The Argosy, Vol. 90 No. 1 — page 40: what you’re looking at

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

o4 to be up and on. Finally McRae became persuaded that he had risen and was on his way to Kahokia. But he was dreaming this; in reality he remained where he had fallen. How much time passed while he lay in this stupor, McRae did not know. He was aroused when some one poked him with the toe of a determined boot. And a charm- ing voice, permeated with laughter like a mocking-bird, spoke to him: “You drunken pig, get up!” McRae desired to rise and follow the voice, but could not. ‘Schwartz, you pig,” it persisted, “ if you lie there you’ll freeze like pork.” The owner of the charming voice then stooped and offered McRae a bottle of whisky. The district attorney drank; his mind was beginning to clear. ‘You had had enough whisky as it was,” commented the airy young voice. ‘“ Now, see here, Schwartz, you’ll have to get up, I can’t carry your weight.” McRae’s dulled mind did not trouble it- self about the name “ Schwartz.” For all he knew, in his frozen state, that might be his proper surname. He managed, jerked at by his rescuer, to get on his feet. Then he followed him. His benefactor seemed to be tall, slight and young. McRae had wandered, since overturning: his car, far into the foot-hills. He followed the young man alongside a canon wooded with dwarfed evergreens; then struck across a level mesa, where he stumbled now and then on piles of loosened rock. Finally his guide stopped before a tight little cabin, which was dark, except for a slit of light under the door. He kicked the door and whistled. The door opened and he stepped in. “Well, I found Schwartz,” he said. ‘ He’s drunk as a pig and was freezing to death. He deserved to be let alone, but I have brought the swine home.” He laughed—with a sound curiously like the whistle of that violin-bow McRae had heard from inside the tar-papered shack. Then he turned and pushed the district at- torney into the lighted room. THE ARGOSY. McRae fell into the place and huddled on a bench beside a red-hot stove. Then he brushed the snow from his eyebrows and looked about him. ‘“Lord—y su God-forsaken fool—that’s not Schwartz!” The district attorney had heard this voice before; before the memorable jail-breach, in fact, when the fate of Rawley Lord and his companions had been sealed forever. It was the voice of the man they called ‘¢ Slim.” Slim was so stout his shirt rolled about him in creases. He sat at the table opposite ‘* Pinhead,” who had been a farmer’s hired man before bis committal to jail for some trifling offense, and was big-bodied and had huge, hairy arms in grotesque contrast with his small head. The man’s mouth, fuzzy from a week’s beard, hung open and there was a puzzled expression, like a porcupine’s, in his little eyes. But his food drew his attention from the stranger; he soon fell upon it again, tearing it like an animal. McRae was rapidly gaining possession of his faculties. He knew Rawley Lord from his portraits, Pinhead from descrip- tion, and the man called Slim from a casual glimpse of him one day in the Kahokia jail; but neither of the three, he thought, knew him for the district attorney. He looked at Lord. The bandit stood whistling a theater song, his arms folded across a chest like a young catamount’s. The lilt of his whis- tle reassured the district attorney: it sounded as if he was not to be feared. “IT see,” Lord admitted, “that it is not Schwartz I brought home. I ought to have let him freeze.” He carelessly shrugged his shoulders, then turned his head, listened a while and remarked: ‘“ Here comes Schwartz now.” A moment later Schwartz burst into the room. At the time of the jail-breach he had been under life-sentence in the Kahokia jail for killing a fellow-crook in a quarrel about a woman. He wore a large, dark fur coat, which had probably misled Rawley Lord into ringing home the district at- torney, similarly wrapped. Schwartz knew the district attorney; he oO Comicbooe S CO