Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 128: what you’re looking at

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

918 And with that thought there rose before him a shoulder of the slope which jutted a comparatively flat surface forth some fifty yards under the barrier which rose like a shelf full six feet high. It was Billy’s chance, and, while he knew that if Concho failed him a back breaking fall for horse and man would follow, he took it. He turned out upon the shoulder of the land, put Concho squarely to the barrier, and urged her forward, Craddock reined in with a gasp to prevent a collision with the mad horseman, and Concho, passing him, sailed into the air like a cat, caught the top of the barrier with her forelegs, scram- bled mightily with her hind legs, and was up! Craddock, hopeless of his mount emu- lating that courageous leap, and not inclined © to encourage that sort of thing anyway, continued his ride to the point where the barrier fell to an estate low enough to permit his loping over it, but by then Billy and his mare were out of sight. CHAPTER XXXIX, THE WOMAN’S PART. ‘'y VE given the news to all the force,” | said Staff Sergeant MacQuillan, “ and Craddock is the only one that has even seen the man. He rode away from Craddock like a devil, and fired at him into the bar- gain.” ; “ But he will come back to the house of my aunt.” ‘He will not; for she has made him promise to keep away for the boy’s sake. It’s a nice mess.” “But yes! A nice mess! And you stand there and say it. Oh, how stupid you are!” This was the third of a little series of interviews with which Annette had cheap- ened the sergeant’s life since the fiasco of Thursday night. The sergeant would now have put aside his mortal coil for the brief- est bar of the shortest song extant. “ Have I not made it plain—” He harked back to his earliest explanation of the wretched incident. But Annette was relentless. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. “You make it plain that you are so stupid!” she pointed out. “ Of course your Craddock could not approach heem! Do you suppose that he will ever appear again while a redcoat ees in sight? Unless he de- sires to play weeth wan?” “ But, Annette, you cannot be more in- terested in this thing than I am meself. Ye can understand that, can ye no?” His fine gray eyes were eloquent of the self-reproach which seared him. “ But how am I to know? There ees nothing that you do!” “It’s aye worse than that. There is nothing I can do. Do ye not see my posi- tion? The man is innocent. I cannot send out men for him to shoot at in the face of that. Ye see we cannot shoot back. I mis- doubt but what it will come to me riding the country in mufti, hunting for him like a needle in the hay.” Annette brightened visibly at that. “That ees wan good thought!” she cried. ‘“* But of course! You weel ride out in the plain clothing, and you weel com’ upon heem when he does not know.” MacQuillan regarded her gloomily. ‘“‘ And what of me work in the meantime? Not to mention the fact that he will more than likely shoot me on sight.” He men- tioned this quite impersonally as one of the obstacles in his way. “He will shoot? But no!” ‘“‘ But yes. He has the love for me that a shepherd has for a rattlesnake, since Thursday night. Flynn is a fool!” She reflected on this. “He will shoot you!” She considered the impersonal tone in which the sergeant had mentioned this. ‘‘ Are you not afraid?” she asked him. “Td no thought of that,” he confessed. “I was thinking it would mean hanging for him.” It seemed unreasonable to Annette that with the proof of Billy’s innocence the sit- uation should have taken this darker, uglier aspect. “ But eet ees too terrible!” she protested earnestly, “ that two good men should in thees way disagree!” “It’s a braw jest!” he admitted sardon- ically, GEomichooks:co AA