Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 37: what you’re looking at

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

JEREMIAH PARSONS—HE-MAN, to halt momentarily in his flight and cast an apprehensive backward glance. What he saw sent a sudden chill through his heart. ~“ Good night!” he gasped. His pursuers were heaving and rocking an immense bowlder that hung at the edge of the road, directly above him. Even as he looked, the rock lifted, trembled a poised instant, then lunged forward and downward —seemingly at his very head. A grinding and crashing of trees rent from their roots—a fierce shout of triumph from the grouped men in the road. -Jem made a wild, sidewise leap, flinging himself prone at a sheltered hollow. There was a roaring in his ears. The world about him heaved and crashed. A shattering con- cussion jarred his body from crown to sole— and then all went black. CHAPTER VI IN CAPTIVITY. HEN light again came to Jem’s Vf senses he found himself lying on the floor of a dim cabin. At his first attempt to move he discovered his hands were tied behind him. His body felt stiff and sore and his head throbbed with a tremendous, pounding ache. There was a sharp, biting pain over one temple, external to that inner throbbing. He struggled to a sitting position and gazed about him. In the murky gloom he could make out the unlined walls of a log shack. The one window was glassless and had been boarded over. A rusty wood Stove without any chimney stood in one cor- ner. A rickety, blackened table and a home-made bench completed the room’s furniture. He had no idea as to where he was, nor how he had got there. His muddled thoughts and throbbing brain painfully re- constructed his adventures since his arrival in Sky City. But beyond that last crashing shock on the mountainside his mind was a total blank. Resting a while, his brain became some- what clearer. He wriggled to his feet and walked to the window. He peered out through-the slits between the boards. 667 The cabin appeared to be set alone, up on a hillside. A short distance below him, through the trees, he could see a camp— Blue Buttes, he at once recognized it. It was easy for Jem now to guess at what had happened. If the huge bowlder loosened by the gang that morning had hit him, he would never have lived to realize the occurrence. One of the many smaller rocks, loosened by the slide, must have struck him; or perhaps a falling tree had brained him. In any event, he had been knocked senseless and had been brought by Kurtz to this cabin, disarmed and impris- oned—for what later purpose he could not know; but it required no clairvoyance to surmise that it was for no purpose beneficial or healthful to himself. They had probably thrown him in here until he should recover from his coma. From the length of the shadows without Jem judged it to be late afternoon. He had been lying senseless since mid-morning. “* That must have been one hell of a wal- lop,” Jem mused ruefully, and he winced as the pain above his temple gave a particular- ly sharp twinge. He walked to the door and turned his back against it, gripping the knob between his palms. He turned the knob, but the door remained closed. As Jem had sus- pected, it was fastened on the outside. He peered through the chinks where the plaster had fallen away. On a stump about ten feet from the door sat a guard, smoking, Kurtz seemed to be taking no chances with this prisoner. Jem sat down on the bench for a study of his position. That it was fraught with evil to himself was patent; and of escape he could discern no possibility. Once again and with more careful par- ticularization he inventoried the room’s con- tents: the stove, a broken section of black- ened crowbar, apparently having served as poker, the table and the bench. The most thorough and repeated examination could discover nothing other than these. The walls and ceiling were blank, There was no lighting equipment in the room, although Jem, on his visit that morning, had ob- served an electric transmission line travers- ing the camp. This shack was too distant Eomichbooks: co