Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 118: what you’re looking at

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

908 calm, restrained. “ Where ees her” She asked it as a physician might have inquired the whereabouts of an urgent case... MacQuillan’s frown deepened painfully. “Then you know?” he said. | “No. I know nothing. Tell me where he is. I weel go to heem.” She was ad- mirably cool. MacQuillan ground one fist into the other and frowned upon his knuckles. “ That,” he said, “ I de not know.” “But he must not be alone!” she cried. “T must go to him!” “Aye, And so must I go to him, too. But I’m domned if I know where.” Sud- denly he looked up from his hard clenched hands and spoke directly to her. “Hi I had only but known, Annette,” he said,-re- buking himself,“ I would not have had this happen. I would not.” “ But we must find him. _ Where is he?” This, it appeared, was too much for Ser- seant MacQuillan. A trace of resentment crept into his voice. ‘Where is he? Have not told ye, girly, that I dinna know? How can I tell where he rides? I’d as soon trace a prairie wolf.” “But you say he is hurt! Wounded!” “ Hurt? Wounded? Nothing of the sort. He’s worse than that—he’s innocent!” Annette seemed visibly te expand. She drew herself to a proud and trim little height. Her eyes dilated with happiness and pride. She spread her arms out a little from her body, seeming as though she were about to leave the earth. She was trans- formed by the sergeant’s words inte an epitome of gladness. “He ees innocent! Ob, did I not know it? Did I not say so? Oh, sergeant, I knew that those news would come, but how 1 have feared it would not come too soon!” She meant soon enough. Her joy vanquished the trouble which a meticulous sense of duty had aroused in the sergeant’s breast. He had come to apolo- gize with contumely and profoundly sincere reeret, but her gladness forbade it. ‘ “Go!” she cried. “ Ride to heem and tell heem that he ees free! Eet was wan meestak’.” “JT want to tell ye, Annette,” he blurted out impulsively, “that ye canna be more ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. giad o’ this than me. I am sair sorry that i have spoken ye so sharply when I was on the chase. Ye must try to see that always it was the job I had to do.” He would have mounted then, but she stopped him. “Wait!” she cried. “ Before you go, you must tell me how you found this out!” He fumbled in his breast then for a mo- ment, and brought forth a bulky paper. It was a letter written with an indelible pencil so liberally moistened by the writer as to have well-nigh vanquished the advantage of indelibleness with the bane of illegibility. Annette took the letter from MacQuillan with a pretty gesture of impatience, and, running up the pathway, sat upon one of the steps to decipher it. it read: DEAR BILL: We got your letter O. K. and am making haste to answer it as per your instructions written in same. Weill, Billy, I am shor sorry, but it is the fact that Jim Harkness was killed by a bullet in the dark on the very might of the morning after of which you rede away to Canada. And they all of them knew that you wouldn't have done a thing like that, Billy, but yet there you was the only man who had been seen with Jim Harkness iast time he was seen alive, and then we all knew that vou had hit the trail to Canada and so what could we do? Anyway, Bud Halli- well, and he was the sheriff as you know, only he ain't since as he resigned afterward. Anyway, he sent out the word for you to be arrested and you are lucky you got to Canada. Bud shor did have a war on his hands then because we all told him that amy murderer who could take to the gulf for South America in a fifty mile ride or across the Mex border in less than a hundred would shor be loco to ride te Canada. In addishun to this, anyway, - the sheriff is now leeking for a cross-eyed Mexican greaser who Bundy Carson says he heard him threaten to get Jim once over Jim's frine him from his ranch on account of eat- ing sheep he was supposed to herd. And, anyway, Billy, the case against this Mexican has been made better since then be- cause this Mexican greaser was killed in a gun fight at a faro layout in Laredo after playing ail evening with a lot of money he took from a pocketbook which since then has peen spotted as a pocketbook which belonged to Jim Harkness and they ain't no doubt but what this Mexican is the one that killed poor Jim on the night when you rode to Canada on the following morning. - GoOmMmichbooksSzco