Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 4 — page 117: what you’re looking at

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

PRIDE OF .TYSON. “ Exactly. It all depends, you see, not on marksmanship, but on ability to get to the gun first. It makes up, you under- stand, for my poor marksmanship, and we start even.” Kennedy changed color. “But here?” he queried. house?” ‘““To the dead man,” said Tyson calmly. “It will make no difference ‘what happens after the shots are fired. And for my part, I’m willing to take a chance on what will follow.” Kennedy stared. “In this “Tf you begin to feel shaky about it,” | suggested Tyson. But the other broke in hotly: “ Make it " any way you will. I’m not the kind that bluffs out. You can tie our left hands to- gether, if you want, and be damned to you!” ) “Of course,” nodded Tyson, “that would be surer still; but I want to give you some chance. Listen to the bell of the church. We'll count by that. The next stroke is our first count, and at the third stroke we go for the guns. Hear!” The clapper of the bell sent out the next “dull, wavering vibration. They faced each other; the eyes of Tyson were glued to the face of his opponent; the eyes of Kennedy were lowered to his gun. And so the sec- onds passed, till the second stroke of the bell. At the sound Kennedy started, body and eye, lurching for his gun. But he tecov- ered himself in time, and stepped back in place. The move, however, had betrayed his hair-trigger nervousness, and like a gambler who has betrayed his hand to a foe, Kennedy flashed up a sullenly defiant glance at Tyson. With his gaze once fastened on the smaller_man, he:could not again change its direction, for Tyson held him, as it were, with the superior strength of self-confi- dence. He had not started at that second stroke of the bell. Hand and foot and eye had remained true to him, and the admis- sion of weakness showed in a sudden pal- lor that swept over the taut features of Kennedy. In contrast his eyes grew large and very me mn nema pitinest- (SO ogle 623 _dark, and his forehead gleamed with per- spiration. More than all, there was a vis- ible quivering of his arms—the gun would wabble crazily in that hand even when he had seized the butt. They waited for the third stroke of the bell, while the humming of the last fell and died slowly away to a sound thinner than the strain of a muted violin. But the third stroke never came. Tyson raised a fore- finger. ‘Luck is with you, Kennedy,” he said, and smiled. The blood rushed back into the face of: the gambler. He leaned over and scooped up his weapons. “ Another time!” strode from the room. From the hall Tyson caught the sounds of muffled, rapidly lessening curses,and then he sank into his chair, and a not un- pleasant sense of weakness slipped through his limbs he knew perfectly that Kennedy would never have the courage to face him again. A new sound roused him from his thoughts. It was a faint tapping, and the sound seemed to come from above him. It stopped, then it began again in a sudden, rattling volley. Rain! He ran like a panic-stricken fugitive at the cry of fire, and looked out the window. That was the meaning of the sudden dark- ness in the early evening. He had been too wrapped up in his thoughts to look, but now he saw that the sky was sheeted in dull gray, here a furling reef, and there solid sheets. “Rain! - And the waters would soon be rising be- hind the dam. There was no time to be wasted. he muttered, and CHAPTER XXXVI. A WORD IN TIME. UTSIDE, he found that every one was pouring out into the streets to watch for the starting of the down- pour. For when the rain commenced in the valley of the Chiluah it was no light thing. The skies emptied themselves in a gush. So far there were nothing but min- Jriainal Tron ” 2 DOO