Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 4, 1926 — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

SILENT Ten minutes later a thin black figure waved on a rope’s end against the blue desert sky. On the ground twenty men stared grimly upward, satisfied that justice was done. Back in the Ritz bar a huge bronze man lay unconscious on the floor. An ever- increasing blood pool centered about his shaggy head. Out of the door of Pop Satterwaite’s store sauntered the brown little deputy sheriff. He steadfastly looked away from the cottonwood tree, not caring to witness the scene. Soon the men of Quartz City filed back to the Ritz bar. They needed a drink after the sight they had just seen, and Pig Gra- bow had promised to set drinks up on the house. a CHAPTER V. A CALM OATH. HEN Jerome Starley regained con- sciousness he was lying across two tables in the Quartz City Ritz. “ Monk ” Day, the bartender, was be- side him, mopping up the blood from the floor. As he worked he watched the desert man out of the corners of his bleary eyes. ‘Glad you’re wakin’ up,” he announced. “The place is closed for the night, and I was afraid I’d have to leave you here.” Starley tried to answer, but his tongue would not form the words. His head seemed bursting open; he couldn’t remember what had happened. “At that, I bandaged you, Jerry,” the gorilla-like Monk went on. ‘‘ Did a hell of a fine job, if I do say it. Adhesive tape. Yes, sir, drew the cut edges together, and stuck ’em just as well as any M. D. you ever saw.” Still no reply came from the desert man; his black eyes blinked rapidly. “Hard to get your senses back, ain't it, Jerry?” demanded the barkeeper. “ Say, I was damned sorry to have to crack you that way. But there’d been some shootin’ and fightin’ if I hadn’t. Ain’t it so?” Starley nodded. He began to recall the scene of that afternoon in the Ritz bar; his hands rose to his aching head. JERRY. 305 “You betcha, I was sorry to have to do it,’ continued the barkeeper. “ The boys all wanted me: to tell you they was sorry, too. They like you, Jerry; you’re a square- shooter, and they know it. But they had to get that little rat with you—” “Did they—did they hang him?” ‘“ Surest thing you know,” answered the barkeeper, cheerfully. ‘Say, Jerry, you won’t go feelin’ bad about that, will you? That kid didn’t run in your class. Not a-tall. “You could see by his eyes that he was a no-good. Plain no-good. And he ’fessed up that he killed Blackie Vari. Yes, sir. Shot Blackie Vari, with the muzzle of a eun at his stomach, over a_half-breed woman. Sure, he should ’ve hung, eh, Jerry?” ‘* Maybe:’ “Then why you lookin’ so melancholy about it?” “Because you boys didn’t kill little Joe Budhouser. I did it. With my damned tongue. I gave him away after I promised to protect him.” The desert man pushed himself from the tables. He tottered a step or two, then turned toward the door. Monk Day followed, and laid a hand on his arm. ‘“ Now, see here, Jerry,” he said, “‘ don’t go feelin’ that way about it. You didn’t—” Jerome Starley shook off the hand, and staggered out into the darkness. Tin Can was waiting, half asleep, at the hitching rail. The desert man untied his burro, and then hesitated. Behind him shone the few lights of Quartz City. One, high in the air above the ore crusher, seemed suspended from the sky. A hundred paces in the other direction loomed a lone cottonwood blotching black- ly against the gray desert below. Toward it Starley turned. The night air braced him, cleared his aching head. He felt the old strength and vigor course through his body, but his head was down, his face morose. A black figure was swaying limply under the’ first broad branch of the cottonwood. For a moment Starley stared at it in silence, and then he pulled himself up into the tree. A moment later the body of ill-fated Joe CCOLMMUCE (E@) oO KS