The Argosy, Vol. 90 No. 1 — page 47: what you’re looking at

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

THE MAN WHO The wagon turned toward the station, and Hilairy saw two men on horses stand- ing in the road. They were waiting for some one to come or had paused to talk at the forking of the roads. It was too dark for her to distinguish their faces. Hil- airy’s heart beat violently; for she knew that Schwartz and Slim had vowed to put the authorities on her lover’s trail. She started when one of the men turned and shouted to Ed: ‘“‘ Hi, there, beet-hauler! You're going wrong with that load—there’s no dump at this station.” Ed hesitated; and Hilairy made a little motion of her hand, bidding him turn the wagon toward Buckingham Dump. They could go that way, slowly, until the horse- men .had passed them, then face about and still have time to catch the freight. And yet—she did not like the tone in which that man had spoken to Ed. It had been too peremptory for a casual bystander on the road. As the wagon went toward Buckingham Dump she heard the two horsemen behind. They made no attempt to pass. Perhaps they were merely interested in talking to- gether. No doubt they were bound for Buckingham village. Where the road for the village branched away from the one to the dump they would leave the wagon; and there would be time enough for the train. The heavy wagon creaked on. Hilairy could hear also the flapping of the tops of Ed’s shoes; a large pair of gaiters that had belonged to his mother and had lost their elasticity. He pulled nervously at the piece of pink ribbon—dirty and perilously frayed —with which he had pieced a failing sus- pender. The penitentiary loomed before him. He wished Rawley Lord had his hundred dol- lars back again. “T never thunk, ’Airy,”’ he remarked in a husky tone, “ to ask ef thar was anything hid under these beets contrary to law. Rall guv me money to drive the wagon, but ef I’m breakin’ the law I don’t know it. You uns could swear to that in a law court, Airy?” “If you try to give Rawley away [I'll swear to what ’ll send you to the Pen, MUST BE HANGED. Al that’s what I’ll do,” the girl replied. ‘‘ Go on!” The man obeyed uneasily. He was smoking a foul pipe, the smell of which mixed nauseatingly with the sirupy odor of the sugar-beets. Huge cottonwood trees rose beside the road, with wintry, brown and yellow leaves clinging to their branches. A gust blew a few shriveled ones down on Hilairy’s head. It was growing late, dangerously near train time. Behind the lacy cottonwood boughs she saw the gray sky, still shot with rose color, but faintly. There were brown fields, roughened from the digging of beets, and here and there in some low house the yellow light of a lamp. A farmer was out watering stock. Hil- airy heard the sobbing and straining of his Stationary engine and the gurgle of the water it raised, into the troughs around Which calves and bullocks clustered, their broad faces white in the dusk. Still, the two men did not pass the wagon. Ed drove down a hill where the passing of heavy beet-wagons had worn the road, and entered a depression where it was dark as midnight and water stood in the wheel- ruts. More water gurgled under the cul- vert at the lowest point. It was so cold Hilairy shivered in her heavy wrappings. She glanced back and could not see the two men—only the white- faced horse which one of them rode. They had stopped in the road, she thought, to exchange a word. But they came with a sudden spurt of speed after the wagon. At the same moment Ed released the brake. As the team started forward, splashing through the wet of the road in intense darkness, a few beets from the heaped wagon rolled off at the back. Then she heard a great splash, as if bushels more had fallen. The wagon was weak at the back, on account of the false bottom. She feared the fall of beets would attract the attention of the two horsemen behind; but the darkness and the noisy wheels afforded concealment. The momentum of the heavy beet-wagon had carried it far ahead of them. -They overtook the load just as it reached the summit of the opposite slope, where oO Comicbooe S CO