The Argosy, Vol. 84 No. 1 — page 104: what you’re looking at

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

94 not had time to use, into his own belt. Then again he placed his fingers at the man’s throat. Nancy gave a cry of hor- ror: “Tt would be murder!” _ Gerard smiled at her. “You do not understand,” he said. “The one cure for the paralysis caused by that grip is pressure on a spot close to it. Now watch!” His fingers closed on Symmonds’s throat, then relaxed and closed again with a kneading motion. Symmonds’s eyes slowly opened. His chest filled as he drew in a deep breath. As his strength came back to him with a rush he plunged to his knees like an angry bull, till the rope about his wrists and ankles drew taut and threw him back- ward with a crash. Again he struggled up, and again the cutting rope held him fast. Derby looked on unmoved, standing between him and Nancy. Realizing at _ last the helplessness of his position, Sym- monds ceased to struggle and knelt, fac- ing Derby, his eyes glaring like those of a wolf at bay. “What are you going to do to me?”’ he snapped. ‘““T have not decided yet whether shoot- ing or hanging would suit you best. 1 intend to be guided by the recommenda- tion of this lady.”” Derby turned to Nan- cy as he spoke. ‘ Personally, I should recommend strapping him to his horse and taking him to the first camp whose morals were still lax enough to permit the men to revel in the pleasing occupation of lynching. I suppose we could not get him hanged legally within two hundred miles.” Nancy Gale turned to the window and looked out in silence. The power of de- ciding on life or death lay in the hands - of a girl of twenty-two. Symmonds, watching her with desperate. intensity, struggled*to guess which way the decision would lie. Slowly she turned to the waiting men. “Tf you are willing,” she said to Gerard, “I shal] let him go. He had THE ARGOSY. been drinking. He cannot have known what he was doing.” Derby shrugged his shoulders. “You are the judge. If I were, he should die.” Slowly he stooped above the man and with his knife cut the rope that bound him, covering him the while with the gun. Their eyes meeting — Gerard’s scornful and disgusted, Symmonds’s blazing still with wrath—sealed a compact of perpet- ual hatred that was bound to last until one or the other was incapable of mortal feeling. Slowly Symmonds rose to his knees, | gazing fixedly at the circle of blue steel in Gerard’s hands that followed his every movement. “Stranger, I have never seen you be- fore, but I will see you again.” Brute that he was, Symmonds was no man to know fear. Even as he looked down the revolver barrel he sneered. ‘The time will come when every drop of blood in your body will cry for mercy for what you have done to-night,” he added. Had Derby known the future, the fin- ger which lay on the trigger would have closed with a steady pressure; but he knew only the past and the present, and the instinct of generations of fair play prevented him from killing an unarmed man. He merely pointed to the door and silent, with set face, waited. Symmonds, with never a look behind him, turned and walked slowly out into the night. Gerard followed him to the door and watched him seize the bridle of his pony, which, restive with the long wait, pawed the ground impatiently. With a loud curse, Symmonds swung himself into the saddle and, plunging his spurs deep, rode off at a mad gallop down the trail. Derby stood in the doorway, looking after him till.-he could no longer be seen, and the sound of his horse’s hoofs grew faint and still fainter on the trail. Then he shut and bolted the door and drew the heavy storm shutters which covered the windows. CONMICELOOOKS (E@)