Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 13, 1925 — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

FLIGHT TO “Tm a-faring a longish distance over inter Kaintuck,” he informed her gravely. ‘“ But thet’s a kinderly rough land—an’ J don’t reckon hit’s no place fer you.” ‘Let me go with you,” she pleaded, still holding desperately to the forearm, which under her clutching fingers had grown as hard as rawhide bound over stecl. “ For God’s sake, let me go with you-——it’s life or death to me!” | The words were few, but they came with a vehemence of despair, and the eyes in the lantern’s light were those of one who looks up, drowning, out of deep water. For a long time, it seemed to her, the man stood with eyes boring into her face. She could see that back of those eyes many thoughts were tangled in conflict; that they were moving forward and backward across an area of judgment at once impulsive and cool. At length the man said slowly: “J told ye jest now thet I didn’t aim ter question ye none—but thet was afore I knowed ye sought ter fare along with me. Ye says ye’re in some fashion of dire peril back thar. What that peril is, is yore busi- ness, not mine.” He paused, and his voice hardened. ‘“ But afore J kin take ye on with me I’ve got ter put one question ter ye, p’int-blank. Air ye decent?”’ ‘“So help me God,” she said solemnly, ‘“Y am decent. That’s why I’m in trou- ble.” The man’s head snapped down and up in a nod of determination and of a decision fully made. ‘ All right, then,” he answered crisply, “thet’s all P’ve got ter know—right now. I’m a-farin’ over ter ther head of Leetle Flinty, in ther Kaintuck Ridges—an’ I goes by ther name of Wade Murrell.” a CHAPTER IV. SPEAKING OF THE LAW, cisive moment when she had put her impassioned plea and when the stran- ger, who called himself Wade Murrell, had steod there soberly weighing it while her 2A |’ had seemed to Cynthia a long, inde- THE HILLS. AQT future hung balanced. He had said he didn’t aim ter ask her no questions,” yet she felt that the steady searching of his eyes had not only questioned but cross- questioned and tried her. Then had come his one interrogation, “Air ve decent?” seeming to dismiss and cut away all irrelevancies, all the complexi- ties which such a man could afford to jetti- son, and to summarize the issue into a stark but uncompromising simplicity. Amazingly swift had been his decision when his one question had been put and answered. Astonishingly free from compli- cation had been the stride of his mind from problem to solution, and in that solution she had read for herself a verdict of ac- quittal. Now, after the first surge of enormous re- lief, came the reaction of physical and ner- vous exhaustion. She stood leaning weakly against the shaggy bole of a towering pine, and her eyes slowly began taking in un- considered items of the picture before her as if with returning sight after blindness. It was a picture which had for its back- ground a gigantic bulk of timbered moun- tam, and nearer at hand the clumsiness of a tarpaulin-covered wagon and a team which stood with hanging heads and shag- sily uncurried coats. But in the narrow circle of lantern light it was the man himself, standing a few paces away from her, who naturally domi- nated the picture and the Interest of the picture. He was a tall man, sloping wedgelike from a generous breadth of shoulder to a slenderness of waist and hips, and his un- smiling face looked at her out of eyes that abashed her with their seriousness and pene- tration. Before his scrutiny she felt trans- parent, and yet he did not seem to stare, Rather, he appeared incurious. His features gave the impression of being boldly painted on canvas with the sure breadth and unmincing strokes of a large brush, For standing there, almost immov- able, with the tricky light of the lantern causing bits of ragged tree trunk and scraps of drooping pine branch to bite into vision out of the darkness, it was all more like a picture than animate life. hooks, CO