Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 14, 1928 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

208 in a vague sort of way, but he could not positively place either of them. This in itself was unusual, for Dad Williams owned a remarkable memory for faces. The fact that he knew these two men, but could not place them, piqued him; perhaps he was getting old —too old—as his political opponents so liked to point out? Still, their identity would come to him soon, he was sure, and meanwhile there was one other circumstance that interested him. That wound on Jones’s jaw had undoubtedly been caused by a bullet, but the shot had entered wnder- peath the man’s chin, and had come out through his cheek. - How could that bullet have followed such an wtnusttal course? The man must have been lying on his back when hit. This was highly improbable. Under what circumstances, then, could that ctiriotis word have been inflicted? With increasing mystification, Dad considered the various possibilities. His thoughts were interrupted, tem- porarily, by a startling discovery. His rifle, which he had left, well hidden, just outside the cabin, was gone! Absence of the gtin, in itself, did not bother Dad particularly—he still had two guns, one of them in evidence, the other secreted beneath his vest— but, the circumstances under which it had disappeared, did trouble him. He had been working about an open fire not a dozen yards from that rifle; some one had taken the gun out from under his very nose, and Dad thought well enough of his own abilities to grant that the theft of that gun was a clever job. These two men were smooth ones. He would do well to watch his step. “Didn’t intend for you to do all the work, old titrer, but you seemed will- ing, and Jean and J are rotten cooks—” his was the man, Jones, talking; he stood in the doorway of the cabin, smooth shaven, and dressed in a white shirt and a blue suit. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. Dad, bending over the little fire, did not move, at once. Jean, Jean, Jean— the name ran through his mind in a bewildering circle, striking, striking against the closed door of his memory. Jones had first said that his partner’s name was Steve—Steve Merton. Now he called his friend—Jean. Jean, Jean what? That name — coupled with a last name that persistently evaded him —was familiar— Dad straightened suddenly. Both men now stood in the doorway, watch- ing hungrily as Dad manipulated a venison steak over the open fire. A spread of orange light from the setting sun set them off in clear, clean outline against the blackness within the cabin. And, in that single glance, the cobwebs cleared away from Dad’s memory. He knew them both, now—Henry Mossin and Jean Cudjo—convicts both —recently escaped from the State prison at Pine Valley. It was the shave and the city clothes that had made recognition possible. The pictures he had seen six months since, showed both men in store clothes. Dirty and whiskered, dressed in khaki as he had first seen them, chances were he never would have recognized them. His heart pounding with excitement, Dad sat at table with his unsavory hosts. Although he was exceedingly ‘hungry, he found it impossible to eat. These two crooks had come to this remote spot with the double purpose of hiding from the law, and robbing old Sam Dodd. The fact that both of them were convicted criminals, auto- matically nullified their ownership in old Sam’s claim, assuming, of course, that they had filed on it. His course of action was clear. There was no chance of his doing the wrong thing, now; he knew them, ab- solutely. And it would help him at the elec- tion to have brought these men in—to have shown up Calderwood— A noise as of stumbling feet sound- 4A DOO (C@) MAIC S (E@)