The Argosy, Vol. 84 No. 2 — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

SOUTHWEST Those nearest leaped forward, their faces dropping their smile, their eyes gleaming again with hate, their hands clenched in the desire to complete their job of murder. And this seemed real to Phillips, the re- turn of a momentarily lapsed conscious- ness on his own part. “ Back!” he shouted, seizing one of the several clubs that cluttered the spot. But he had not to use it. The men fell back of their own accord. “ Phillips commands,” spoke one. “ We obey Phillips. He is our friend, our master.” And Phillips suddenly understood. They had seen his fight on their behalf. It had been such an object lesson as he might not have hoped to show in years— as he could not yet wish to have shown _-at all. At last they comprehended. Already their faith in Pinhon and Pinhon’s lies was shattered. Already some of the older ones and wiser had begun to suspect that they had lost in Phillips the best manager they could ever hope to serve. Now he had proven the truth of their suspicion. And he had convinced the others. As for rebellion against all authority, they had had their fill. Most of them had been born in peonage. To serve was a natural attitude of mind, the normal manner of life. And just as all this was dawning upon him as realizations generally dawn, in- stantly, in a flash of revelation—Evelyn Reade walked into their midst. Behind her trailed the new doctor. Both were laden with bandages. “ Viva la senhorina!’”’ some one shout- ed. The cry became a new outburst of — enthusiasm. Evelyn Reade had sat in horrified ter- ror at the sounds which succeeded Hag- gins’s arrival in the stockade, until she had seen Phillips running toward the place. She could hardly have explained why that sight prompted her to follow. She was conscious only of an effort to comprehend how Phillips could have gone OF THE LAW. 249 for aid instead of merely fleeing from danger, and could have got back in hard- ly more than twelve hours. She had seen Phillips stop the beating up of the helpless peon inside the stock- ade gate. She had seen Haggins almost knock him down for the interference. She had been on the point of rushing forward for one more protest against her fiancé’s brutality; but had stopped at the thought of the hopelessness of such protest. Be- sides that, she had caught sight of the man with the mutilated hands. That sight had sent her scurrying back to the bungalow for bandages from the storerooms. Half-way, she had met the doctor who had followed his patient in doubt as to what might befall a man who had seemed so exhausted. At her behest, the doctor had gone with ner to help bring bandages enough for the work she knew must await in that fenced- off acre of horror. She had got back to the stockade in time to behold Phillips, with blood streaming from his cut face, white, un- steady on his feet—plunge again into thé mélée of the savages. Not until the men had shouted the word that Haggins was dead, had she been able to guess what lay in the center of their close circle. It no longer worried her that this news was an insufficient shock to destroy the gladness she felt in the moment’s demon- stration that Phillips was no coward. Now, even as she knelt to assist the doctor in ministering to the unconscious man, her eyes flashed with something he dared not believe in, any more than he had belie¥ed a moment since in the sud- aen good-will of the peons. At the least it was_a warm congratulation upon the “vivas”’ of the natives. But they took it for something more. Or, perhaps, mere love having little to do with their ideas of matrimony, they, thought her but the natural prize of the dominant white man. And no notion of causing embarrassment prevented them from altering the last huzzah of their vol- atiiely happy temperaments. GO NOOK AMUC (C@