Argosy All-Story Weekly — "The Purple Limited" — page 163: what you’re looking at

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

SHAG, Gray Flash, with a snarl of rage and fear, leaped away from the dead calf as Shag lunged madly at him; then he scram- bled to the top of the basalt cliff, where, safe from the mighty horns, he squatted, and with lips curled back from fangs still dripping with the blood of his victim, looked down in disappointed. fury on -the massive bulk of the gaunt K-Bar steer . standing over the slaughtered offspring of Red One and the Roan Bull. Shag ‘smelled the warm blood, yet he made no sound. His eyes gleamed with a new light, and he stood rigid and silent and waited. The nose of Gray Flash pointed in the air, and the shrill, keen howl of the hunt rolled in quavering ripples of sound across the slopes of Capaline, over the dim Llano de Gato, and echoed through the canons ' -of Del Christo range. - ferocious, the leader of the pack, far up the Purgatory, heard the howl of Gray Flash, and knew the young wolf bayed the great, golden-brown steer that stood so ' often and alone on the slopes of Capaline. The time had come. Then Crooked Fang, the king himself, stretched wide his muzzle while the long, curved tusks gleamed in the moonlight, sent out. the slow, terrifying, far-flung cry that would bring together his greatest hunters. Three times the call was repeated. Like the wailing of souls, lost and damned and in torment, came back the answers. Some from the near-by crags of Del Christo range; some from beyond the Cimmaron;_ some from the grassy slopes of Sentinel Mountain; and still others, faintly, from out of the depths of the blanket of shadow that lay over the Llano de Gato. After that Crooked Fang loped swiftly, eagerly, to the place of the kill. Shag, too, heard the call of the master- ‘wolf, and the answers—drawing nearer, al- ways nearer—that rolled back out of the night. And he knew. Yet, even so, he made no sound. Silent, in his mad eyes the delirium and passion to kill; the rough hair of his back ridged with the tingling lust of battle; his mighty neck arched; the great head held low and tensely alert; he Crooked Fang, the. his throat. 729 stood over the limp, motionless body of Red One’s calf and waited. Once only did he lift up his voice. When the pack was ready—when the score or more of gaunt, shadowy forms had closed in a tight circle about the little cove, and Crooked Fang a stretched up his grizzled head, and the | hoarse, deep-toned howl of attack poured from his widespread jaws, then, and then only, did Shag answer. ting trumpetlike bellow roared from his mighty throat, and in it was the challenge of undying hate and defiance and rage. It was no call to his own kind for help—he had lived alone—he would fight alone— he would die alone! Crooked Fang’s veterans, impatient for the slaughter, closed with their victim. Shag met them. Twenty to one were the odds—besides the young ones. Yet Shag, the great, drug-crazed, K-Bar steer, dissi- pated, dissolute, depraved, despised by his own kin, battled with them all! Sharp teeth slashed at the sinews of his legs; frenzied creatures, the mad glare of hunger and hate and fear in their eyes, the blood-foam drooling from their jaws, leaped and leaped again and yet again for Crooked Fang himself sprang time after time—now for the jugular, now the flank, again at the shrunken haunches —and always the snap of his strong teeth, the teeth that made him master of the pack, was followed by the sickening rip of flesh and hide. | | ‘Bleeding from a hundred wounds, Shag fought them all. His breath came in torturing explosions; blood oozed from his mouth and nose; his eyes blazed with implacable hatred, with the fierce wild joy of battle. Twice the death howl sounded above the snarling confusion as the black tip of a mighty horn found the vitals of a gray devil; one Shag crushed into a lifeless mass under his front feet; Gray Flash leaped for the flank of the great steer—an ironlike hoof shot out and Gray Flash, with a broken back, rolled against the bottom of the basalt’ cliff! One long, vibra- . Keen fangs at last whittled through the ~ sinews of the gaunt hind legs—his knees gave way—and with a helpless lurch Shag’s TOO PG (C(O) S (C(O)