Adventure, February 1917 — page 140: what you’re looking at

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

7A =, ‘girl in the world, going to marry him? _ Hale did not yet know that the fifiger of suspicion had leveled its sinister shape to- ward him. He had taken half the clothing from his canvas suit-case when his eyes beheld the - black leather of the stolen money-satchel! It was small, and it had been neatly pressed flat. With a great lump in his throat, Hale closed and locked the suit-case and shoved it out of sight under his bed. Then he sat down in his soap-box chair weakly. His face was chalky white. ‘“What’s the matter?” inquired “Funny” Hartley, whose bed was next to Hale’s. “See somethin’ under the bed?” “J —J]I reckon I’ll not go,” Hale said _ tremulously. He meant to stay behind and destroy the . damaging evidence that some one—the man with the motive, of course, was Linderman McNabb — had so cunningly~ arranged against him. And he did stay behind. Funny Hartley also stayed behind. Funny Hartley had caught a glimpse of the _ company’s money-satchel. | When Charley Hale stole up Pistol Creek . with the little satchel hidden inside his blue shirt, Hartley stole after him. Hartley was a mountaineer, and he followed Hale as a man follows wild game—soundlessly, al- ways behind something, never in the open. Hale threw the satchel into a dense thicket of laurel and Judas trees; then he went on up the creek. Hartley found the satchel, carried it to Super Bill and told of all that which he had seen. “Ah-hum,” growled Cooley. His face showed deep regret. “We'll have to go through his baggage, Funny, while he’s gone. But —— me, eee if I don’t plumb hate to do this!” Sally King overheard ‘hea talking it over. When Cooley broke into Hale’s suit- case, Sally slyly watched and listened from a near-by doorway. Cooley found forty dol-: lars in bank-notes of small denominations, and the missing key to the dynamite house. Then Super Bill, no longer in doubt, set out with Hartley to arrest Charley Hale. Sally reached the woods two minutes ahead of them, and hurried up the creek to find and warn her lover. She found Hale sitting on a stone above a little pool; he was absently watching a school of trout that was playing around a half submerged . boulder. -ed. Adventure “‘They’re atter you, Charley!” she pant- — “Come wi’ me—quick!”’ “‘Who’s atter me?” drawled Hale. He noted that her blue-and-white calico dress was torn in several places. “TI hain’t done nothin’, Sally, honey—ef it’s the law you’re a-talkin’ about.” “Hush! Don’t waste breath and time— come wi’ me!’ panted Sally. She stooped and caught him by an arm. Another look into her drawn face decided him. He rose and ran with her into the laurels. She knew the lay of the country per- fectly, and she kept the lead. Half an hour later she led him into a deep and thickly wooded gash known as Gudger’s Cove, and there, in gloom at almost midday, they sat down on a gray stone amid giant sword- ferns. Sally quickly told Hale all she knew to tell. “Tinderman McNabb is the answer,” muttered Hale. ‘‘He stole my knife the day afore the safe was blowed that night— and he done the dynamitin’ of it. He slipped into the boardin’-house the night atter the safe was blowed, s’arched my clo’es for my suit-case key and found it, and put them things in my suit-case. body’d see me find ’em, a course. It’s a new idee to git me out o’ the way. He wants you, Sally.” ‘He shore won’t never git me alive,” ”” de- clared Sally. ‘‘Ef you could jest prove ’at it was him blowed the safe!” He ‘knawed some Hale shrugged his shoulders like a - Latin. “Tt’s a bad hole I’m in,” he mumbled dejectedly. ‘I don’t see no way out.” “T don’t neither,” said Sally. ‘“‘Hain’t it a shame for you, Charley! And it’s a shame for me, too. Jest when I’d found you! You ain’t like nobody else in the world: Charley, ever sense I was seventeen ° I’ve wanted a home 0’ my own, and a man o’ my own, and childern 0’ my own—and now—n-now, Ch-Charley——” She turned her face to his shoulder, and one of her arms crept tremulously around his neck. He put.an arm about her waist and bent his head until his cheek rested against her fragrant, brown-gold hair. Al- ways, always she reminded him of his mother, that other great and good friend, who had always, always understood. “Don’t cry, honey,” he finally said. Her tears had put a fine, new strength in him, - COME S 9)(0)(0) (EO) AT