Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 3, 1924 — page 158: what you’re looking at

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

948 a doorway obviously leading to a rear room. Tall, lean, spare, yet broad in his spareness, he filled the portal from threshold to rough hewn lintel—and such a man! Rork professed contempt for all ‘ sky- pilots,” yet he was awed in the presence of this particular individual. Shabbily dressed, it was true, yet there was about the man a calm, stern dignity wholly indifferent to raimant or surroundings, Straight as a ramrod he stood in the doorway, his arms hung loose, his shoulders squared with a carriage that spoke fearlessness toward man and the world. A spare, aquiline face, full bearded gave him an air of power and impregnability hard to delineate but easy of comprehen- sion. His hair was raven black, like his beard, except here and there where it was streaked with gray. But it was the man’s eyes that focused attention. Black as jet, they seemed to fairly burn from their deep stockets with ebon flames—twin holocausts of indictment that sought out and searched a man’s very soul. Steve Rork found it hard to meet their piercing gaze. There was something about the tall, gaunt figure almost terri, fying. But Rork had too much brute courage to be long intimidated now that he was safe from the wrath of the storm. After gazing at the old preacher for a moment in inquiring silence he suddenly bellowed out like a mad bull. “ Why in hell don’t yuh Jet a man in when he knocks? Think I want to stand out there an’ freeze, you ol’ fool?” With an imperious gesture the preacher raised his right hand. Fis voice boomed out with a hollowness that carried full above the clamor of the storm. “ Peace, man, peace! Thee had no need to knock. My door stands open to all who care to enter.” To most men such a statement would have been disarming. The Killer was mere- ly nonplused. He could find no ready retort — at least no retort sufficiently venomous to satisfy him. And, like other men of his type, unable to find words apt in their causticity, he took refuge in brute wrath, ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. “You lie!’ he snarled. ‘‘ Peace, Steve Rork. Come not in wrath into the house of God.” ‘So you know me, eh?” questioned the Killer with a wicked glint in his deep-set, piggish eyes. ‘“ Know thee? Who in all this country does not know thee to his sorrow, mur- derer of men?” For a moment Steve Rork was tempted to whip out his gun and add one more to his long list of victims. Ordinarily, had any man used such words and tone to him he would have ended that man’s earthly ca- reer then and there—out of sheer bravado, if for nothing else—but now something held him back, something which he could not define. He told himself that it was be- cause he wanted to toy with the old preach- er, to see him grovel in fear like a whipped dog, before his life was snuffed out. But it was not this that staved his hand. It was something deeper, something more gripping, something that he could not de- fine, but which held a power stronger than his to resist. “ Careful, old man,” he rasped. “ I’ve sent men to hell fer sayin’ less ’n’ that.” The old preacher’s eyes suddenly seemed to blaze anew and his voice boomed out with a sepulchral quality that was scarce human. “Your threats are naught,” Steve Rork. “ I fear thee not. Thee cannot harm me. My soul is safe in the hands of God.” Had the Killer heard these words uttered at a religious gathering, he would have guffawed his derision in a bellowing voice. Now, in this strange setting, alone in the queer cabin with the eccentric old preacher, far hid in the hills, with the storm wailing In banshee fury outside, he was suddenly awed by their solemn import. They struck a chord in his brute sensibilities before un- discovered. A nameless dread again clutched at him. And, like all men confused and balked, he took refuge in bluster. “Don’t spring any of that sky-pilot bunk on me, old man,” he scoffed sneering- ly. “It don’t go down—see?” ‘Take not the name of the Lord in vain,” the old man’s voice boomed out again, “ for COmmicoool (©