Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

CHANNING COMES THROUGH. house, Vallon had overheard the conversation between Channing and the drifter. Vallon had been mending a rent in the arm hole of his only vest. He had finished while Chan- ning and the drifter had been talking, but he sat silent and motionless long after the talk had been completed. Vallon was bothered again by his inability to force his memory to work. As upon the appearance of the drifter the night be- fore, Vallon was tortured by something familiar about the man. Out of the haze of many yesterdays he conjured mental pictures of all the men he had known in the past in an effort to create a counterpart of the drifter. He failed. Many men with bow legs he had seen. Other men there were who had teeth missing. Hundreds of men in the old days had worn their guns low on their hips, where the drifter wore his. Men with steady eves were not rare, and the baffling vacuity of the drifter’s was to be observed in the gaze of all men who were habitually watchful and suspi- cious. When Vallon heard the drifter move away he got to his feet and watched him from be- hind the muslin curtain of a small, open window. With corrugated brows, his eyes narrowed to mere slits, he studied the drifter’s figure as the latter stood at the corral fence. Vallon was uneasy. He felt there was something wrong. To be sure there was nothing much out of the ordinary in having a desert rat drift in as this man had come. His kind usually slipped in without ostenta- tion and departed the same way. No one would ask where a drifter came from and and no one would inquire where he was going. Nobody cared very much. It wasn’t that the drifter had done any- thing out of the ordinary. He had asked for the grub he had taken; he had offended noone. He had slept in the open, as be- came a man of his habits of life; he had Staked out his horse and pack animal in the approved fashion. He had not been inquisitive, except to Channing, and then only mildly; he had asked no embarrassing questions; he appeared inoffensive. And yet Vallon was not satisfied. He was vaguely troubled, was conscious of irri- 655 tation; a conviction that there was mystery here annoyed him. He studied the man’s legs again. He was certain that away back in the past he had seen those legs. He felt there was not an- other pair exactly like them in the country. Somewhere, sometime, he had seen them be- fore. But he couldn’t remember. ‘Must have been a hell of a long time ago,” he decided. He rested his elbows upon the window sill, dropped his chin to his arms and contin- ued to watch the drifter. He observed that the drifter’s movements were furtive, stealthy, that his long, skinny arms were restless. The drifter stood back a little dis- tance from the corral fence, now, and as Vallon watched him, the drifter stole a rapid glance at the stable, into which Channing had gone. One of the drifter’s hands came slowly upward and stroked his chin. The hand dropped. Both were now hanging loosely at his sides. They moved jerkily upward, the hands sliding along the faded overalls. They slipped upward, linger- ing momentarily at his gun holsters, one at each hip, The fingers halted for an instant at the butts of the guns, seemed to lightly caress them. Then the arms slid up and were folded over the drifter’s chest. There was something sinuous and smooth about the movement of the drifter’s arms. They reminded Vallon of the sliding, slither- ing stealth of a rattlesnake coiling to strike, leisurely, knowing there was plenty of time. Once again the drifter glanced at the stable. Then Vallon saw his right hand slipping down toward his waistline, where the ridiculously ample overalls were folded. Vallon saw the hand vanish and then come quickly upward, gripping the butt of a third gun, The drifter glanced downward, criti- cally. He slipped the gun back into its hidden sheath. At that instant Channing emerged from the stable. Likewise, at the same instant illumination came to Vallon. A name flashed into his memory, a name that seemed to startle him, for his face grayed and he caught his breath quickly. Channing walked toward the corral gate. A saddle was on his shoulder, a coiled rope hung from the crook of his left elbow. oO COMmiclboooKS.s.e@