The Argosy, Vol. 84 No. 2 — page 133: what you’re looking at

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

DARING THE DANGER ZONE, send another letter out with the clue that the secret service has been hunting for, there should be a Federal posse here with- in a week.” Gerard seated himself at the table and wrote a long letter to the office of the nearest postal inspector. “If that gets through,” he exclaimed as he sealed the envelope and threw it on the table, “we shall probably win out. -When should Pedro be here?” ‘Not until to-morrow. The trail is bad always to Independence, and it is worse than usual now.”’ “Are you sure that your father never recorded his location of these claims?” Derby asked. “If the records are all right we could leave the mine in perfect safety. With the discovery which I have made of the old shaft, there is no question as to the amount of assessment work, and I think that back in the East, on the strength of the deposits which I have actually seen, I could raise all the money we need.” Nancy shook her head doubtfully. ‘‘ Just before father left he mailed the papers to the recorder; but he mailed them from Esperanza. From what we know now, there is very little chance that they ever left there. We never re- ceived any acknowledgment. Still — if you want to go—” She looked at Gerard imploringly. “After all,” she thought “ why should a man who is really almost a stranger to me make such sacrifices as he has made, and why should I expect him to go on making them and _ taking still further risks after such experiences as his in the Esperanza mine?” Derby interpreted her glance quickly. “Tt was only of you that I was think- ing,” he replied. “If we leave now and the location has not been recorded, every location notice on the place will be torn down within an hour after we have gone and there will be plenty of Symmonds’s witnesses who will swear that they were never posted. I do not know what to do,’ he went on perplexedly. ‘“ You 315 ought not to stay, yet you cannot leave alone.” Nancy tossed her little head de- terminedly. “IT can answer the question for you. Whatever happens I am going to stay.” Gerard’s face lighted with admiration. “All right, comrade! Have it’ your own way! You know the risks. After what I have seen of you I know that you will face the music; but, after all, such risks were made to be borne by men, not by girls.” Involuntarily, as he spoke, he thought cof Gladys Hayden. He asked himself how she would have acted in such a sit- uation. He wondered whether her per- sonality would survive and how it would thrive amid the rough and ready realities ox such an existence as this, He still loved her, or thought that he did, which amounted to the same thing, yet in all frankness to himself he was obliged to admit that she never would have stood face to face with fate as un- flinchingly as Nancy Gale had done. Nancy had meanwhile drawn her chair in front of Derby and was gazing at him with a charmingly direct frankness. “You say risks should be borne by men and not by girls,” she repeated, ‘‘ but tell me this: Would you ever wish to marry a girl who would not stand by your side in danger? Is not that quality the one which you would require first and foremost in a friend? Could you ever feel that a person who did not possess it was a comrade?” . Gerard was startled by her. remark, which had unconsciously fitted in so closely with his momentary reflection. ‘“T do not know that I ever thought of it in that way,” he answered. ‘I suppose a man never really does know just why he falls in love.” “T have seen so little of the world,” went on Nancy, with a sigh, “ that I do not know much about love. I had al- ways supposed there must be some good reason for it. : ‘““T have been brought up in such a GomiGcovooks (C@