Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 7, 1925 — page 110: what you’re looking at

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

es ii ; pie / ew Aise “etx AS PS bbl F yak OH ' s Fi , . ee ot 4 1) A ee DBA ALES Fee | ay es ft ne 7 Pan la i : PREWaAY { ‘ tay wey ‘ “eis ‘ i » ey | ; q 580 From indeterminate distances she heard the raving of coyotes, the hooting of ground owls, the croaking of tree. toads. — ‘Wherever : possible she rode fast, for the sounds she heard dismayed her. She kept glancing ap- _prehensively back, and she was breathless with a dread of dangers that might be ahead of her, lying in wait. The. character of the country chaaped. The trail was always visible, although there were times when it made sharp curves that took her into unsuspected ravines and over abrupt rises. But the moonlight held, dis- closing the hazards, and after a while she srew calm and confident. She dropped into a low, broad river bed filled with dry sand. The road ran along the edge, close to the perpendicular banks, where aspen and alder geeper: over her head. She followed the trail out = the river bed ‘to a broad level where giant cottonwood trees arched above her; she went down again into canons between walls of fantas- tically carved rocks, their faces hollowed to cavernous depths through long exposure t to | the elements. — She had not suspected that the country held such magnificent views, and there were times when she halted the hearse and sat mo- tionless and enthralled. But the country with the moonlight shining upon it was weird as well as beautiful, and usually, after a halt, she rode on again, shivering with: an indefinable dread. The rim-rock towering above her was _ mysterious and threatening with deep, dark caverns, entrancing with drooping ferns and | long-bladed grass that fringed it like droop- ing Jace. She decided that some day she would ride here and view the place when the sun shone upon it, and revealed the true color values. ‘She encountered ether sections equally beautiful before she again ascended to a level, where she could look downward into the slumbering lowlands. - By the time she crossed the level the moon was shining directly into her face. It was swimming low, and she felt that if she _ did not hurry it would sink below the level. of the mountains westward and she would ‘reach the section where the trail. vanished made no attempt to guide the horse. rode him carefully, with a good grip on the - ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. in that darkest interval of the night, just | before dawn. The level ended in a long, downward slope which dipped Into a big basin. Al- ready the farther reaches of the basin were dark, although about half way out into the ‘saucer-shaped hollow the moonlight was brilliant. Half an hour later she looked back and saw the moonlight behind her, and she felt she was riding into a wall of som- ber darkness. In another half hour she felt the darkness had swallowed her. She could no longer see the trail. Far away, eastward, she could see the moonlight touching fie peaks of some ‘mountains, but ahead of her was an impenetrable black i Grimly she rode into it, although he She reins and her knees: pressing his sides. If he stumbled and fell she meant to- stay with him, for she knew that if he fell and she were fe tumble out of the saddle, she could never find him again. She didn’t care to travel through that country on foot. The horse went on and on. ‘There were now no landmarks that she could See, to determine how fast she was traveling, no features of the landscape by which she might mark the progress she was making. Ahead was nothing but a blank darkness, immeasurable, yawning. After a while, from the fact that her body persisted in sliding forward in the saddle, she knew they were descending a slope. ~The slope was long and the horse stumbled occasionally, and at each stumble she caught her breath sharply. But they got down ultimately. She became aware of that when she ceased sliding forward. Then there came an qaterial in which . tie horse traveled steadily, evenly. In this interval Edna felt a strong, pungent breeze striking her left cheek, pressing against her. ‘When she could no longer feel the breeze she decided they were in some timber. And when once a branch scraped the top of her head and knocked her hat off, ‘she crouched low in the saddle. She sat, trembling, when the horse sud- denly halted. For a time she was in a frenzy of fear and dread, for she thought of rob- comicbooks.co