Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 4 — page 180: what you’re looking at

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

686 Nevertheless, there was a thread linking these occurrences. IH. DaNNy SHANE had a habit of telling the amusing incidents of the day to Mary Loo- mis. He did it with such quaint humor, such a touch of exaggeration, that Mary hung on his words as if they came from an oracle. Danny was somewhere north of the cotton line, and was son of the presi- dent of the Vulcan Stove Foundry Com- pany. He was twenty-four, older than Mary by four whole years. They were sitting out in front of Judge Loomis’s home, just north of town. The honeysuckle clambering up the porch were in full bloom; thousands of night insects sang in relays in the oak grove. And the moonlight was mildly tempered with dark- ness. “Say, what you think?” said Danny. “As I went home from here last night I dropped by the Kelley Springs for a drink, and there was an old man looking for the buried treasure. Had a pick to dig it up with and a gunny-sack to carry it home in. Armed, too, in case anybody tried to rob him. 2) “ That’s antisusl—a man,” said Mary; “ it’s usually boys. -What was he like?” ‘‘ Oh, a working man of some kind; a big old fellow. Couldn’t see him good. Who- ever heard of such foolishness?” Judge Loomis, who was going out, paused on the steps, fingered his goatee and added his mite to the conversation. “ Yo’ fo’tune hunteh wasn’t a niggah, Ill wageh, an’ many of ouh whites wouldn’t go neah the place. It’s ouh only haunted ground, you know. Something up theah, they say, that runs the dogs off. Even a bulldog that could whip a moun- tain lion comes back with his tail between his legs. “You see,” he laughed as he walked away, ‘“‘ dogs an’ animals in general can see things invisibfe to mortal eyes.”’ “Ts that the reason,’ Danny asked Mary, “that you're afraid for me to be out after night? Or do you fear that the old fortune-hunter will rob me and beat me up?” Dic g itiz ry Go ogle ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. “Neither, Danny; I can’t tell you now. But I wish you’d take a conveyance or come and go sometimes by different routes.”’ 66 Pish! > . “ What’s that, Danny?” “T said I wie YOu ‘wouldn't Hy to scare me. PP] But Mary was not alone in her views on Danny’s safety. One day he was accosted on the street by a stranger, who drew him ‘aside and tipped him off to avoid the Kel- _ley Springs neighborhood after night. Evi- dently the fellow meant*to be vague and mysterious, and he achieved his purpose. Refusing to unveil his identity or explain the nature of the danger threatening young Shane, he walked away. Danny was not frightened off. It was beginning to dawn on him that there might be something to Mary’s apprehensions, but it would take something more than the vague warnings of a stranger to keep him away from Mary Loomis. Sometimes he dropped by the springs on his way home. He did not see again the old fortune-hunt- er with the pick and gunny-sack,.and as for weird, uncanny things that took the starch out of buildogs’ tails—rot! Grave- yard terrors were for negroes and children. It was not long, however, till the mys- tery was explained with a precision and eloquence that mere words could never have attained. At eleven o’clock he left Judge Loomis’s, and a little after eleven, as he was leisure- ly making his way homeward, a rock or “other inelastic object suddenly bumped into the road at his heels. He was oppo- site the Kelley Springs, but he could not ascribe anything so grossly materialistic as a two-pound rock to the work of ghosts. The huge, grimy fortune-hunter whom he had seen at the springs also loomed for an instant in his mind. But he had little time for reflection, for on the heels of the first rock, and close to his own, came another, then another. Then one whistled in his ear. Discretion is sometimes the better part of valor, but Danny had no time to think of platitudes. He ran. That is, he ran on level ground “and up-hill; going down-hill auIo sTaTe UGOLe ebooks