The Argosy, December 1905 — page 161: what you’re looking at

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

BLOCK TOWER SEVEN. letter, and that Crompton had seen somebody lurking near the signal tower before he left, and how Markell had given him his blackjack when Dan started home. All this in a jumble that fired Belle’s anxiety to the highest pitch. Poor Silly Billy had forgotten all about Sade Armet and the letter she had striven to make him deliver to Dan the night before; but Belle pieced the two businesses together and at once con- nected Dan’s disappearance with Jase and Ike Howard. And not that*she had any particular interest in Dan Crompton, beyond the: fact that she knew him to be a brave man who had, on two occasions, been an instrument in saving her from injury. She was not a foolishly romantic girl— not one to gather a personal interest in a man whom she had never spoken to except on one evening. She feared, as had her mother, that black streak in the Howards which, in Captain Payne’s case, had led him to espouse the Lost Cause, and stick to his belief in the Southern Confederacy when the issue for which that union stood was as dead as Julius Cesar! With other members of the family— more ignorant and less noble members— the bad blood had shown in law-break- ings more than once. Jase and [ke Howard were the ring- leaders of the clan, now living in the hills some thirty miles from Coldspring. She had no fear of them on her own part, but. she feared what they might do to a man lke Crompton, whom they so greatly hated. Her mind, spurred by Silly Billy’s story, concentrated upon one thought. She would get to the bottom of that note to Dan Crompton; she would know what it meant. With this end in view she attacked "Tilda Armet first. But at once ’Tilda dissolved mto tears. This was her main defense upon all occasions—the bulwark against which even Captain Payne’s _ wrath surged and broke in vain. But Belle was not at all touched by these tears; she was a woman herself, and women easily penetrate the foibles and shams of their sex. She managed to get the verbal declaration from ’Tilda 139 that the contents of the note Sade had been instructed to deliver at the signal tower (“if there was airy note ”—to quote the sobbing *Tilda) were unknown to her. ‘ Belle knew it to be worse than use- less to seek to interest her father in the matter. At breakfast she hid her trouble successfully, but said, as he ht his long and black cigar before going out: “Send me Jetty up from the stable in an hour, please, father. I am going to ride out the river road this morn- “ All right, Maybell,” he responded, in his*most affectionate manner. When the old captain was not in the throes of a wrathful eruption, he was thwarted his daughter in her least in- tention. The horse came up to the house on the minute. She left word with ’Tilda, as though it had been an afterthought that she might stop at a friend’s for luncheon, and possibly not be home until dinner- time. Then, once free of the town, she set Jetty to her best paces. She had been over the road before and knew it well. Ten miles out from Coldspring there was a branch wagon road leading into the hills, and skirting the railroad for many miles, passing through the same break in the heights which the railroad builders had found when they surveyed the A. & C. right of way. Although the way was so familiar to Belle, she had never penetrated as far as the neighborhood where the rocky farms of Jase Howard and his clan were situated. Not even as a child had she been allowed to associate, to any degree at all, with her cousins. She was not afraid of them, however. . the kindest man imaginable, and never | She believed her own father was feared — by Jase and his crew far more than out- siders feared the mountaineers. Harm could not befall her in this proposed visit. | And from Sade, or somebody else, she - was determined to draw an explanation of the note delivered to Dan Crompton the night before; and, if the Howards had to do with his disappearance, she COmICLOOOKS (C@