Argosy, Vol. 120, No. 1 — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

18 mouth of David Burns; and he saw that she did not eat more than long enough to make the pretense of hunger. It was for her sake that he had sat down to the meal without protest and it was for her sake that he let the days slip on, one after another, without trying to settle the issue raised by the stealing of Fred Abare’s traps. It remained open, with infinite possibilities of future trouble, while the snow sogged down at the touch of the spring thaw and the time for them to go on the drive drew near. It was understood that both men were going. .Stowe would not stay at home and David could not. LEasy-going Mink Hill would not have gossiped, perhaps, about Molly, because even Harry’s former sweet- hearts liked her; but Harry himself was ready to entertain any dark suspicion of anybody. He was oppressed by the weight of poverty, he was fettered by a wife, and he did not have enough chewing-tobacco to satisfy unstintedly his taste: such, final- ly, was the reluctant judgment of Burns. He puzzled over this, sitting long hours in the kitchen thinking, until he remem- bered that neither Stowe nor himself had before been subjected to the grind of pro- longed misfortune. Quick, hard blows, yes; and dangers overcome in a moment or an hour. But nothing like the past winter. He was both sorry and worried about his partner, and his partner’s wife, and he was glad when at length there remained but one more night before they were to go north to the headwaters of the Skeene River to begin work. It was the same river that ran within a few hundred yards of the log-house, and from which they carried their water in pails.- On the morning before the men were to leave it was Stowe’s turn to-do the chores. He was more cheerful that day than he had been in weeks and as he sauntered out after breakfast, with the pails clanking in his hand, he turned and called to the others to come out into the spring sunlight. Dave followed Molly out of doors and they stood together in the path that led to the river. That path was like a dark-brown sponge beneath their feet. But only in such places, where the snow had been shoveled away did the earth show. The rest of the world was THE ARGOSY. covered by a damp, white covering that was plowed by gurgling rivulets—rivulets that flashed in the sun and sang joyously of the changing séasons.. The river still held its ice bridge, black and gray-black and dirty white. It looked the treachery that was in it and it struck Burns suddenly that to go to-day to the water-hole, which had been cut well out from shore, was dangerous. “Take. a pole, Harry!” he shouted. ‘ You’re liable to get ducked if you don’t!” A pole to test the ice ahead of him, or to fling up horizontally as a support if he should go through—that was the precaution Stowe should have taken. But he laughed and shook his head from the bank, and leaped beyond the doubly dangerous strip at the edge. They saw him walk off con- fidently toward the water-hole; but both Molly and Burns were moved to go swiftly down to the river-bank. Again they stood side by side, not a stone’s toss from Harry Stowe as he filled first one pail and then the other and turned so that he faced them on his way back. He had taken two steps when the rotten ice refused the added weight of those two pails of water and broke into ragged cakes under. his feet. The pails thudded and splashed away from him. He went down to the arm-pits in the welter of heaving fragments and then his instinctively clutch- ing fingers found brief hold, so that he re- mained head and shoulders out of water. This was the moment in which he should have had the pole, to bridge over the broken - area until help could come. For his respite was of seconds only. His pale face, scowl- ing and drawn by desperation, sank ‘lower as his fingers dragged along the ice. In the instant when the water-pails dropped and the feet of his partner went out of sight a strange thing happened to David Burns. He saw a picture of the future, as sharp and clear as though it had been photographed for him, and this was what he saw: Molly’s firm, warm hand close within his own, her blue eyes lifted to his and filled with the light and happy tears of love, her red lips parted with a quick breath at the approach of his own. Of course Harry was dead, and she.was his to love forever. C@ LOOOLK CO