Argosy All-Story Weekly, 4 February 1922 — page 54: what you’re looking at

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

TAPS As > iS 364 in a holder. He looked about him by its flickering light, and saw that -he was in a dilapidated cabin containing little except _dust and a large Boer bed, made of wooden posts with thongs of antelope hide criss- crossing it from side to side. It was clean, however, and looked fairly comfortable to one accustomed to camping on the veldt. Dean could manage without a blanket until the coach brought his things the following day. He folded his coat and placed it at the head of the bed for a pillow. shamefacedly, but realizing that something “might lie behind Tom Binn’s warning, he placed his loaded revolver at his side, and lying down, tried to sleep. But the mystery of the situation worked on his mind, perplexing him to the point of insomnia. A dozen times he dozed, and started up, listening to the steady patter of the rain and the roaring of the torrents through the gullies. And suddenly he found himself sitting bolt upright. He had been dreaming of Lois. She seemed in danger, she seemed to be calling to him. Mixed with this had sounded the splash, splash of a horse’s hoofs over the wet ground. He listened—he could hear nothing. He lay down again, and was half asleep once more when there came an unmistak- able sound. It was the long reverberation of a rifle-shot,. Instantly he was on his feet, slipping on his coat. The crack that had aroused him still echoed among the surrounding hills. It had seemed to come from the direction of Tom Binns’s shack. Dean felt for a match, but then instinct warned him not to show a light in the cottage. Revolver in hand, he went out of the door. Nothing was visible through the darkness except the faint outlines of the mill, save when an infrequent flash of lightning lit up the whole scene in an instantaneous picture, And nothing was moving. Dean trod on a bed of soft mud, deadening the sound of his footsteps, but clogging them, and now and again he went splashing into a gulley, deluging himself with water. By the aid of the flashes he located - _ Binns’s shack. As he reached it a jagged A little ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. fork of lightning illumined the entire in- terior. The door was wide open, and there was nobody upon the bed. Dean went in, and waiting till the next flash came, glanced about him. The shack was stripped of everything except the bed- stead. It looked as if the watchman had carried out his threat of departure almost upon the word. Dean. went toward the cottage that he should have occupied. The first thing he noticed was that the door of this was wide open, too. He suddenly remembered that he had closed it to keep out the rain, and Newman had been too drunk to have been capable of rising from the bed. Dean went into the outer room softly. He listened at the bedroom door, and heard the sound as of water dripping through the roof. He struck a match, shielding it with his hand- so that the direct flame should ‘not be visible to any one outside. Then he saw Newman. The engineer would never rise from the bed again. He lay stone dead, with a bullet-wound through the heart, and the blood still dripped to the growing pool upon the floor beneath. CHAPTER XII. A LIFE FOR A LIFE. EAN bent over the dead man and laid his hand upon the wrist. The pulse had ceased to beat, and the hand was beginning to grow cold. The engineer had been killed in his stupor instantly, for there was no expression of either fear or surprise upon his face—only a relaxation of the muscles about the eyes and fallen jaw. The dead man had not even changed his position in the bed. Whoever the murderer was, it was evi- dent that he had mistaken Newman for Dean. Dean went to the door and listened, Not a sound was to be heard but the steady dripping of the rain. He pushed against the- door that led into the company offices. As he had half expected, it was open. The door that led down to the vault was open, too. Dean struck another match and went Ss Lt Eomicboo (Efe)