Argosy, Vol. 111, No. 1 — page 136: what you’re looking at

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

126 He stood trembling by the blaze, extending his skinny hands, rubbing them together. ‘“T’ve had a hard chase,” he rambled. Damn you, Bagley, you’re as hard to find as Mason told me you was. I worked with Mason. Fine chap, if you’d let him alone. Of course, that wouldn’t ha’ got us any- thing-—but it didn’t, anyway.” He laughed crazily. ‘God! I was months in a Toronto hospital, looked like sure death, but you never could kill me. Like a kid, like a man, that’s the way I am. I’ve got ninety-nine lives; talk about a bum cat! ‘Seemed like a hundred years in the hospital, while they was makin’ me over. An’ the pain—say, man! Greatest surgeon in Canada, they said; he was workin’ on me for his own reputation—an’ when he sent me out, the way I am, they gave him a vote o’ thanks or something. ‘“‘ Get busy, partner, an’ gimme something to eat, an’ some coffee. I’m starved like a wolf!” Mechanically Bagley started to do as he was bidden. It was as if he were under a weird influence and dared not disobey. ‘“Let’s see,” pursued the gray man a little later, as he squatted before the camp- fire, eating greedily. Bagley was not eating. ‘“‘ There was a lot o’ money stuffed in that satchel: papers, notes an’ all. About seventy-five thousand dollars. Lot o’ kale there, eh, partner? An’ we didn’t get a smell of it.” Bagley writhed where he sat huddled against a tree. He did not speak. His look toward the hunched figure was un- speakably evil. “* So,” went on the gray man, “I made my plan while I was in the hospital. When the rest of ’em said I’d die, the surgeon an’ I said: I wouldn’t. An’ as soon as I got out I started lookin’ for you. It’s been hard going; I was nearly all in when I found you.” He chewed at a bread crust. There was audible the rattle of his artificial teeth. “You know what a peach prospector Mason was, Bagley? But he gave it up after he’d found two fortunes an’ wasted ?em. An’ died at only thirty-five, at that. But he had a nose for the ledges.” THE ARGOSY. “Yes,” grunted Bagley, his shifty eyes flashing to the grim figure crouched in the firelight, “‘ he was a wonder at it.” ‘ Well,” crowed the gray man, “ cheer up about havin’ a partner. He was good, but I’m better. I proved it in Alaska—an’ I wasted the stuff same as Mason did. Didn’t you ever hear of Hank Meigs up in Alaska?” “Yeah,” replied Bagley, his eyes bright- ening at an obscure memory now revived, ‘“T did. You’re an older man than us.” Mockingly the gray man swept off his cap. His crown was. bald and shining. “ Fever first,” he explained laconically. ‘“T was afire from head to foot in the hos- pital. Then the pain—it made what was left of it white, like you see. But there’s a lot o’ stuff left in the old bald nut. You'll see! : “T ain’t very strong. You'll have to sort o’ cart me around, partner. There’s two of us now; the third one’s dead. We're after as big a haul as the one we lost. We’ve got seventy-five thousand dollars to get. If we can’t get it out of a steel safe, we'll find it in a rock. You'll have to do most of the work, and I'll find the strike; if it takes a year or if it takes five! ‘Then we share an’ share alike?” Con Bagley grunted eagerly. The gray man lighted a pipe and smoked silently over the fire, which Bagley rose to replenish. The plumed night shut down. The scarred, frightful face of the gray man showed fitfully in the leaping flame of the fire. Against the tree rested Bagley, his glowering eyes searching the bowed, maimed figure. They shot sparks of evil while Con dreamed his dreams. ‘‘ Share and share alike, eh? Well, they’d have to make the strike first.”’ It was the second summer of this odd partnership that the strike was made, in a region a hundred miles west of the point where the two had met on the shore of the lake. As he had constantly assured Bagley, he would do, when gibing at his blundering, even while Con carried him—almost—in the faring through the wilds, like a carping ‘old man of the sea,” it was the gray man who made it. COMmiilclooo SS (@