dead on the floor. I had come forward, they said, begun a big row with Dent, and finally shot him.” “Then the only witnesses were these four men who were gambling with him, who cursed you when you attempted to persuade him to drop his cards,” Steele proceeded. “One of whom was your political adver- sary —men who were old-timers and op- posed to newcomers, who pretended to be your friends, but took your ranch and cattle. It begins to look to me as if they not only killed your friend Dent, but double-crossed you into the bargain. Did you look in your-gun afterward?” “No. I was sick with horror of the ‘accusation, I tell you, Steele. I had no way to deny it; it seemed, indeed, as if I must have killed him. And from that day until this I’ve never had the courage of soul to reload my pistol, or even clean it. Tt hangs there on the wall with the very shells —— two. empty, the rest unfired — it carried that day in San Mateo.” The son sprang up and crossed to the nail where hung the weapon. ‘The latter he drew from the holster and broke open, so that the cartridges were ejected into his hand. For an instant he stared at them, but at length walked to the bed, before which he extended his palm. ° “Took—look for yourself!” he exclaimed hoarsely. ‘‘ You never killed Jim Dent; drunk or sober, you’d never kill any one. Yowre not a murderer. You're the inno- cent victim of those four infamous scoun- drels; they deceived you, they ruined your life; and their damnable fraud not only killed my mother in her youth, as I guess, by grief and despair, but has brought. you now to your death, too.” His father had raised himself on an arm to gaze incredulously at the six unfired car- iridges lying in his son’s palm, Then all at once=his bearded lips trembled, and a great light of joy flashed upon his face. “ Innocent — innocent!’ he whispered. “Steele, my son — Helen, my wife! No stain on my soul!” As he sank back Steele’s arms caught him. He did not speak again, but his eyes rested radiantly on his boy’s before they glazed in death. Weir gently lowered his father’s form upon the bed, covered it with a blanket. Then he walked to the door and ~gazed forth upon the sunlit valley. For him, and for his father also, the black curtain of the past had been rent in twain in the twinkling of an eye; but revelations are not to be calculated by,units of time. Some obscure process of mind, more pro- found and more sure than mere intuition, had prompted. him to delve into the mys- tery and had established the truth in his father’s case. He was as certain of his father’s innocence as that the sun stood in the sky. Nothing now would ever shake that faith. He felt no sorrow, no grief. Indeed, his spirit was lighter than it had ever been hitherto. Peace and happiness had filled his father at the final minute of his life; he had died with the knowledge that his hands were not red with the blood of mur- der. In that there was cause for gladness. But what of his father’s thirty years of undeserved torment? What of his ruined life? Steele Weir’s gray eyes narrowed until they held but glints like knife-points. His bronzed features became as hard as the mountain’s granite. The names of the men responsible for the hellish business were seared in his*brain; and, never a mild man, there were slowly distilled in his soul at this moment a deadly hatred and an im- placable purpose. If yet alive, they should pay the penalty. “They'll beg to be put over a slow fire and end it before I’ve finished with them!” he grated between his teeth. CHAPTER II. IN A HOSTILE COUNTRY. ASTWARD out of the Torquilla Range the Burntwood River emerged from a gorge, flowing swift and turbulent during the spring months, shallow and murmurous Conmiclooolks.conn