Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 5, 1921 — page 74: what you’re looking at

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

260 ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. back he saw Little Britches standing there. She had dismounted and was standing close beside her horse, but she made no move to enter, though the rush of the wind had thrown her light form against the ani- mal’s neck. For a moment the two were silhouetted against the background of blackness like spirits of the tormented night. Then he seized the girl’s arm and drew her inside. ‘What are you doing here?” he de- manded harshly. “ Do you only ride these days when other people are indoors?”’ She did not resist, but her slim body was stiff and unyielding as she followed him. <A slow smile touched her lips; blue and cracked with the cold, but sweet in spite of everything. The coor could not close because she still held the rein of her horse and outside they heard a faint, dis- tressful neigh. “T’ve got to shelter him,’ she said gravely, as though this were the most im- portant question between them. “ You reckon we might crowd both of them in here?”’ For answer Billie led the horse inside and to a corner as far removed from Widow Green as the small space per- mitted. The coffee pot was still on the stove and he took it up and poured out a cup while she seated herself on a low stool before the fire and drew the thick gloves from her stiff fingers. While she drank the hot coffee Billie sat opposite watching her and wondering what he was going to say to her presently. But she saved him from decision by open- ing the subject herself as she put the empty cup on the hearth. “I followed you,” she said. ‘I figured you’d make for this shack and I aimed to be here before you, but I sorta missed out in the snow.” In the light of the little oil lamp with the scarf pushed away from her face he could sec that in the little time just passed a devastating change had taken place in her. There was not much left of the old defiant beauty, but the glow of her hair that stood out against the somber back- ground like a flame. Her eyes were sun- ken and dull, and her face discolored and: dark from the lash of the storm she had: endured for so many hours. And beyond ' these signs of physical suffering there was. something deeper, more obscure, that gave: a poignant meaning to the lines of her face and form, and awakened pity in his heart instead of condemnation. “What made you follow me?” he asked slowly. Her dry lips twitched as though some unnamed pain brushed the shell of her soul. She said nothing, only looked at him out of her shadowy eyes with a sort of helplessness as though the story behind them was-too great to tell. B. Billie, who would not have hurt a dumb thing for any reason, went on remorseless- ly, not knowing that speech was beyond her. ‘I been wantin’ to talk to you for quite a spell, Britches. Seems like we’ve sorta got snarled up like a wet rope someways, you an’ me an’ things need stretchin’ out an’ dryin’ in the sun.” He paused, giving her a chance, but nothing came of it. ‘“!m not goin’ to beat around what I got to say,’ he went on with a man’s im- patience at finding himself in a difficult position. ‘‘ You’ve got to know that the whole range is suspicionin’ you of not bein’ on the square. I hate to say it to a woman, an’ much less to you, Britches, who’ve been one of the best hands I ever saw around cows, as well as a straight ridin’ person; but it don’t look right to me —none of it. I’ve tried hard to make out that somewheres in the deal there was a catch that snagged you an’ started you off down hill so fast you couldn’t stop, but I just can’t lay my mind on the original thing that’s to blame. 1 sorta figured out your old man was to blame somehow, but I can’t remember you ever paid him much mind, an’ it don’t seem reasonable he could drive you into crooked work if you was all straight yourself—a person that’s a regular hand and used to lookin’ out for yourself...” He waited, giving her another chance, but she stared somberly into the fire. The flickering light of the guttering lamp dis- guised any consistent expression on Alas inn