Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 13, 1925 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

498 Suddenly the girl, who had been so ob- sessed with a single fear that lesser fears had been merged, began to be afraid of the wilderness and of this man who seemed 2 spirit of the wilderness. She would be riding into the hinterland with an unknown young giant who had about him the strength, the boldness, and perhaps also the ruthlessness of a wolf. Perhaps back of the abrupt decision he had made lay an intent rather wolfish than generous, and as she looked into his face his eyes hardened until they frightened her into violent trembling. He opened his lips as if to speak, a sud- den scowl! sweeping blackly over his face, then closed them still in silence. He had been standing with his feet wide apart and his hands hanging at his side, looking at her with unflickering yet detached intent- ness. - Against that dark curtain of forest and night she was a vivid thing to sec, a scrap of living color like human fire. She was bareheaded «and the curling bobbed hair caught the lantern light and flung it into a coppery nimbus. Her eyes were of gray- green, like illumined jade, and her features, under their paint, were arrestingly good. Cynthia, when she forgot the slouch which she affected as her idea of fashionable poise, carried her supple young body with the instinctive grace of a dancer. To the man she seemed almost unbelievably beautiful. He had no power to differentiate be- tween the genuine and the artificialities of city women, between the sterling mark of high breeding and its cheaply bizarre imita- tion. Here the spurious struck him with all the force of the real, and with such men as he first impressions bite deep. If for an instant there had leaped in his own eyes a light that had frightened her, it is not to be wondered at, and if she had shivered in a momentary fear of him, that was not to be wondered at either. But he saw and rightly interpreted the shudder. Wade Murrell took off his black hat and ran his hand through his blacker hair. ‘““Ef so be, ye’re afeared ter trust yore- self with me,’ he announced bluntly, “ ye hain’t got no bound ter go on. God knows, I hain’t a’seekin’ ter over-persuade ye.” ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. Instantly her fears switched again from the minor to the major import. The one cardinal danger was not that of trusting herself to him, but of his changing his mind and refusing to take her. He had appeared to her a shape of rescue, and the thought of losing him stunned her. “Why should I be afraid of you?” she demanded almost breathlessly. ‘I asked you to take me, didn’t I? You must take me.”’ ‘An’ yit [ seed hit in yore eyes jest now thet ye was affrighted of me,” he made grave response. “I hain’t faultin’ ye none fer thet. I reckon men hev done give women full cause ter feel thetaway since ther world began—an’ ye hain’t nuver seed me afore. Fer all you knows I mout be ther orneriest hellion atter women in these mountings.” The girl’s eyes flared with anger. “T took you for a man of your word,” she blazed out with the sudden gusty tem- per of one whose nerves are overtried and edgy. ‘‘ You said you would take me into the mountains. If you’ve changed your mind, for God’s sake, say so. Don’t try to make me back out of it by frightening me. There isn’t anything in your hills-—includ- ing yourself---that I’m as much afraid of as —as things back there.” ‘““Mebby thet’s because ye don’t know them hills,” he suggested. Wade Murrell put his hat back on his head with a slow gesture. Then he opened his coat and vest, and from a huge holster strapped under his armpit drew out a heavy automatic pistol. Cynthia’s eves widened at the sight of the wicked looking weapon and instinctively she drew back a step, but the man twirled the thing on his palm so that the muzzle was at his own chest and the grip toward her. ‘“‘T said I wasn’t faultin’ ye, an’ I meant hit,” he repeated slowly. ‘“ Ef so be ye’re timorous ter start out journeyin’ through ther night, all alone with a man ye hedn’t nuver seed afore—wa’al, I couldn’t handily blame ye.”’ He took a step nearer and proffered the pistol. ‘When [ gives ve that,” he said simply, illogical Conn lODOOK CO