Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

LORETTA That was a strange culmination to their combat—an embrace, to which the gir! suc- cumbed! He released her then; took his hand from her mouth. They separated, stood staring at each other, both wide-eyed, abashed, yes, even frightened. The girl did not scream. Instead she looked at him, her face flushed crimson, her eyes flaming, her lips parted to regain her breath. The bands of light, made white now from the rising dust, cut across her tall agile body. One of the beams lit upon her mouth. It was a courageous mouth. Her eyes were clear, flaming, her face thin and burned by the desert wind—all those de- tails which Chilton saw in that first be- wildering combat of glances, formed the defiant face of a frontier girl. Defiant, yes; until she saw Chilton’s first move. And then her defiance melted. She saw a gesture which at first she could not believe, which left her wondering just what sort of a man this was whom she was facing. He had reached to the floor, picked up her six-gun and was now holding it outward with handle toward her. CHAPTER VIII. A WOMAN’S PITY. HE stared at him with an expression of utter bewilderment, incredulity. There was no possible clew, no.memory from her past, by which she could discover just what sort of a man she was facing. There he stood, powerful, gaunt, fierce. Her wrist ached from that one inexorable clutch and twist. He looked as if he could have fought ten men. And yet he was not husky like many of the herders on her ranch. The neck revealed by the opened shirt appeared straight, graceful, without the touch of brutality that you always see ex- aggerated in the necks of powerful men. His throat, in fact, gleamed white down to the rough, big chest. From there she glanced up to the pale, fierce eyes. She was not afraid. The quick, intense appraisal resolved it- self into one question: ‘“‘ Who are you?” BRODELL, encounter, he seemed perfectly composed. He was in rags—yes. But some miracle seemed to have taken place. She was not facing a cornered renegade. She was fac- ing some other type of man—yjust what type she did not know. She saw him re- move his cap—a peculiar gesture in a mo- ment of such stress. ““T made a very regrettable mistake,” he said. ‘ I cannot understand how such a thing happened: you see all I knew was that a hand was thrust in that door with a gun bearing upon me. Of course, I lunged for 14.2? The girl was all the more bewildered. Why had he ducked into that shack in the first place? He might probably confess himself a tramp. But there were no tramps in that country, properly so called. The nearest thing to it was the type of drifters called renegadoes, but they never tramped. They always rode on something. Plenty of broncs for the asking. Then again he looked more like a gam- bler. But what was that curious woolen thing he had just removed from his head, that thing with a visor like the green shades the gamblers wore at Pedro’s place? She had never seen a cap. Yes, a gambler he might have been. He had a poker face—like Skeeter Bro- dell’s. brother, Buck; and hair like Jack Brodell. He seemed a composite of all three and yet he was as unlike them as a race horse is to & COW pony. What could he be doing out there alone, on foot with tattered clothes, without so much as boots to tuck his trouser legs in? What was he doing wandering round there, stumbling into a cow farm on the desert rim? An escaped criminal, of course! That was the answer! And yet the girl rejected this almost immediately. She was riveting her eyes upon him. That was one thing She was satisfied about. criminal. “Who are you?” she asked again. ‘What are you doing here? Why did you hide in here—when my dog barked at you? You were afraid of the dog?” Her lips oO CORNICE OOO KS 5CO) 343 * ‘Although as surprised as she was at this = He had shoulders like Skeeter’s © He was not a