The Argosy, Vol. 90 No. 1 — page 44: what you’re looking at

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

oO missed him? By a special interposition of a righteous God? After a time, when there was a thick film of snow on his shoulders, McRae ven- tured to shake it off, to raise his head and look about him. There was by this time so heavy a fall of snow that it afforded a better screen for his movements than the darkness of night. As nothing happened, resultant from lifting his head, he got to his knees, then to his feet. All was still. There was no sign of the sheriff’s posse announced by that young fiend with the rifle. McRae was for the first time in his official life possessed of a passionate desire to punish. He wanted the posse more for Lord’s apprehension than ‘for his own protection. Probably when the time came his conscience would prompt him to leave the prosecution of this hated bandit to his assistant; for he was a right- eous man. He found himself shut in by a gray wall of snow; if he looked up he could see dark- colored - flakes tumbling through _pearl- colored atmosphere. If he stayed where he was he would become numb and then freeze to death; so he rose and started down the canon, with a vague idea of find- ing his way to the railroad thirty miles distant. Still he thought of Lord. Passion lurked around that young mouth. Some day he would kill the girl who lived at the tar- papered shack. McRae knew that she was good. However, had she attached herself tc this young devil? The district attorney could answer his own question; he had felt Rawley Lord’s charm. Now and then as he walked he saw what looked like human figures; but they all materialized as bushes or low trees, banked up with snow. At last he approached a kuge pine tree leaning almost horizontally across the canon. Here was silence, except for the sound of twigs and leaves settling under a weight of snow, and the little voices of the desert- horned larks, who plaintively complained that they were cold. After passing this point of quiet he began to notice a sound some distance behind him as of a lone man following his trail. THE ARGOSY. At first he thought his nerves were play- ing him a trick; but the soft step behind him grew more distinct. Finally it ceased. This must have been when his trailer made @ détour of the cafion slope and came out in front of him. For as McRae made his way down the canon he saw a dark figure, blurred by the snow, directly in his path. Then he heard a man’s laugh, low, mocking, and musical. CHAPTER III. THE STRANGE YOUTH. AWLEY LORD knew perfectly that ~when he turned his rifle so as to send the bullet eighteen inches from the breast of the district attorney he had sealed his own fate. Slim and Schwartz were hiding now, taken care of for the moment by his ruse about the posse. But they would under- stand afterward; and the boy knew what they would think—that he had refused to kill the district attorney because he was intending to get mercy some day by turn- ing State’s evidence. They would swear with one voice that he had shot the Kahokia sheriff; or—more to their liking—they would betray Lord to the officers and themselves slip out of the country. But he could not have killed if the pen- alty for showing mercy had been instant execution. He was not made of bandit stuff. It was a strange position in which he found himself: in the eyes of the law a murderer! It had begun in a most trifling way. At Kahokia he had quarreled with the hotel people over a bill he thought ex- tortionate, and he had attempted to remove his suit-case through the window—which turned out to be a serious offense under the strange law of the western State. His imprisonment at Kahokia had not been his first experience—as he had been twice jailed in Missouri, once for rioting and once for refusing to witness in court. So he vowed he would not remain behind bars here, either. He had joined Slim and Schwartz in their jail breach, and Schwartz had killed the sheriffi—and now all were guilty in the first degree. comicbool< CO