The Argosy, Vol. 84 No. 1 — page 113: what you’re looking at

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

DARING THE DANGER ZONE. cheeks as she caught the meaning of Derby’s words. “He was a faithful comrade,” she said brokenly; ‘‘‘ faithful unto death!’ ” At the earliest break of dawn, when the sun -was touching the hill-tops with gold, Gerard carried Patrick’s body to a spot near the site where the magazine had stood, and laying it tenderly in the natural grave caused by the explosion, he filled in the depression from the masses of loose rock and earth. With his jack-knife he carved a rough headboard and wedged it in the rocks. Then he went back for Nancy, and standing, simply, hand in hand above the grave, they prayed a silent prayer for the departed friend. ‘1 wish there were something more that we could do,” said Derby. _ Nancy climbed up on the hillside to where some hardy flowers grew amid the forbidding rocks. She gathered them and laid them lovingly upon the grave. Then Gerard took her hand and gently led her back to the shack. CHAPTER VII. THE TREAD BEHIND. ERARD had told Nancy that he in- tended to make it his first business to trace every detail of the attack on the powder-magazine. She was much sur- prised, therefore, on going to the brook for water to find him seated on a log by the stream, his knife in one hand and a bit of soft, mottled wood in the other. ‘“T thought that you were intent on in- - vestigations,” she said, coming up close behind him, “‘ and here you are like a schoolboy wiling away his recess by whit- tling a stick!” “True enough,” answered Derby calm- ly. ‘ Won’t you sit down and talk to me while I work?” “Work! I don’t call that work!” ex- claimed the girl impatiently. ‘‘ How can you waste your time at it when there is so much of importance to be done?” 103 ‘‘ Because,”’ observed Derby, neatly re- moving the mottled bark and pricking his knife deep into the pith, “ because I feel that the more at ease my mind is about you, the faster I can accomplish things when I get to work. Now, can you guess what I am making?” ‘“A whistle?” guessed Nancy, seating . herself on the log. | ‘‘ Precisely, a whistle. It can be used for various purposes—to call me, for in- stance, if 1 am at the corral when dinner is ready; or—” 7 “ Yes,” echoed Nancy significantly, “ or —I understand.” ‘It is a comfort that you do under- stand so readily. It saves a lot of ex- planation. Where is Bruno?” _ “Chained under the shack.” ‘“ Keep him with you, even when you go ~ as far as the brook. * His bark is even more carrying than this.”’ As he spoke, he raised the little cylinder to his eye and looked through it toward the sky. “Not a very satisfactory job,” he com- mented; ‘‘ but I can finish it more orna- mentally this evening. Now let us. agree upon a code of signals. If you want me a little for some small thing, blow once, like this. If you want me suddenly, blew twice. If you want me desperately, blew three times very fast—like this. Now, good-by!”’ ‘“ Good-by!” responded Nancy, picking up her pail; “‘ and do be careful of your- self, instead of thinking so much about me!” The thought of West Symmonds hung like a blight on Derby’s spirits. But fer that he could have taken blithely all the hardships of camp life and the gamble of putting in years of hard work for perhaps small profits and slow returns. In looking back on his first encounter with Symmonds, he almost blamed him- self for letting his enemy escape. It was becoming evident to him that this Sym- monds was more than the ordinary bad man, that he had some sort of organiza- tion back of him, and that there was a dangerous conspiracy afoot, a conspiracy ECOMMICLOOOKS (E)