Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 11, 1925 — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

_ FLIGHT TO ashen with dread and anger as she came to her feet and commanded tensely: “ Leave me alone. Get out of here!” “Your vocabulary is losing its color, my dear,” he laughed at her. “In the old days there would shave been a fierier eloquence. You would have said: ‘ Get- the-hell out of here, you big bum!’ ” “Get out—get out—get out!” she re- peated. monotonously, with a sense of numbed despair. . She could not banish the sinking terror of one who stands on the scaffold alone save for the executioner. There was no up-leap of the old _ spirit, which had always been ready to meet com- bat half way. “T should have been able to protect my- self,” Carroll went on with a hard steadi- ness. “‘I knew your type at least. But these people are simple and generous. They are easily deceived. The penitentiary was intended for such public menaces as you— that, or—”’ Cynthia caught at her breast as if to hold and steady her palpitating heart with her tremulous fingers. ““ Wade Murrell!” she screamed wildly, and it was like a shriek out of nightmare. “Aunt Erie. For God’s sake come here!” They could not have been far away, but it was Wade who first came eruptively through the door, and his face, for once, was almost as startled as her own— startled, but doubly dangerous. “What is it?” he demanded. He saw the girl leaning against the wall near her chair, her eyes wide and terrified, but he saw Stacy Carroll as composed as if there had been no outcry, and his quick eye took in the fact that the man stood haif the width of the room away from the girl herself. : It was Carroll who answered, and his tone was reassuringly steady. “ Miss Stokes,” he volunteered, “ has had a fright. I tried to reassure her, but she heard some sound outside—or thought so— and she was convinced that an enemy of yours was lurking about.” He paused and then he went on: “ It was a sort of waking nightmare. I fancy that since that other night when she saw you shot at, Murrell, her imagination has been overkeen. One THE HILLS. 251 has to be raised to it to take these things calmly.” , He looked over at the girl and his eyes were full of warning. Already Cynthia had begun to wonder what she would say; what explanation she would give. Already she had seen in her imagination the catastrophe that would spring from the unleashed wrath of Wade Murrell should she tell the truth. Impulse had cried out and now judgment repented. Slowly she nodded her head. “T guess it was just nerves,” she said, as her spread fingers pressed her hot temples. - “It sounded like a foot breaking twigs— but it sounded too cautious for an honest noise.” 3 “Tl slip out at the back,” said Wade, ‘an’ take a kinderly look round. Don’t woorit yoreself, gal. Ill be heedful.” Aunt Erie, who had been only a little tardier than Wade, sat down again philo- sophically in her chair and nodded. One could not afford to take alarms too seriously when they came so often. “‘T reckon,” she said, “ ther sort of life we leads up hyar seems right full of dire perils fer them thet hain’t borned ter hit.” Cynthia felt suddenly and _ vastly ashamed. Carroll had laughed at the Joan of Arc idea. It was certainly no Joan of Arc he had just seen. “It’s the sudden thing,” she said defen- sively. “It’s the things that don’t give you a moment to brace yourself.” Into her voice came a note of wildness. “It’s living under—the same roof with fear.’ Carroll found it impossible to sleep for some hours that night, and when the cabin was quiet, except for Aunt Erie’s snores, he opened his door and sat moodily on the threshold. The starlit skies, freshly scoured by the storm, were diamond-bright, and he breathed deeply air that still tasted pungently electrical with freed ozone. Somehow the game had changed and be- come sordidly depressing. Somehow mat- ters stood in altered aspect and his mind was troubled. “ God knows,” he mused, “ a woman who is capable of murder doesn’t call for much sympathy—and yet I feel a damned brute.” = comic a = — 2° Ee JOOKS (Lo n | we ee? + AM 7 a ee bY ne) i*. . ia a! ‘iba al Vat . NU NAD I Tae Dy SRT ON ays eet PRE eS “pastas hae? Me : PONT HOR RUNYAN CL UAL RARMS PREM Hy SOM ASO ye TO Wey SAREE