Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 2 — page 151: what you’re looking at

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

CROSSROADS. He leaned across the table and stared at her. | ‘““ Jack,” he said, I got-an idea it’d be to your interest to get him off this here trail of Onate.” She jumped from her chair and stood with flushed face, glaring at him. “What d’you mean, Glasgow?”’ “T dunno,” said the marshal, and grinned not unkindly at her, ‘“ but just think it over. If he’s worth saving, Jack, you got to keep him away from the sher- iff.”” She turned slowly away. She was not thinking of the marshal’s words, but she was seeing again in her mind’s eye the care- less, boyish recklessness of Van Dyck as she had first watched him in the dance-hall; how long ago it seemed! The heart of a boy and the heavy hand of astrong man! The two did not go safely together. She tried to define him; he was simply a grown-up mischief-maker. And then the advice of the marshal struck home in her mind. She could have blessed him for it. She knew that Dix Van Dyck had followed through the mountains on a long trail. Perhaps for her sake he would give up his vengeance on Onate. After all, it was only a dim hope, for she remembered how he had sat at their table in the dance-hall and actually waited for the pursuit to overtake him—waited in the hope and: joyous expectation of a fight; waited because he challenged the bad luck of the cross which she wore. She remembered how his agile ‘hand had suddenly poised on the edge of the table and his eyes fixed and burned past her so that she had known that the enemy was in the room. Then the down swoop of that hand, the flash of the revolver, the boom of the shot; and how the Mexican had staggered back with his hands across his face. - It was terribly clear to her. And terribly clear were the misfortunes which the cross had brought upon him. First the outlawry. She had broken that, but now he was a known man, and at the first suspicion, things would go hard with him at the hands of the officers of the law. And now the bad luck led him on toward Onate. He was sure to strike at the Mexi- 301 can; he was sure to succeed; and afterward there would be the inevitable outlawry again, and this time the pursuit which must end in the death of Van Dyck. Once he had escaped; it would be impossible to do so twice. a In the sense of helplessness which over- whelmed her she caught her hand to the base of her throat to seize the little metal cross and throw it away from her, any- where, into the night. But at her touch the cross pressed cold against her flesh and she remembered a thousand things. It had betrayed others, perhaps, but to her, the cross had been a continual salvation. It was wealth and strength to her; and it carried with it a host © of associations. She felt that she would never have the strength to give it up, even for Van Dyck. But here her thoughts paused, suddenly. It was necessary first of all to reach Van Dyck and tell him first of the pardon and then of the necessity of keeping from the trail of Onate. She waited until after mid- night, to let the stallion rest. Then she started slowly on the trail for Guadalupe, keeping well to the right of the beaten track and among the hills. For she knew that Van Dyck would head toward Guad- alupe to reach Onate. CHAPTER XXXVI. ONATE’S GENOR DON PORFIRIO MARIA ONATE could neither sit nor stand in comfort. He could not walk without cross- ing a doorway, and every time he crossed a doorway there came over him a shuddering thought that the door might open and a giant spring out upon him. A giant such as his trembling friends had described to him, unkempt, unshaven, lean, hollow-eyed, swift, and terrible—with hands that crushed throats with a single grip and steel-faced fists that broke heads—seemed too fright- ful to contemplate. Senor Onate caressed his neck with his pudgy hands. He retired from the vicinity of the yawning doorway and sought refuge in the corner of his room. INSPIRATION, (€(0) vOOK (E@)