Argosy, Vol. 112, No. 2 — page 42: what you’re looking at

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

7 ‘Ti ¥ pes Pua’ t Ay ; Oa hae a 4 C 5 | 7, ay ee a 208 ery. From his stool near the door where he had been napping, he rose up wildly at the first crack of battle. Jim Herring Was upon him. Over and over on the floor the two men rolled and the rifle with the bayonet clat- tered to a corner. They reeled against the bench-table. It went over. The candle, stuck in the vodka bottle, flickered a mo- ment and then went out. Barbarism was enacted on the rough log floor between the two antagonists in the darkness. Finally, with the Russian’s fingers at his throat crushing the life from his lungs, Jim Herring’s hand came in contact with one of the two stools with which the apart- ment was furnished. He gripped a leg and struck with the bit of poor furniture blindly. Insanely, with every instinct of self- preservation, again and again he belted at the form that bore down, bearlike, upon him. The fingers loosened. With a crazy sob, the American squirmed from under. Rising, he stumbled over the rifle. He lurched for it. The bayonet caught in the table. He yanked it loose and he stabbed with it. It was murder, and an awful sensation tore through the American. This was in- deed getting back to fundamentals, back to the primal and the survival of the fittest. The contorted hulk crumpled. The Ameri- can let the rifle sag, the bayonet still in his enemy’s body. He caught up the stool which had saved him. With it he belted out the sash and the window. Out into the death and de- struction he vaulted. Close to earth he crawled on his stomach. His direction was toward the attack, not away from it. Flames began to light the village. A hut on the edge of the street had been fired. It burned like a box of tinder. Wild and weird rose the barbaric conflagration. It disclosed masses of men rushing blind- ly to and fro, some on foot, some on horses. It showed snipers behind the corners of fences, the roofs of outbuildings. Above the boom and the crackle and the roar came the shrieks of wounded ponies and the bel- lowing of cattle. A shot from a heavily armored automo- THE ARGOSY. bile struck a flimsy roof and tore it so that it sagged with its weight of dead and dying human beings. Another building caught the flames. It was deserted by its occu- pants and they were shot as they ran from it. The Red Guards gathered the evening before to protect the place, found such mounts as they were able, and started off across the steppes, a detachment of Czechs hotly after them. The flames mounted higher. The din became more bewildering, terrifying, deafening. The place was being exterminated. 3 The American lay inert on his back, his arms outthrown, his eyés fixed on the stars. A detachment of mounted men swept past within a rod of him, enemy or friendly, he could not discern in the nightmare of their onrush. When it had passed, he rolled over slowly and crawled still farther. Luck had been with him. He thought so, at least. But after a quarter-mile of crawling from the settlement he found sud- denly that his left arm refused to function. He sat up and felt it over. A terrific pain went seething through it. His hand was warm and slippery with a sickening damp- ness. He had been shot as he came through the window! In his excitement he had never noticed it. At twenty minutes past two that morning the town of Biisk was a furnace. Daylight broke at twenty minutes to seven. The winter sun arose and looked down on another tragedy of the intervention in’ great Siberia. VIUI. Tue American opened his eyes. Again, as he had in the Red Triangle Club car, he tried to place his location. And then Jim Herring saw a vision— and he knew that he was in heaven. Over him bent a ministering angel—an angel whom he had seen many nights in his dreams—a celestial being on whose fore- head gleamed a scarlet cross. The Ameri- can cried out hoarsely. He reached his one good arm to her. ‘* Madelaine!’’ he moaned hysterically. ‘Yes, laddie,” she said soothingly. “I Gomichbooks (E(0)