Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 13, 1925 — page 104: what you’re looking at

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

O76 him that he was safe from tracking, and then he hobbled his horse and turned it loose to graze over a wide area of grass. Sunrise found him in the saddle again and riding on; but it also found him tricked, although he did not know it. iI. SHANGHAI'S reputation was truly found- ed. He was. a fox and not a wolf. The persistence of his pursuer indicated the character of that person sufficiently well to give the fugitive a basis for appraising him; and Mesquite’s youth suggested adolescent carelessness. To be certain of the latter and more fully to measure Mesquite’s ca- pacity for thinking, Shanghai had laid his trail from ridge to ridge, and made those signs which the deputy had found so en- lightening. Time after time the fugitive, from the vantage point of another ridge, had looked back to see the pursuer sticking stubbornly to his trail; and he almost had given up the hope that his new plan would work, when his efforts were rewarded. At last his threats of ambush had been taken for their face value; at last Mesquite had heeded them and used his head as an old hand at trailing would have used it. The steady swing of the trail around a sreat circle and the location of the fugitive’s friends united to indicate that its maker was trying to rejoin his partv; the high and screened watch points on every hill and ridge had conveyed their empty warnings; and reading the signs aright, according to the data presented, the deputy had drawn the natural conclusions; but the conclusions were wrong because the signs had been made to deceive. Shanghai was not trying to create care- lessness which would discount the possibil- ity of danger in innocently appearing sur- roundings: he was not trying to work back to his friends through such a wide circle; but he was trying to create the suspicion of danger, and the natural inference to be drawn from the direction of his flight. In no other way could he throw the pursuer off his trail long enough for him to put a great distance between them. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, Watching from another ridge, Shanghai caught sight of the moving speck which he knew was Mesquite Jenkins; and he chuckled with delight when he saw his pursuer at last forsake the trail and its threat, and strike straight across country to intercept the great circle at a point many miles away. This, he recognized, was no accidental choice; and this, he also recog- nized, proved that the youth was an expert trailer, despite his years. Only the amateurs stuck stubbornly to the tracks themselves; the adept, drawing conclusions based on experience, would dare to leave the actual sign and save time and danger by striking across the windings to pick it up again miles farther on. In no other way could a pursuer hope to overtake a fugitive, for the latter could make the signs much faster than a follower could find and read them. Knowing the caliber of the pursuer, Shanghai knew what to expect in a given circumstance. The swordsman fears an ex- pert less than he does a novice, for no one may hope to guess what asinine thing a novice or a fool will attempt. His doubts cleared up as to the skill of the tracker, Shanghai put back the cigarette paper with which he was about to manu- facture more misleading evidence, and with creat satisfaction loaded his old pipe for a really satisiying smoke. He lay at ease behind the rim of the ridge. pleasantly watching the speck move straight south- ward, and from time to time he chuckled as he saw the speck detour to avoid a drv- wash or some other break in the floorlike level of the plain. He was in no great hurry now, for now he had time in which to get away; but it would not do to waste too much of it. He gave Mesquite full credit for his skill, and idly wondered how it was that a man of so few years could have become so expert in an art so diffcuit; and he wondered how soon that expertness would learn of the trick, and how it would react to the knowledge. The old man put himself in the youth's place, and found that there were two things to choose between when that knowledge came. He either would ride back on his own trai], at the consequent cost of much 6A Comilclooks CO nn)