The Argosy, Vol. 76, No. 3 — page 227: what you’re looking at

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

THE TAKING OFF Whitey, looking and listening with tense eagerness, heard the scund of a horse’s hoofs and creaking of a wagon as they drove away. Then he dropped back on the grass, wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and discovered that he was cold and trem- bling. It was nearly an hour later when he clambered over the wall of the ceme-. tery and set out on the mile walk to Applegate’s farm. The Nash farm was in the same direction, and if Joel and Andrew were going home with their grisly burden, he wanted to give them plenty of time to stow it away before he got into that neighborhood. He had no desire to be under the slightest suspicion of having seen the brothers on their midnight trip, and long before he reached the road and stepped off into the darkness he had decided that so far as he was con- cerned the events of that night were buried forever in his memory. All thought of sleep was gone from his busy brain, and when he reached the farm he curled up beside the back door and sat there until dawn, think- ing of the spectacle he had witnessed and vainly trying to determine what it meant. When old Lem Applegate arose with the sun he was surprised to find Whitey already puttering about at his morning: chores. But before the day was ended the lad’s thoughts were directed into an- other channel by a new sensation. Martin Nash was found burned to death in his barn. | It was Applegate himself who told the details of the tragedy to an eagér group of listeners in Jessup’s store that night, his prospective importance as a witness at the coroner’s inquest the_next day impelling him to make the drive to Tolmans to tell the boys about it in advance. “ The way I come to be there,’’ he said, “ Martin sent his boy Andrew over to me along about noon askin’ if I’d come over right after supper and OF MARTIN NASH. 697 talk about that back forty acres I’ve been wantin’ to buy. “Martin talked abotit sellin’ it for a year or more, but we couldn’t agree on a price, and I thinks to myself: ‘Well, the old man’s finally gettin’ sensible and he’s goin’ to let that forty go at a reasonable figure.’ Martin had a couple of pretty bad seasons on that place of his, and I just about figured he needed the money. “When I got over there the boys were both gone to town with the team and Martin was settin’ out on the porch smokin’ and waitin’ for me. Mrs. Nash come out with her sewin’ after I’d been there a while, and we all set there talkin’ about. one thing and another for maybe half an hour. “Martin didn’t get down to busi- ness about that forty acres, but he never was what you’d call a direct man, and I s’posed he’d get around to it after a while, so I kept on talkin’ _about crops and so on. “ Finally he gets up and says: ‘ Just set where you are, Lem. [ve got to do the milkin’. Them boys o’ mine has both cleared out and left the old man to do the work. I won't be a minute,’ he says, and goes into the house for a lantern. Well, I didn’t have anything particular to do and I knew I was in for a spell of settin’ around anyhow, so [ set still, talkin’ to Mrs. Nash. It was gettin’ pretty dark by that time, and Martin come to the door with his lantern lit and told me again he wouldn’t be only a jiffy milkin’ the two cows. “Well, sir, we set there maybe twenty minutes, when all of a sudden Mrs. Nash looks over her shoulder and lets a yell out of her. “* Fire!’ she says. ‘The barn’s on fire!’ “JT jumped up, and blamed if the barn wasn’t goin’ up like sixty. First thing we thought of was Martin and the cows, bein’ that the horses was away, and we run for the barn. The cows were all right, runnin’ around loose in the yard and bellerin’, but COMicdoo S CO@