Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 6, 1923 — page 156: what you’re looking at

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

938 the stop had been made at a spot where the timber grew thickly and leaving the car as it stood they turned aside from the road on the up-mountain slope and climbed among the trees to a safe height before ven- turing to press forward. Having taken this precaution, they were well up on the for- ested slope when they passed the stalled touring car. As they looked down upon it the moon- light enabled them to see that the hood was lifted and that both of the occupants were out and doing something to the ma- chinery. Cautiously they crept on, holding a course parallel to the road and still well above it. After going only a short distance beyond the stalled car they saw a dark figure coming down the road at a brisk walk. “ The third man!” Della whispered; and they stopped and stood motionless among the trees until the figure disappeared around a bend in the road. “ That clears the field for us!” said Bar- rett jubilantly. “A little time is all we need now—but we’re not likely to have any too much of that. They’ll get that car go- ing again in a few minutes, and then it will be all over but the shouting—or the shoot- ing. I wish to the Lord you had stayed with the roadster. That one little thing is all I lack of being happy.” “Ves: and a nice time I’d be having, wouldn’t I?” she retorted. “It’s no use; you can’t shake me off, Jimmie, dear. Pm a part of you now and I'll be with you at the finish, whatever it may be.” They reached the httle plateau upon which the deserted cabin stood sooner than they expected to. It was such a perilously short distance up the road from where the two men—or probably the three, by this time—were still tinkering at the stopped car. Barrett led the way around to the front of the log shack. The door was standing open, and a handful of fire was burning upon the hearth. Obviously the third man had been camping in the cabin. Beside the door there was a cracker box transformed into a bird cage with slats nailed across its open side. Barrett snapped the switch of the flashlight and a pair of ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. pigeons stirred uneasily in the corner of the box coop and crooned their tuck-a-too-too. “That is the other end of their wire- less,” he said. Then, turning the light into the cabin: ‘“‘I don’t suppose there is any use in our wasting time here. If they’ve hidden the money it will be in a safer place than this.” ‘The mine tunnel?” the young woman suggested. “Most probably. We'll see.” It was only a short distance to the dark hole in the slope behind the cabin. As they stood together under the rotting timber por- tal, Barrett recalled the brief glimpse he had had of the place in the flare of a single match before dawn on the morning of his escape. Under the beam of the electric flash lamp nothing new was revealed. A few feet beyond the entrance the roof had fallen in, and a mass of broken rock and earth quite filled the tunnel, although the gaping chasm overhead, out of which the cave-in had fallen, appeared to offer a pas- sageway to the depths beyond where they stood. “Will you hide out among the trees and wait for me while I climb and see what I can find?” Barrett asked, pleading again. “Not I!” was the shuddering reply. “ Ton’t you see what that would m-make me do? If they should come up while you were in there, I’d simply have to shoot them d-down, one at a time, to keep them from getting at you! You wouldn’t make me do such a dreadful thing as that, would your I’d be-be obliged to, you know.” “ You brave little soldier!” he exclaimed in husbandly exultation. ‘‘1 believe you would do that very thing! Come on; we'll go in together.” And together they scram- bled over the heap of earth and rock, find- ing beyond it a measurably unobstructed passage leading on to an unknown distance in the heart of the mountain. As it chanced, they were not constrained to explore the gloomy cavern to its farthest depths. Less than fifty yards beyond the obstructing roof fall, Barrett, who was sweeping the jagged walls on either hand with the beam of the flash light as they went along, turned the light of the torch into a narrow niche on the right. At the COMmiclboo (©