The Argosy, Vol. XXV, No. 1 — page 66: what you’re looking at

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

66 SULLIVAN JONES’ BOARDERS, You know what to do now, so hurry back, and keep a sharp. lookout ;’’ and leaving Charlie standing by the boat Tom plunged into the bushes. TIl. Tom kept on for a mile or more and then it began to grow dark. He felt that he was in a situation of peril, for if robbery was the object of these men they would hardly hesitate at murder to accomplish their plans, and the more he pondered over it the more certain he felt that his suspicions were justified, for all the circumstances pointed just that way. He was now nearly two miles up the valley. It was rapidly growing dark, and as yet he had seen and heard nothing. A few feet above him, up a little embankment, lay the railroad track with the mountain rising steep beyond. Not far ahead, round a slight curve, the creek ran in between the mountain and the railroad and was crossed by an open trestle work. ‘Tom stopped a moment. All was silent. But hark! A low, grating sound rises in the distance. It comes closer, becomes louder, and up above his head the rails begin to sing faintly. Tom quickly forced his way up the bank, throfigh the thorny blackberry bushes, and peered cautiously out. It had grown suddenly dark in the last minute, and he can only see an indistinct form rolling round the curve above him. It rushes on swifter and swifter, and with a whirr like the rising of quail, the velocipede hand car dashes past him in the gloom, with two motionless figures on the seat. Tom drew a long breath and stepped out from his place of concealment. What a fool he was to be sure! All this trouble and worry for nothing. He turned down the track toward Dauphin, when suddenly a thought strikes him—a thought that brings him to a stand- still and’ makes his blood run cold. He turned and hurried up the track. He rounded the curve, approached the trestle work, and stood looking down on the shallow bed of Stony Creek. A cry of horror and he leaped down the embankment. Two motionless forms lay among the stones, dead, to all appearances ; but placing his hand on the breast of the man nearest him, Tom felt the heart beat faintly. He pulled him to a sitting position and dashed water on his face again and again, and finally with a moan of pain the man opened his eyes and closed them again wearily. : The other lay partly in the water. No sign of life was visible, and, drag- ging the body to the shore, Tom rushed up the bank, and with frantic leaps fairly flew up the face of the mountain. If he could only give the alarm in time! The murderers must be near Dauphin already. Half way up he stops. He scrapes a match on the rock. It burns and goes out. ‘The next one burns brightly and ignites the end of the red light. A moment of suspense and then the ruddy scarlet glow flares up like a volcano. IV. CHARLIE made his way slowly back to Dauphin. He was just a little doubtful about this deadly plot of Tom’s, but he was equally suspicious Eomicbooks (S() i , .