Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 11, 1925 — page 96: what you’re looking at

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

250 and genuine admiration: “I must go slow. He’d try to make a grease spot of me if he knew why I was here, and it would be a pity to quarrel with him. There has been pity enough already—but she’s run amuck too far.” To his companion he said quietly: “ Af- ter what you’ve told me, I don’t know that I shall even feel free to try for Miss Stokes’s friendship.” “JT wants ye ter do hit,” declared the other earnestly. “I don’t aim ter speak no word—an’ even if I did, hit wouldn’t be no more then fa’r ter give ye a good half of ther road.” ~ CHAPTER XXII. REACTIONS. HEN the afternoon was half spent, W the sound of maul on wedge, which had been drifting down to the log house, was drowned in the continuous and sullen roar of sky batteries drawing near. Black thunder heads, rimmed with the sickly fringe of green that proclaimed wind, blotted out the sun and carried a streak of sullen anger across the sky. A livid brilliancy of lightning gashed the spreading cloudbanks, and the rumble lift- ed its volume to a cannonading, while the advance guard of the wind bent the trees and called out a moaning protest from the lashed forests. ““T reckon we’d better make a run fer hit,” declared Wade, with an eye on the sky, although he smiled as if, in the im- pending fury of the elements, he found a sort of Valhalla of delight. ‘ Hit’s comin’ on ter storm. ’Pears like hit ‘Il be a gully washer an’ a trash mover—not no gentle drizzle-drozzle.” Before they had made the journey down the mountainside they were leaning into a wind of hurricane force, and gazing with distended ‘pupils through a murky gloom -__ 9f sheeted rain and hail that whipped them with the sting of rawhide. The valley was a well between the solid darkness of the slopes, and its murk was made intermit- = = tently livid with a ragged whipsawing of ae lightning. ~ aS gs — ; = ae aes Se eo —_ a 3 ~ Z ae =3<3- ye . pon = Y ae ok. SS < _ ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. Into the house, when they succeeded in reaching it, they ran as two men might run into a fort from the pursuit of ene- mies, and all the rest of the day they listened, like animals in a den, to the as- saulting pound of wiiffl and hail and rain. But the setting sun tore out scraps of cloud from the west for shreds of color to peep through, and because the air was chilled and sharp a heap of pine knots roared up the chimney. Cynthia was sitting, after supper, in a split oak chair at one corner of the hearth. in a rude semicircle the others lounged, too, and talked in a desultory fashion with frequent lapses into silence. The girl sat with her elbows on her knees and her fingers locked under her small chin, Her gray-green eyes did not stray from the back of the fire pit, where foolish little lines and patterns of soot sparks played behind the logs. They were eyes full of brooding and reflection. She did not look at the other chairs, and she did not notice that one silence had stretched and prolonged itself. She was not conscious that Carroll had risen and moved over until he stood behind her—between her and the door. At last, though, his voice quietly pitched and ironic, broke through her insulation of aloofness. “So grafting and cheating—trying to murder a man and leaving him to bleed to death—these weren’t enough, were they? You had to come here to deccive and vamp simple folk who took you in and protected you.” With a start that made her heart miss a beat the girl looked up. Except for herself and Jock Harrison, the room was empty. She realized what had happened. Aunt Erie and Wade Murrell had slipped quietly away to leave them uninterrupted together. Their obtuse hos- pitality had refused to grasp the fact that she studiously avoided being alone with this man as she would have avoided deadly contagion. Now she appeared trapped. The thing that for more than a week she had success- fully maneuvered and contrived to avoid had happened at last, and her face turned tgp —" Te hei ee ee - ~ Lhe - : ae ee : ee — 3 — Pe —— “ose ae — = == a 7 el @ ial | C | 0) oe) €! = pS aes @ yr a