Argosy, Vol. 119, No. 2 — page 37: what you’re looking at

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

a x Ad - e 2 eB = S dt ag 3 ch a eA . te ‘ ¢ - STRONGER THAN IRON. 187 a layer from half the face of the cliff into which they were boring and it had heaped up the débris in a wilderness of strange shapes. One mass of broken rock rose up like a slovenly built wall; tiny slivers and pieces as big as a man’s trunk had gone into the making and it towered unsteadily fully twenty feet high. Even as the smoke began to clear it wavered and settled a little, with a hint of complete collapse. Instinctively the men halted, waiting for the crash. The crash did not come. Jacques Bolduc ‘turned his head slowly and his eyes fell upon Etienne—they went to the pile of jagged rocks again and back to the man he hated. Suddenly he leaped to where a couple of crowbars leaned against a neigh- boring block of stone and seized one in each hand. ‘“ Here, Dubois!” he cried, holding out a bar. “ Help me tip that pile over! You others stand clear!” = Mechanically Etienne took the bar and went forward with the boss, but even as he did so he realized that he had read purpose in the glance of Bolduc. Should he turn back? Not that—the others would call him a coward. His fingers took a tighter hold upon the iron. He would see it through— Jacques could not harm him now that he was forewarned. . ‘Loosen that big chunk in the middle— at the bottom!” ordered Bolduc. ‘ That’s the keystone. I’ll work at the ends so that it'll all go together!” Dubois scrambled to the big stone to which the foreman had pointed and labored to get the point of his bar under one corner of it. _He heard shouts of warning from the other men and he knew that they realized his apparent danger; but -he knew also that the rock upon which he was spending his strength uselessly would have little or noth- ing to do with the fall of the mass above it. He had not worked with stone all his life without profiting in knowledge of its ways’ and he knew, as well as Bolduc knew, that this particular fantastic pile would collapse under leverage from the rear. The weight leaned forward, and the place in which Etienne Dubois stood would be a place of death. _ Nevertheless Dubois remained where he was for the moment, grunting and making a | great pretense of labor. He heard the clink of Bolduc’s bar at one end of the pile. Then the sound ceased and at length from the op- posite side, and above his head, came a shout. ‘“ Are you ready, Dubois? What’s _the matter with you?” ‘“ Another minute!” he replied to the in- visible voice. ‘One minute more and Ili be ready to get out of the way.” With the words he dropped his bar and leaped for his life, going cat-footed from rock to rock in spite of thick shoes and a strong desire to laugh. He reasoned thus: Bolduc was ready to spring his trap and had wanted to make sure that he was still in front of the pile. An ominous grating and the sound of falling fragments con- firmed his belief—he knew as certainly as though he had looked behind that the rocks were teethering forward. Only at the corner where Bolduc had first pretended to work did Etienne stop. There he swung around, breathless, just as a cry that was half shout, half groan, came from the watchers. He saw tons of rock in a slow movement that gained velocity each. frac- tion of a second—saw that Jacques Bolduc had fallen and was being carried forward with one leg twisted down into the grinding wave of stone which would break in a mo- ment with a shower of dust and splinters. Etienne gathered himself, hesitated, and sprang straight up the side of the totering prison of Bolduc. He had no hope either for himself or the foreman until he had actually laid hold upon the shirt of the latter—and then, just as he began to think that the long delayed crash would delay a little longer, it came. He flung himself backward as they fell, partially freeing Jacques, and saw the world become a black- ness shot with streaming fire. Etienne Dubois awoke in his own bed with the face of an amateur nurse whom he knew very well bending over him. She — called him “un brave,” and told him to go to sleep; which he promptly refused to do without some idea of what had happened. Thus he learned that he himself was sound, except for some injuries about the face as to which the nurse would not be explicit. The foreman? He lay at home very A Eomichbooks:. co