Argosy: The Short Story Magazine — page 51: what you’re looking at

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

There were only some shanties and a lane between us and the river bank; as soon as we were clear of them and had collected | Rosalinda, I was running rather than staggering. After paddling himself across the Parana, Hilario had left his canoe about two miles downstream. He hadn’t stopped to think. Indeed, he hadn’t thought at all during his journey on foot and horse and rail and river right across the length of Paraguay; he was just a moving blaze of anger. Posadas police hardly entered into his calculations at all. They preferred to spend their nights in decent gentlemanly idleness— but once their attention had been drawn to any undesirable character trying to escape from Argentina to Paraguay, stopping him was a routine job. ‘They knew the river bank so thoroughly that they could count on picking us up and returning to their bottles before wives or waiters had time to clear away. The night was dark; but one can see by starlight in these parts and spot a moving figure at twenty-five yards so long as it does move. ‘There was no cover at all along the flood plain of the Parana. Worse still, there were creeks and patches of marsh so that we could never race off into the Americas at large or even get very far from the tracks. ‘To my mind our chance of reaching Hilario’s canoe was nil. We just bolted along the river bank until we were stopped by a creek. We had to follow it up to its head, and that lost us our lead. Once round the creek, we had a choice of three tracks westwards—one north of a marsh and one south, and a third which ran down to the sands. We heard horses already canter- ing out from Posadas, and there was no time at all for hesitation. We took the middle track, north of the marsh. The going was good, and Rosalinda didn’t hold us back. She wasn’t even shocked by all this savagery. Murder didn’t count when it was right. Just another example of her extraordinary innocence. She had kicked off her shoes and was running as free as a little twelve-year-old. Her education had not lasted long enough to soften the soles of her feet. But it was the shoes that gave us away. ‘The police troopers spotted them, lying bang in the middle of the right track. ‘Lhey did not have to split up and do a bit of scouting. They came on behind us like a charge of cavalry. ‘There was a small patch of open plain by the side of the track, and we dropped flat on it. When the pursuit—all six of them— had thundered past, I began to have hopes of getting clear. ‘The obvious move was to double back to the head of the creek and try one of the other two routes. We had just reached the junction SIX LEGS ARE WELCOME — 51 Comichooks.cConn ~