Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 7, 1925 — page 81: what you’re looking at

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

\\| iy shadows moving purposelessly before him, — often indistinguishable one from the other, They told him when it was time to eat, to go down into the blackness. | On his third daily descent after Quong’ S return from Apple, Dariel found the two bottom lengths of casing askew: the loose — gravel around them had shifted, and they were bent at their common joint. The job was done. The buckling tube would not hold for long, and when it went the gravel- would close in smoothly, quickly, a smoth= ering pressure that no suit made for man could withstand. He had enough gold; -he had beaten the creek; let it get what tri- umph it could out of saving that last shovel- ful in the bottom of the pocket! He yanked the life-line twice, we signal for ascent—and his air stopped. Mechanically closing the exhaust in aie helmet so that his suit would hold what air — it contained, he waited. Seconds passed, no air came. He- jerked the hose in the double signal for more air. None came. He pulled at the lifeline, the upper end of which should have beet fastened to the raft; ‘the rope came down slack in his hands. With fumbling fingers he unfastened his weight-belt and let it fall away from him. Then he filled his lungs with the weak, stuffy airsin his suit, and started for the sur- face. Bare fingers and heavy shoes found purchase on the lips of the jointed casing and lifted him up, length by length, to the creek-bed. There, one arm found the guide-rope, and it Was. taut. The stored air in his suit was no longer weak; it scored his. lungs as if glass-dust floated in it. He went up the guide-rope, hand over hand, fighting currents that bent him dewn- stream. The foot of the ladder: firm wood for hands and feet. He could make the raft now—if an accident to pump or water- wheel had stopped his air. But if cheap tools had become treacherous tools. He went up the ladder. raft was under one hand; under the other. Water dropped away from his face-plate. His chest was over the raft’s edge; he crawled, scrabbled, came up on his knees, Thin air of the upper world starved lungs that had been fed on heavy stuff. He tore at his face-plate; got it loose. He swayed, CHEAP from t though the shadow came close to him, it ‘Spoke from a distance. The edge of the i} the sharp cough of strangulation tore his chest. The raft whirled under him. Some- thing like a man lay prone before him. A face moved somewhere; and sunlight glinted on bright metal. An invisible club struck him everywhere at once. Ii. DARIEL awoke in the dull light of the coal-oil lamp that hung from the cabin’s ceiling. His naked body was wrapped in ss blankets, and he was on his bunk. His ~_ head swelled and shrank to the beat of some pulsing thing inside; -pin-points of fire tor- tured his skin. He groaned, and a shadow detached itself the other shadows i in the cabin. Al- Well, Jobn, are you comin’ around all right?” “The shadow’s voice was a dim echo of Hogan’ Ss. ~Dariel tried to sit up, one the siaice pushed him down with a fat, tangible hand. © Now you lay still, John, an’ Vl tell you about it. It was that damn chink!” There - was bitterness in Hogan’s ies as if he had learned not to smile at defeat. “ He came up here right after you went under the water—to get tobacco, he said. An’ then— I’m at the purep, and Evans fooling with the sluice; an’ a gun goes off and a bullet plunks into the raft at my feet. “Me and Evans both looks up an’ on the top of the cliff. there’s three hombres and ee the chink, He’s grinnin’ for the first time — I ever seen him grin. - The rest of ’em has rags over their faces an’ guns in their hands. cx Stick ’em up,’ one of ’em says, and me an’ Evans stick ’em up. ‘Then I remember you, an’ J erab- the pump. 3 “* Stick ’em up,’ ‘the fellow says again. “< There’s a man down there,’ tI = at him. «© The hell with him,’ he s says. ‘Let him rest.’ “T don’t know what to do about that. It seems unreasonable: so I keep on tryin’ to pump, only there was somethin’ the mat- ter with the water-wheel and I couldn’t get Eomicboo S (E)