Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 189, No. 4 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

488 disfield was thinking of Janice, gloating in the belief that his plans as regarded her were at last showing signs of early fulfill- ment. Several weeks had elapsed since his talk with Hugh Lamberton and the sinister understanding developed between them as a result of that conference. Jan’s cousin had been adroit in the way he went about his delicate task, drawing upon his fertile imagination for facts indica- tive of Sandisfield’s worth, but all in all doing it so casually that Janice never sus- pected herself to be the victim of a selling campaign. Hugh’s efforts were made the easier because of the high regard the girl’s dead uncle had held for Martin Sandisfield, and also because Jan was on the whole not unfavorable to his ardent attentions. “‘ She’s coming round,” her worthy suitor reflected triumphantly. ‘No question about it. That dance ought to clinch the business. I’ve got to watch my step till the halter’s pulled tight on her pretty neck. After that she’ll be mine, and all hell can’t take her away.” These highly agreeable musings were in- terrupted by a sudden and unexpected plunge of his mount, which nearly unseated Sandisfield, skilled horseman though he was. The animal had stepped close to the nest of a mourning dove, and the distracted mother bird fluttered up, wings beating frantically almost in its face. That was the final straw to equine endurance, tried to the breaking point by a morning of torment. A trivial cause often brought to the sur- face the passion that slumbered like a dor- mant volcano in Sandisfield’s brain. “Try to buck me off, would you?” he snarled, using quirt, spurs, and bit as a punishment for the rashness that had dared challenge his supremacy. The pony’s response to this violence was instinctive and instantaneous: he arched his back like an angry cat, bucking and sun- fishing in a maddened effort to shake off the cause of all his troubles, which only brought further punishment. Under the stimulus of Sandisfield’s savagery the goad- ed horse bucked the more earnestly, and the more he bucked the blacker grew his e@wner’s rage. By this time Sandisfield was quite beside ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. himself, and he began quirting at the horse’s eyes, heedless of everything save a determination to conquer this brute or kill it. For the time all other considerations were forgotten in the flood of depraved pleasure he experienced in gratifying his lust for cruelty. Subconsciously he was recon- ciled to postponing the Boxed J L visit, realizing that his horse would be left in no condition to be seen by tender-hearted Jan- ice Lamberton. The pony shook its head and squealed with rage and pain, as Sandisfield deliber- ately cut at its eyes with the quirt, eager to blind it if possible. Sandisfield’s own eagerness proved his ruin, for it left him quite unprepared for a sudden lithe twist of the muscular body between his legs; it was more than a sideward twist—a snap, rather, as of a powerfully compressed spring abruptly released. With a gasp of astonishment and dismay Sandisfield found himself hurtling through the air, to land with a disconcerting thud on one shoulder, breath jolted from his body. The pony snorted in triumph at finding itself freed from the ruthless domination of the man who had tortured it. Without an instant’s hesitation it whirled toward Sandisfield’s half-unconscious body, fore- feet reared aloft in readiness to finish the good work already started. Sandisfield looked stupidly up from the ground where he lay; he heard the trium- phant squeal of the horse he had man- handled; he saw its flashing hoofs about to descend. He tried to reach the gun be- neath him, but his muscles seemed para- lyzed, incapable of responding. At that instant Sandisfield was powerless, unable to lift even a finger to save himself from being pounded to a quivering mass of jelly. At heart little better than a craven, he died a thousand deaths in that awful instant while the horse reared above him like a sable Nemesis. He cowered closer to the ground, shrinking from the expected blows. It is necessary to leave Martin Sandis- field involved in this serious predicament while the reader’s attention is briefly di- (€(0) DOOKS AAI (E@)