Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 18, 1925 — page 139: what you’re looking at

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

IN then, with sudden realization that he had to deal with a maniac, he turned and bolted from the house. Farley stood in the middle of the room petrified. So it was true! It was true that this sentence was to be worked out to the uttermost letter of the will. “ In the event of death!” First his brother. Then Klien! And now Lederer! It was true and unescap- able. He himself would be the next to die! Raving and cursing, he paced the room. He sat at the desk in the corner. He scrib- bled madly upon paper there. He arose to shriek out a malediction upon all the world. He sank to his seat at the desk again. He fumed and scribbled and shouted wildly, trying to deafen his ears to the din of the insistent voices, the voices that drowned out all else but the condemnation of the will. The will! He would write his own! He would re- voke that sentence! He would order life instead of death! Life! Life! And he would leap through that shattered window and run away! He would run away from them all; from the hatred and malice and vengeful thirst for blood in which he had lived and worked; which he himself had set loose. He would run away! Madly he scribbled at his desk, and mad- ly arose from time to time to pace the room. And he was deaf to all save the ter- rible voices which doomed him, deaf to the noises outside which proclaimed that the jail had fallen, that they had discovered his escape from that stronghold and that a hundred horsemen were out scouring the country for him. Deaf! Deaf! Deaf to all that might yet have saved his miserable life. CHAPTER XXXVIITI. “LIFE EVERLASTING!” RADLEY COSGROVE was weary with a fatigue that surpassed the meaning of weariness, He was hungry —weak with hunger. And the fight he had fought in the blackness, the shock of it and the stress had left his body filled with pain. Yet the news Gaines brought to him when 9A THE EVENT OF DEATH. 289 he rode up after. the tableau was broken, filled Cosgrove with exuberance. Hazel, her mind bent only upon his wel- fare, his comfort and his safety before all else, would have persuaded him to retire from the activities of that night, to dis- mount and find refreshment, sleep and peace. But that exuberance which flooded his pale cheeks and irradiated in his eyes, silenced her. She knew well that nothing could hold him back from the way that led to the end of this adventure. So she helped him to saddle a horse to give Thunderbolt a well earned rest, and was in the saddle beside him when he took the road for Sheerwater. If she could not win him from the grim task, there was no power on earth which could prevent her sharing it with him. They rode through the dawn, and there was no attempt to nurse the endurance of their horses. It seemed almost a race they ran along that rolling, dusty road; a race in which each mount pressed his mate for first place; in which the riders spurred and lashed their ponies forward in a fury which acknowledged the life of a man to be at stake. And because they rode fast they rode silently. The only communication which passed between them was that silent com- munion wherein the girl examined the tired eyes and the grimly set profile of the man she loved; for Cosgrove rode with clenched teeth, fighting a weariness which implored him to take rest. They swept into Sheerwater as the sun burst out above the mists, and they found few men there. Marshal Neal was present, and Christofferson, lounging with a knot of loud talking men at the doorway of the jail. The jail door, significantly, stood wide open. “Too late?” cried Cosgrove sharply, as he flung himself from his mount. ‘Too late!” growled the sheriff bitterly. One of the loud speakers in the doorway ceased his post mortem at that, to answer Cosgrove’s black accusing gaze. “We rode over from Manford hell for leather!” he vociferated. ‘“ And they ran away! Broke and scattered when we came. Gomichbooks (E@)