Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 1, 1922 — page 146: what you’re looking at

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

956 no argument that Triggers had had a hand in it. His most ardent enemies could not say that he, Cal Triggers, had done this thing. Meakin’s body would be found un- marked by bullets. There would be no man and no way to avenge his death. And yet the gunfighter—the man who had not hesitated to kill in other fights— sensed something here which he thought would make this passive deed of standing by while Meakin died, the first real mur- der he had ever committed. Meanwhile Meakin was clinging franti- cally to a last hope. He noted that Trig- gers had not taken the gun to kill his enemy. When Meakin realized that he had taken it for the purpose of saving himself from the climax of the stampede he felt a great thrill. Perhaps Cal for some miracu- lous reason would not take the revenge that was being thrust into his hands. A fainting fit had come over Meakin, but he fought against it. The coming of his enemy, the firing of the six-gun, the momen- tary cessation of the herd’s onslaught upon the shack—had helped him to fight. As he looked up at Cal now he screamed at the top of his lungs: “‘ Help me, Triggers! If you have not come to kill me, help me! Don’t stand there and look at me like that while I die!” ‘Meakin, you pretended you were free- ing me a short while ago—and instead you were sending me straight into the hands of a lynching party. Why should I help you? This death is coming to you! It belongs to you! It’s yours! What have I to do with it?” “Don’t bring up that petty fight, for God’s sake! We’re both lost if you don’t help! Fight for us. Help me! Help your- self! We’re trapped! If you’ve a soul in your body, lift up this door and hold it against the steers!” The stampede again closed in about the hut, so that it seemed to the two men as if in that maelstrom of hoofs and horns they were like flies hiding in an eggshell. But Cal Triggers was oblivious to these out- ward things. He looked down at his beaten enemy. Again the horror of this death—a murder—struck home to Cal. It was not like standing up face to face with a man and ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. drawing on him, fighting him for the sake of some woman, for the sake of honor. To stand there and watch his enemy die was as yellow as knifing him after the manner of a Mexican—in the center of his back. ‘Damn you, Meakin!” he burst out sud- denly. ‘‘ Coward that you are, yellow coyote that you are—at least, you aren’t worth blackening my soul with this crime. Now get the hell up off that floor and help me fight!” Triggers lifted the door and the weight of the smashed-in wall by his own tremen- dous strength. He rammed it up against the big open side of the shack, then kicked up the table and the iron stove, which he propped against it. Meakin, meanwhile, feeling the weight lifted from his back, crawled across the floor to the other side of the room, where he lay exhausted, trembling, watching Trig- gers aS a wounded dog will watch his mas- ter. Cal had not come to his decision any too soon. The last of the stampeding mass had not passed before the hut was battered on every side by the fear-maddened bulls. Cal’s last ounce of energy was gone and the wound which he had received while riding into the stampede had sapped his strength. The crashing of wood and the thundering of hoofs grew suddenly quiet, but one last giant steer, with black iron haunches and a five-foot spread of horn, came buck-jumping frantically in the tail of the stampede. It smashed head-on into the wall, gorging through the door and hurling the wall, the table, the iron stove over in a mass. Before this last onslaught Cal gave way. He sank to his knees, and as the débris crashed upon him he went on fighting with a futile determination. Words and thoughts were beating into his brain as he fought. “The life of that damned is saved, and by me!” were some of the words: “ It is a penance — for past killings — damned rot! Killed others—but couldn’t kill him —the damned Quiet came, but the walls still whirled in a dark soundless storm. Cal sank into this velvet silence and then into oblivion. The last confused idea that trailed away was a a Bi comicloool C©