Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 472 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

~ Six-Foot Si. 11 nie rater dealterms) FT TO ST oe ee If Moran was showing off his skill; the effort was a marked success. The girl turned somewhat pale, as she looked up at him. This was the man she had undertaken to co with! She had not believed that such deadly accuracy and such instantaneous action were possible. ‘** Suppose he detects me!” she reflected. ‘* An instant will suffice him.to frustrate all. The same deadly aim that separated us will unite us again! **But he shall not detect me,” she went on, *‘ with that weapon in his reach! I will never go to Robert with the message of failure! His murderer live, with no one to hunt him down? Never! nuevert never!” These thoughts flashed through her mind like a glare of lightning, and the expression appro- priate to them swept across her face like a mask of Medusa. But the vigilance over every look and ges- ture to which she had schooled herself since en- tering upon this difficult mission, did not fail her now. She knew every changing expression of her face, every flash of her eye, by a carefully-cul- tivated muscular sense, so that, even before the look of wondering surprise had time to appear on Joe Moran’s countenance, she knew what he had caught a glimpse of, too fleeting for him to quite realize what he had really seen. Instantly she dropped her eyes, and lifted her hand to her heart. ** Let me go home!” she petitioned. Her voice was so hoarse, her pallor so ex- treme, the collapse of her figure, but now buoy- ant with sparkling life, so marked, that, be- lieving her about to faint from some sudden disturbance of the heart, Moran seized her by the arm. She shuddered at his touch, but by a mighty effort prevented herself from shrinking from it. ‘‘It is nothing,” she assured him, “I am subject to these attacks. It will pass in a me- There!—thank you—I am better al- ready.” She recovered herself almost as abruptly as she had succumbed to he knew not what weak- ness. Butas she passed her hand across her face, he noticed that a slight moisture had start- ed about her yet bloodless and tremulous lips, and she looked exhausted. ‘T have frightened you!” he ejaculated, re- morsefully, as Te received back from her the revolver which she held out to him wearily. ‘*The shot was a little unexpected,” she ad- mitted, ‘‘ and, you know, I came here for my health.” This was equivocation, but the girl who was or- dinarily the soul of honor and truthfulness, had subordinated everything to her fixed purpose of revenge. Her conscience was asleep, if not dead. Only her hatred lived. To efface the impression just made upon Joe Moran’s mind, and to lull to sleep any stirring suspicion of the truth, she affected a gayety which a finer perception than his might have seen, was forced and bysterical. But he was listening to the siren’s song, the poison was in his blood, and he only knew that she was coquettishly contidential, as she chatted about her prospective lessons in pistol-shooting. So they returned to the camp, and at the door of her shanty she gave him her hand, and thanked him with a smile that set his pulses to leaping. She did not seem to care that the boys were witness to this mark of intimacy. In his mad elation Joe Moran could not join them and meet their covert looks, if not banter- ing words. He went straight to his own shanty. As he entered, a piece of brown paper, such as is used to wrap hardware in, attracted his attention to where it lay on the floor. With a nervous start he sprung forward and picked it up, mechanically putting his band to the spot where the precious cryptogram was sewed under the lining of his coat. Could he have dropped a piece of it? For this scrap of paper was of the kind on which it was written. Hastily opening it, he read with staring eyes: ** Beware of Bob Cady !” The specter of retribution had risen in his path at the very moment when everything seemed most promising. CHAPTER XI. THE TEASER ‘‘ DROPS IN.” ** WxHoop! I’m a teaser!” The patrons of the Bucking Burro were lounging about in most forlorn listlessness, wait- ing, yet scarcely hoping, for something to ‘¢ turn up.” If was in the middle of the afternoon, when the most wide-awake mining-camp ought to have a rather sleepy look, the men who ‘ make Rome howl” at night being then engaged dig- ging the gold which furnishes them with their nightly carouse. ut it was suspected that the citizens of Bloody Run did their mining for the most part on the road, with a revolver for a pick, and a stage-coach forarocker, Certainly honest