Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 88: what you’re looking at

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

878 next day but-one, and expected to reach the White Horseman’s camp just after dark, That meant two whole days to Midge. All the next day and -practically all the following one in which to get to him and warn him of this treachery. Treachery! Treachery! Of course, Midge knew in her heart that she had lost her sense of proportion. The man was a bandit, an outlaw, they said a murderer. It was quite right that the king’s forces should capture him. But all that meant nothing to her. He was the man she loved, and he had been betrayed. She crept back to her room, all on wires, a little bundle of taut attention. Sleep was as far away as if she had never known what it was at all. The men sat up late, but ultimately she heard Colonel Manisty go. Then she sat in strained silence in the dark for a couple of hours. It was an ag- onizing wait. She could make no plans. She could do nothing but go out into the darkness with the one unalterable purpose in her mind. She lit a candle, not daring to switch on the electric light. She began to dress, hold- ing her breath all the time. She was ready in a quarter of an hour; riding breeches, a long waterproof coat, a tam-o’-shanter, and a heavy chiffon scarf tied round her head. In the pocket of the coat was fifty pounds in bank notes, a sum she had saved during the last few months; under her Shetland jumper she wore the string of pearls worth two thousand pounds that Sir John had first given her, and that he had begged her to keep—begged with such quiet pathos that she couldn’t refuse. The money and the pearls were potential payment for the fulfillment of her one absorbing purpose. She would have paid her way to the White Horseman with her life’s blood, if need be. She looked at her watch. It was four o'clock. The men had sat talking until two. Major Inglis was the trouble. Elsie slept like a log. She knew that he would not leave the bungalow until six. She dared not wait until then. The guards would be changing; the station would be astir. There was nothing for it. Out into the ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. night, all she valued in life in her hands, Again luck attended her. She slipped out onto the veranda, climbed the balustrade, and dropped like a feather to the ground. She stopped and listened. The sentry was at the other end of the mound. She had a horse of her own now that Major Inglis had placed at her disposal. It was an old polo pony that a brother officer had left in his charge while on leave. Ten minutes later, she came out of the stables, risking everything. And, holding her face for a moment against the animal’s glossy neck, she breathed a prayer to it not to fail her. A brilliant moon rode in the heavens, filmed over every few moments by lacelike mists. There was only one thing for it— Midge knew that. She mounted, and with a few low words told Polly that they must get through the ring of guards like light- ning. Polly responded. Midge did not know what happened. The horse’s hoofs sounded to her like thunder. She saw a brazier on the road; she discerned dark shapes. There were voices, rising to shrill cries. She galloped through them. A bul- let whistled past her. She dug her heels into Polly’s flanks, and on they went like wind up the road that led to the pass. Dawn broke. Then came a rosy glow as if all the rubies in the mines of India had crowded into the eastern sky. Midge found herself not far from the spot where she had first met the White Horseman. She felt a strange life in her; her blood flowed quickly; she breathed the pure hig with a kind of fierce ecstasy. But the pony was dead beat. She had given every ounce of herself, as Midge had asked her to. Now—what was there to be done? Noth- ing. Despair crept into Midge’s soul. Here she was alone in the mountains, miles and miles from the White Horseman’s camp. All she knew was the direction of it—over there across the mighty ridge, toward Yar- kand. Her heart failed her for a moment, as she sat there motionless, while the pony drooped her beautiful dark head to the dust brown earth, and around was enacted the daily miracle of the rismg sun. And Ccomicbooks C©