Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 16, 1921 — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

MISS tunity to move the spring so that the thin slats which crossed it did not Partly hide the precious recipe. He begged Dewilde not to stay with him. “ Just where do you think I could go?” “You make it so perfectly apparent that I’m a bother I wanted to relieve you of any feeling of responsibility for me!” he replied. She glanced at him and the silver in her eyes grew bright. “There isn’t much of a variety out here in the way of refuges and retreats and sani- tariums! When any one comes along who needs one of the three, the hospitality of the country just has to give of its poor facilities.” “Tm not looking for a sanitarium!” he retorted. ‘* N-o?” she returned, her brows lifted. “No! But a retreat suits me all right— with a girl like you!” Clayton watched the flow of her wrath rise in ther cheeks in crimson banners and blaze from her eyes like twin beacons. “You don’t like that!” he observed. “‘ But you’ve been treating me to your Vere de Vere manners about as long as I care to stand it. That scoundrel Clayton isn’t the only man in the world that likes a pretty girl. You let him get away with some love stuff—”’ “ Be still!” she cried, leaping from her chair and facing him in royal indignation. ‘“‘ That man may have been short on morals; but he had manners! If you can’t remem- ber yours, I’ll remind you!” | She started across the room to where her own and Wharton’s gun lay on the ‘table. She had put them there on her return from the shack; and, after getting breakfast, had forgotten to replace her weapon in her pocket. “ T guess you won’t pick up one of those guns, Miss Capet!”’ Clayton, cat-footed in his stocking feet, was within three feet of her. The gun that neither she nor Morg had thought to take from him, was leveled at her. | Dewilde went white, overwhelmed with terror for an instant. The utter hopeless- ness of any one’s coming was the one thought that held her in its grip. | Clayton laughed. ANGEL. 89 “My dear girl, I’m not the same kind of a villain that you spent the night with. I see how beautiful you are just as plainly as he did. I’d give a good deal to know how he won you; but—” Dewilde’s breath stuck in her throat for ‘a second. Then a wave of something warm and strengthening rose from her heart. “T’m willing to earn a way to what he just naturally took!” Dewilde Capet had been brought up like lots of other Southern girls, to think that her charms were the royal road to triumph in men’s hearts. Her mother had come as near to spoiling her with the doctrine as she could; it was only the invincible natural nobility of the girl’s character that had saved her. But now, with a gun pointing at her and a man behind it whose eyes glistened disagreeably while he kept moistening his lips as if they were parched, she deliberately focused every phase of her winsgmeness as ‘a weapon to match his. _“ Have I been so—so disagreeable?” she asked, the long look from under her dark lashes holding Clayton’s gaze. ‘You have,” he asserted, wondering what she meant to try next. “T reckon you're right,” she acknowl- edged softly, the deeply luscious corners of her lips drooping. ‘‘ I’m so distracted about my uncle and all that’s happened since this hideous storm set in that J—I—TI reckon. I’ve been mighty unkind.” Pity for herself and: fear made the tears come. They slipped from under her low- ered lids and dried, after an instant of trembling on her cheeks. “T’ll accept that as an apology,” Clay- ton said quickly, dazed a bit by the be- wildering change in her. Then he added: “‘T wonder if you'll ever forgive me for— for—for daring to give you a hint of how I feel about you!” “ T’d find it easier to do that if you were not at the business end of a gun. Of course, you can make me say—or do—almost any- thing you like when you have the drop!” “T don’t want to act the cave-man—un- less you make me!” he answered. “Well, I won’t. I don’t know much about cave-men; and I’m clever enough to COmiclbool< (C@