Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 146 No. 4 — page 119: what you’re looking at

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

pay.) ee pulls his own gun, you lean across him, and shout: ‘ He’s got a gun!’ See? Warn- ing the holdup man!” “That’s what he thinks!” breathed Springtime, horror struck. “I was telling your dad that the crook had a gun!” Kitty nodded. “Oh, I don’t believe for a second that you were warning the holdup man; I’m just telling you how it would all sound to an officer. As I said, you shout that and lean across dad and turn out the lights in the road so that he can’t see your pal there in the road, and you knock the gun from his hand. The other man fires, and the only thing that saves dad is the fact that there is a little downhill slope there, so that when he steps on the car, he’s doing fifty within a hundred yards.”’ Springtime rolled his eyes as though he had been struck on the head with a black- jack. He sat down weakly and said: “ You don’t believe all that!” “ Of course J don’t!” “ But does he?” *T don’t know just how much he does believe,” lied Kitty. ‘“ He hasn’t told me.” As the next figure in the drama sprang into his vision Springtime wet his lips and got to his feet again. * Does McCabe?” “Nobody knows. I heard just a little of what dad said and I know he didn’t tell him everything just as I have told it to you.” Springtime sat down again, dazzled by the perfection of the frame-up. It unfolded itself in flashes—one bursting rocket after the other, each one perfect in itself, and each one helping to make the whole scheme perfect. If the cleverest man in the world had deliberately sat down to concoct a scheme which was to incriminate him, he could not possibly have created as good a one. As the mental sky cleared after the last rocket burst, Springtime got up and said firmly: “ There’s just one thing for me to do and that is to beat it. I’m sorry, but there has been more than one man sent up river on slighter evidence than that!” _ Kitty shook her head. Womanlike, she THE BIRD OF PASSAGE é perfection of the net, the more that while it was so perfect, it was harmless. “You aren’t guilty,” she said; “I know » it, and my dad knows it—away down in his heart. You couldn’t be guilty—after the way that little boy looked at you, as though you had pulled him out of a river or some- thing. If you stay right here, everything will come out all right, but if you go Mc- Cabe will broadcast the country with pic- tures of you ”—a quotation from the talk of her father—“ and you’d be hunted. If you slipped away now dad would spend every cent he has to get you back, just as a mat- ter of principle, and Mr. McCabe is terribly efficient. A few years ago this town was infested with tramps—you couldn’t walk a block without having some one stop you and beg for money. But he cured all that.” “Yes,” said Springtime, “I’ve heard about him.” He turned away from her, forlorn, scared, yet perfectly aware that he was caught as neatly as any fly in any web. His future lay in the palm of Tom Osborne’s hand—he was not especially angry with him for it, because it was only human nature, in the world in which he had lived, for one man to take ad- vantage of a hold he might have over an- other. ‘““T wouldn’t worry,” said Kitty gently. “J don’t see why you should think that life here would be so hard—for a while. I’ve known my dad now for twenty years, man and boy, and I’ve never known him to do a mean thing. He either likes people a lot or doesn’t like them at all, and unless I don’t know the signs, he took a great fancy to you right off the bat. If he has it in his head that you ought to stay here, I’d stay, and believe me, above all things, I wouldn’t drift without saying something to him about it. That would be bad news for everybody. Why do you have to go, anyway?” “T have to—that’s all,” said Springtime. “ Why?” ‘“‘T don’t know—I do, and there’s noth- ing else to it. I get fed up with places— and when I get fed up I simply have to shift.” ; ‘‘ Nonsense!” said Kitty. “ Everybody — feels that way once in awhile. There is man in the world whcecti} {el ref) oy