Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 31: what you’re looking at

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

QUEEN OF THE NIGHT, hoped to be out on the lonely road, which they decided was a safer place, under the circumstances, than the Sundown Café. But they had come to their decision a little too late. Something happened at the very moment that Herzog came hobbling toward their table. It was not an event which could be called immediately serious, but it was enough to delay their departure indefinitely. CHAPTER VI. A VISION—A TYPHOON! ERZOG, the innkeeper, was an inter- ested witness ito only a part of his wife’s meeting with the stranger. For no seoner had he sent Cora into the dining room than his attention was drawn to a small, trembling man who stood in the doorway which led from the patio into the kitchen. It was the stable mozo, who stood staring with wide-open, muddy eyes, kneed- ing his clawlike fingers in the gréAtest per- turbation. “ Senor—the stranger’s horse—”’ the man stammered. “It is scarred in the belly, senor! And if I know what such scars mean, he was gored by a bull!”’ “What of it?” Herzog laughed. “ It’s an old horse, and its master comes from across the border. Like as not it’s some picador’s nag he picked up in the bull- ring.” “Even so, senor. 1 understand that. But the man himself—you have heard of Senor E] Gato—” “El Gato? El Gato?” Herzog repeated. “Yes, some of the sailors have talked of him. But that was long ago—” “ He is the man, sefor, who was a great bullfighter in Havana and the City of Mex- ico—a man whom they say went bad, like some horse or other animal which has some- thing wrong in its brain. He is the man— do you not remember, sezor?—who left the arena when young, but after he had cut off his pigtail he could not satisfy the taste he had for blood.” ‘** Ah, yes—now I remember. ‘““ And he went about stabbing men, as he had stabbed bulls?” 2A 657. “Yes, yes, but just because this man happens to be a bullfighter, you have no more brains than to insist that he is the feared and fugitive El Gato?” ‘“ But, sevor, this El] Gato, certain sailors told us, was greatly feared in Nicaragua, where in Managua he wounded men without number.” The mozo wrung his hands in despera- tion. ‘‘ Do you not remember a ship’s cap- tain telling us how he heard again of him in Honduras, where he had fled because of the price on his head? “And then later a ship from Puerto Cortes brought terrible tales. From these facts, sefwor, one can guess that he was com-~ ing northward in his flight.” “Tt’s all nonsense. This man El Gato you’re whimpering about was a don from some famous Castilian family. The bull- fighter in there says he is of the lowest classes—too low, he said, to even drink wine with my wife. He must be pretty damn low!” The mozo shook his head doubtfully. “He is maybe clever enough to say that— to throw us off the track. And they say also of him that he is most chivalrous to women. ‘That is perhaps only his way of refusing to drink with your wife!” — “B’ God, you may be right!” the inn- keeper admitted. ‘ If that is so, God help this house! And yet ”—there was a differ- ent note in his voice, crafty, hopeful— if it is El Gato, he’s got enough to buy all the wine in my cellar! All I need now is a woman to make him.” The innkeeper did not know that the very woman he wanted to do his trick was Juana, his maidservant, who had gone up- stairs in company with an insignificant and penniless sailor. When Tom Yarre, the boatswain, fol- lowed Juana into the little room under the eaves of the house, he struck a match. The girl stood not three feet away, and the boatswain caught the gleam of her knife and the phosphorescent sheen of her eyes, He felt as if he had followed a panther into a lair. He was right. No sooner had the lantern smoked up Gomichbooks (C@)