Argosy, Vol. 117, No. 2 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

CROSSROADS. and in the saddle-bags he carried enough provision for many a day. The Arab seizes a handful of dates and another of barley, and is ready for the desert. The Southwesterner travels almost as light. For guide Dix Van Dyck carried an instinct sure as that of a hunting coyote or a migratory bird. His destination was— the world. CHAPTER II. DOUBLE BEND. E did not leave Guadalupe an hour too soon, for the new sheriff was hardly in office before a warrant for Dix Van Dyck appeared. A posse strove to serve it, and rode hard to the north, only to find that their bird had flown into distant regions. They returned with the ill news, and Sheriff Onate sat-~down to bide his time, for the Mexican has in fact, what the ele- phant is endowed with in fancy—a mem- ory which never dies. As for Dix Van Dyck, he cared not a whit what was happening behind him. He had no sooner turned his shoulder upon yesterday than it was lost and abandoned with the shades of distant years. His heart went galloping into the future. So it was, in the early evening, that he swung into sight of Double Bend, a group of ‘dobe huts and frame shacks huddling away into thé purples which swung down from the shadowy mountains beyond. Double Bend took its name from the windings of Coyote Creek, which flowed through its center. The main street fol- lowed the windings of that treacherous littl stream, and men held that the inhabitants of Double Bend were as snakelike as the street they walked. All of this'was unknown to Dix Van Dyck, for he had long since left far be-~ hind him the regions which he knew and where he was known. All that he Saw in Double Bend as he passed down its sinuous main street\looked very good to him.- It gave the impression of a town which has been much lived in. The window-panes, for instance, were usually shattered; the wooden Indian which _ 163 the proprietor of the general merchandise store had erected before his place of busi- ness was minus one arm, and his legs had almost been shot away. From a saloon of capacious proportions strains of music and the roll of voices proclaimed that “ a good time was being had by all.” So Dix Van Dyck hurriedly put up his horse in the stables, ate in the restaurant a great platter of ham and eggs, with an enormous side dish of French-fried pota- toes, and then bore toward the saloon and dance-hall. The gasoline lamp flaring over its en- trance was like the vortex of a whirlpool toward which all living things from many miles around gravitated with irresistible force. Buckboards littered one side of the street, and horses the other, and under the glare of the lamp a continual stream of men passed toward the dance-hall. None came out. It was like the yawning maw of some great monster drawing in an endless current of human food. At the door Dix Van Dyck paused and surveyed the interior. . His eye kindled. He was a devotee of neither whisky nor dancing, but here was life—life in plenty, action, — confusion, clamor. In such places and in such mo- ments the tang of the world came most sharply home to him. Moreover, there was a natural caution impelling the pause at the doorway. Inside might be a dozen foes, and a foe to Dix Van Dyck would not wait to give a warning. He would either flee or elise start shooting from the hip. Big Dix slipped into the shadow on one side and turned his leonine, ugly head from side to side in a slow survey. His trained eyes photographed a hundred faces—not one was known to him. The smile which had gone out while he made this preliminary survey now returned. He canted his head to one side and drank in the confusion of sounds which swept from dancing floor, bar, and gaming tables, all in one room. ‘Rolls five for his point. . . . Come, Phoebe; talk to me, little black-eyes! Rolls five.... Raise that ten... . Line up, gents; line up and name your poison. . . . Hey, Bill CORMICGLOO© S (C@)