work f a a ee, more than to turn his eyes slowly toward the was a quite secondary consideration with them, “‘ crooking their elbow ” being the most arduous of their lavors all day long. Consequently the place was noted for ‘ keep- ing the ball rolling” about twenty hours out of the twenty-four. But now Dandy Dave, who was lounging against the bar, drawing radiating lines from a splash of agg: that had been spilled by his own languid hand, yawned dismally, and drawled: ‘You hyear me, fellers! We've struck a streak o’ blue Sundays in this hyar camp. What’s got into the thing? *Pears like it was time to move on, an’ open up in a fresh spot, some’rs,” ‘* We want a mite o’ blood-lettin’.. That's what’s the matter with us,” observed Old-man Crocker, tearing the end of a plug of tobacco with his yellow teeth, as a dog shreds gristly meat from a bone held between his paws. ‘**S’pose you lead off?’ replied Dandy Dave, merely for the sake of talk. ‘*[ ain’t a hog,” asserted Mr. Crocker, ele- gantly. ‘Tl stand back an’ give somebody else a show.” And his auditors knew that this was a modest allusion to a “ ison diffikilty ” out of which he had come only the day before Beth Crawford’s arrival, with a new notch on the heft of his bowie, a grim record corresponding to a mound of red clay up in the “‘ High Lot” of the camp. ‘*T’lowed ye might want to keep yer hand in,” said Dave, not looking up from the intri- cate pattern he was tracing. ‘*It’s your put,” answered Old-man Crocker. ** We hain’t hyeared from you lately.” All this was mere ‘‘ chin-music.” Even those who turned the crank wearied of it, and let the matter drop. None of the others vouchsafed so much as a word of comment. It wasn’t ‘‘ business.” At this moment, then, the door of the saloon was suddenly, without warning, thrown violent- ly open, and the figure of a man shot through it as if propelled by a catapult, landing in the middle of the room at a single bound. ‘* Whoop!” he yelled. ‘ [’m a teaser!” Everybody present had witnessed challenges of this sort before, and they usually promised the liveliest kind of a time. Still there was no manifestation of awakened interest. No one’s face lighted up with ex- pectancy. No one changed his bored attitude, stranger. It would not do for the credit of the camp, to have it appear that any fellow who chose to jump into the crowd and demand elbow-room could create a sensation. The man who had chosen this characteristic method of introducing himself to the camp stood in a crouching posture, with his hands on his knees, his shoulders drawn up, his back arched, his head thrust forward, looking about in fantastic mimicry of a buffalo bull, when, his fore-feet planted firmly, his head lowered and his eyes rolling he challenges a bovine rival to the test of battle. ** Don’t all speak to once, gents,” he requested with a grin. ne e got his wish, for no one deigned a word. But this was evidently not what he had come for, so, suddenly snatching his hat from his head and throwing it on the floor between him- self and those standing about the bar, he pur- sued, with an exaggerated air of pleading: ‘* Spit on it, somebody—do!” He got this request too, with a vengeance. Not a man within reach denied his petition, and the gage of battle was fairly deluged with streams of tobacco-juice from all sides, ** Waal, I sw’ar!” cried the owner of the hat, with a grin of delight. ‘‘ That thar’s a leetile like ole times. The boys hain’t furgot their | slight, an’ that’s a fact. Nary miss in the hull gang. That thar was beautiful—beautiful !” But Dandy Dave went further than his com- panions, | With a deft kick, he sent the hat flying straight for the face of its owner, but that the latter caught it as skillfully. ‘* Thankee, sir!—thankee!” said the stranger, slatting the unshapely piece of felt across his thigh, to relieve it of the worst of its unwhole- some drenching. ‘‘ I alluz likes to strike a camp whar the gents picks up anythin’ what’s throw- ed down. Thankee, gents, one an’ all. You're the kind o’ fellers I likes to tie to. I reckon Pll ee down in this hyar camp, an’ go my pile on er. And to the surprise of every one present, he rue on his hat, and stood bowing and grinning right and left, as if he had been received with distinguished favor. ** Waal, I sw’ar!” ejaculated Dandy Dave, with undisguised contempt, ‘‘ef you ain’t the way-downest white man lever sot my two peep- ers on! I’m glad I kicked your hat before dirtyin’ my feet on the likes of you.” The stranger looked at Dave witha smile of admiration, ** You’ve copra mighty quick,” he said, “That’s what I likes‘to see. Wharever I