Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 157: what you’re looking at

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

CHEDDAR CHEESE. back of the niche, which was nothing more than a crevice, shot out in a softer stratum of the rock by one of the tunnel blasts, stood a black painted powder canister part- ly covered by a gunny sack. Barrett gave the torch to his companion and fished the canister out of its hiding place. By its weight he could tell that it was filled — with something; not powder, because it wasn’t heavy enough for that. His hands were shaking as if he had been suddenly stricken with an ague when he put the black can down on the tunnel floor. The top had been cleanly cut around the edge, though not quite all of the way around, and it was wired in place. The wire was stiff, but he knelt and twisted at it with bare fingers until it came off. When the cut cover was lifted, one glance at the contents of the can was enough. The pow- der container was stuffed full of packages of bank notes. “Oh! Thank Heaven!” gasped the pretty torch holder, and the exclamation was more than half a sob. “Tt’s here—some of it, at any rate,” said Barrett, bank trained coolness taking possession of him at sight of the money. “ Will you hold the light down while I count it?” “C-count it!” she said, with a little shriek. “ Why, it will take ours to count it—and those men may be here any min- ute!” “Oh, no; it won’t take seconds,” Barrett returned. dumping the packages of bills on the floor and handling them swiftly. Thirty nine of the forty parcels were in- tact, with the printed “$5,000 ” binding slip of the bank on each. But the fortieth had been broken and rewrapped~ with a string; and this one was five hundred dol- lars short. “ This is the one they broke to give me five hundred dollars that I couldn’t spend,” he said, and was beginning to cram the money back into the can when Della pro- tested shrilly. “You can’t carry that thing!” she point- ed out. for pity’s sake, hurry!” The little tremolo of panic in her voice made Barrett = and look ‘Up at De in was measurable in seconds. “Put it in the gunny sack, and - 939 amazement. Hitherto she had been all cold courage, and he had been the one to need bolstering. But now they seemed to be changing places. She was trembling with impatience to be ~ gone, whiie he found himself growing stub- bornly unwilling to hurry; more than un- willing—not wishing to go at all until he had staged a final climaxing act with the men who had not only robbed him, but had concocted a devilish plot to steal his good name and send him to rot in prison. Was he to be satisfied with a simple recovery of the loot and let these scoundrels go free? Hardly. “All right,” he said in reply to her plea for haste, “ ‘we'll get out in the open if you'd rather; though if there were any place in here where. I could hide you out of bullet range, I’d just as soon settle with those beggars here as anywhere.’”’ And he began to chuck the packages of money into the sack. “What do you mean, ‘ settle ’?” she chit- tered. “ Haven’t we got what we came for —if we can only be lelucky spough to get away. with it.” - ~“J mean just what I say; < he returned doggedly. yet, and it won’t be “until after I’ve had my innings.” “Bu-but this isn’t red blood, Jimmie, — “it’s just c-crazy sus- — dear!’’ she wailed; suicide!” “That, dear girl, is what I’m going to try to make these fellows think it is before I’m through with them. Let’s go. Stick closely behind me and snap that light off as soon as you can find your way without it.” Against all the probabilities, they es- caped from the tunnel without being in- tercepted, although the margin of safety They could hear voices on the other side of the cabin, and they had barely time to draw aside in “The game isn’t played out — = the shadow of the trees when the three men __ | came around the corner of the shack. The fat man was in the lead, lighting the way with an electric torch, and the — smallest of the three, the one they had seen - going down the road toward the stalled au- eens was —= volubly. oO = com ehoe (SCO