Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 4, 1926 — page 145: what you’re looking at

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

THE DEVIL’S SADDLE. 455 But with the desperation of one who is hounded by all mankind, he kept doggedly on, his head lolling with every movement of the horse.. He would fight it out for a day, perhaps two days, because the night would turn cold. After that they could take a chance on branching off in search of water. Until then the course was straight south. It was conceivable that this frantic de- termination might have saved him his life. But something happened which made Lad- ley’s own will-power as futile and ridiculous as the will-power of a blowfly bumping its head against a window pane. His mount gave out. When they left that last fateful water- hole in the gulch the creature seemed to have been instilled with a fine zeal. Ti went cantering along over the dunes like an Arabian steed inspired with unlimited spirit and strength. This preliminary effect of the drug last- ed for but a short while, however. Present- ly Ladley found it necessary to keep his heels digging into the animal’s flanks to urge it on; then he had to thwack it with the bight of his reins. They covered a lot of trail before the end came. The horse stumbled heavily, was yanked to its feet, and floundered on for a space, struggling in the dunes, churning up a cloud of alkali. It was like a ship that had sprung a leak, a ship that banged heavily against the seas, unable to answer her rudder, unable to lift herself over the rolling swells. Then abruptly the little creature plunged forward, doubling up its front feet, and tumbling over on its side like a steer brained in the slaughter house. Thrown from the saddle, Ladley picked himself up, staggered to his feet, and stood staring incredulous and dazed at the drugged horse. The disaster seemed to impress itself upon his consciousness slowly. He went to the horse’s head, tried to yank it up, then kicked at it. “It’s no use,” the girl said. “‘ That was copper water; no doubt about that now.” Ladley looked up at her. He did not seem to see her; he was looking through her kept her fit. and beyond her. In a confused, bewildered way, he remembered that she had held her sombrero to this horse, enticing it to drink. But it was like the memory of a dream, the details of which had long since faded away, “You said the nags wouldn’t drink; you even tried to make this one drink, and you said it wouldn’t.” ‘“T guess perhaps they must have tried it after all,” she replied. “This nag of mine will go down next.” He was on the point of flying into a rage, rushing toward the girl as if to rend her in pieces. But her last remark stopped him. What if they lost both horses! “You think that nag drank! we'll be left out here to die!” ‘* Looks that way,” she said calmly. “T thought both of these critters, being bron- chos with a good lot of desert savvy, would know gyp water when they smelt it. But I’m mistaken. Looks bad.” “Bad! God! It’s the end. We're goin’ to roast here in the fires of hell! That’s how bad it looks!” He was clinging to her saddle now, sup- porting his crumpled weight, staring up at her with a dust-whitened, haggard face. She herself must have looked pretty bad, although she had managed to take Sips sur- reptitiously from’ her canteen. This and the knowledge that she could get water within a mile or two of the trail Ladley had been without either water or the promise of it. He was writhing in a torture that was both physi- cal and mental. “You don’t look as if you can eat up much more trail, pard,” she said. ‘ Your face looks like a skull.” “God knows it’ll be a skull before that sun goes down!” he whimpered. ‘“T’ve got a fear,” she said quietly, ear- nestly; “a fear that you’re right. A buz- zard has sightéd us already.” “A buzzard—where? Where’s a buz- zard?” : ‘Look up against the sun.” He turned his ashen face toward the sun, and the skin wrinkled up as if shriveling under the blaze of heat. “ Can’t you see it?” You mean s Gomichook