so- journ, the boys all allows as it’s money ina ' the matter with you, ee Se CT I Ce eee TT See er OO man’s pocket not to kick ag’in’ the Teaser. But inerally two or three o’ the reggullation craw- shes o’ the place has to whale Cain out o’ me before they crowns me chief.” ‘* Whale you!” cried Dave in disgust. ‘* Why, ou ole stoughton-bottle, we hain’t got a man in the camp what ’u’d demean himself to kick the like of you into the nearest wallow?” “You don’t say?” cried the stranger, elevat- ing his eyebrows and puckering up his mouth in apparent surprise. ‘‘ Waal,” he continued shaking his head regretfully, ‘‘ that gits me! it did want to show you galoots down hyar, the new style o’ layin’ out subjecks fur the under- taker. I’lowed as ye might have a chap what ’u’d be middlin’ easy fur to git away with, what you’d jest as lieve I'd operate on. But that thar’s jest my luck!” is. eA called Old-man Crocker, “On deck, boss!” responded a little man, starting to his feet.as abru tly as if a spring had suddenly been tripped under him. ** Mount him!” was the laconic order, “With the greatest pleasure in life,” an- swered Chippy, tripping forward with a parade of jauntiness. e was a smirking little rascal, who played jackal to the more redoubtable Crocker. In return he got tHe protection of the man of whom everybody but Dandy Dave stood in fear, and was thus enabled to play the bully over men who would otherwise have ‘sat down” on his pretensions in short order. With an insolent grin on his face he advanced, rocking his head from side to side, and throw- ing out his elbows, in exaggerated pugilistic attitudes. ‘* Hold on, gents!—fur the love o’ God hold on!” cried the stranger, waving Chippy off, as he retreated toward the door through which he had entered in such warlike style. ** Look at the blatherskite!” scoffed one of the bystanders. ‘Stand to the rack, man,” admonished an- other, ‘‘ an’ take yer gruel with a short-handled spoon, Itll do you a power o’ good.” ‘* But, gents, hyear me!” pleaded the stranger. ‘I don’t want none o’ yer crack fightin’ men, e onderstand. I ain’t ekil to it. I seen my st days when I was a heap younger than I be now. “Cheese it, you duffer! What do ye want littler’n Chippy?” **He’s little, but he looks powerful loud! Gimme somethin’—” ‘** Drop bim, Chippy!” It seemed the easiest thing in the world. The stranger was backing off, apparently only hop- ing to protect his face as much as possible while he underwent the process of being “ dropped.” In us abject fear he seemed to have become bewildered, and lost the direction of the door through which he boped to make his escape, and backed into a corner. At what looked like a favorable moment, Chippy jum for him. But the blow by which he expected to knock his man out at a single effort, somehow failed to make connections, His wrist was clutched desperately, and the impetus of his rush carried him fairly into his cowardly antagonist’s embrace. Then there was a mingling of arms and legs, as instantaneous as it was intricate, so that no one made out just how it happened, but the two went to the floor with a crash, Chippy under- most! Tne stranger scrambled to bis feet as quickly as possible, and stood in seeming terror and be- wilderment, looking at the crowd and at his fallen assailant, as if he were as much puzzled as the rest to account for such a termination of the affair. I say termination, for Chippy had received a bump of the head that left him staring straight up at the ceiling, with his wits plainly wool- ee ‘*Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Dandy Dave, who, entertaining a secret pate of Old-man Crocker, yet unwilling to provoke an encounter with him, was ready to “‘ get in on him ” through his jackal. ‘* He’s knocked your man out.” He's got a point on him,” admitted Crocker “but that wasafoul. Hi, thar, Chippy! Time! time!” But Chippy did not jump at his master’s word, as was his wont. ® ‘“*He’s out fur keeps, I tell you,” insisted ave. ‘* Gents, pon me soul I didn’t go fur to do it!” | pleaded the stranger. ‘‘I hope you will excuse me. ‘Why, you sneakin’ whelp!” cried Dave, ** didn’t he go fur to lay you out? Then whatis thar to excuse? He got a hot spoonful of his own gruel, that’s all.” “But hell play hob with me when he comes round!” urged the stranger, with ludicrous con- cern, Everybody laughed, and most swore. This was the flabbiest man that had ever come to Bloody Run. | . ** Come! come!” exclaimed Old-man Crocker, — who liked equally well to set men or do fight, ‘* the Run ain’t goin fur to stop so, at’s: gan? Ain’tthishyar NiGDOO (E _=3) (EO) SGOl } y Sei :