The Argosy, Vol. 82, No. 3 — page 195: what you’re looking at

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

A WATCHFUL WAITER. board of the empty vehicle, where it could- not fail to be seen. Turning the horse around, Jeff led the animal a hundred yards or so down the road that stretched straight away toward the settlement. He struck the mare smartly on the flank with his open hand. ‘““G’long there, you Jenny!” he ordered under his breath. ‘ You’re goin’ to town, understand?—and don’t you stop for any- thing till you get there.” The horse moved away at a trot. Jeff pulled out his watch, looking up at the sun. There were three hours of daylight left. It would take the horse fully a third of that time to reach the town. It would be perhaps thirty minutes more, his mes- sage having been found and read, before the citizens would be assembled and ready to ride out to his place. And it would take them another hour to get there—two hours and a half, all told, must pass before he could expect help to arrive. But, of course, all this presupposed that everything would turn out without a hitch ——that the horse would hold to the pace all the way at which it had started off and not wander, driverless, from the road. “Tt’s a long-shot chance I’m takin’, I know,” Jeff muttered to himself. “ But I can’t go away and leave her and the kid alone with those devils!” Going back on his tiptoes, Jeff removed his sombrero and once more stole a look around the side of the hill. The ragged crew had by now completed their looting of the dwelling. There was little of intrinsic worth the Millers owned to reward them. No mon- ey was there, or silverware—or valuables of any sort that could be converted into cash. The house had been dismantled, nevertheless, to judge from the tumbled pile of household goods on the ground out- side it; probably in a search for such hid- den treasures. Jeff saw his wife standing a little apart from the tall, dark-skinned vagabond, evi- dently the leader of the gang, who had struck her across the face with his open hand. She did not once look toward the hill around whose side Jeff was furtively watching. She was too clever for that. A question, bringing with it an instant dryness to his mouth and a nervous clenching of his hands, rose in his mind as 569 he watched his wife standing apathetically there in the outlaws’ midst: Where was the baby? She should have been holding it in her arms. They hung listlessly at her sides— empty. He knew there was no place in the house where she could have hidden the infant at the mob’s coming. No place in which they would not have discovered it in their, ransacking of the abode and brought it forth before this. The ranchman opened his hands and clenched them again, the veins in his neck swelling with the mounting of the mur- derous wrath once more within him. If they had harmed his little son— But there it was again. What could he do to them, one against three hundred? He could drop their leader from where he stood, and perhaps five more of the band, with the bullets left in his gun. “Then the remainder would overwhelm him, and so snuff out the one chance left for his wife and child—if it was still alive—to escape from their clutches. He must stay where he was, and do nothing to betray his presence, so that he could follow the villainous rabble when they made off, and mark the direction they took. He could leave a trail of scraps of pa- per torn from his memorandum-book, which the townsmen would follow until they caught up to the miscreants and cap- tured or slew the lot. But now, having sacked the dwelling, why didn’t they set fire to it and depart? Jeff saw the leader turn to give an or- der to two of the miscreants beside him. They seized the woman and dragged her to the hitching-post. Forcing her to sit down with her back against it, they bound her arms to the post. Then two more of the swarthy crew emerged from the house. bore a bowl of water. The other held a bag of salt. Jeff saw the latter kneel be- side his wife, force her mouth open, and rub a handful of salt in it, laughing at her struggles to frustrate his purpose by twist- ing her head from side to side. The other Mexican set down the bowl of water in front of her, an inch or so be- yond her reach. And, with his companion, he stepped back. ‘“They’re goin’ to leave her behind to suffer the tortures of the damned with the thirst that salt will set up.” Jeff voiced (EO) oNOLOLKS AAG One of them . (E@)