Argosy All-Story Weekly, August 9, 1924 — page 109: what you’re looking at

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

CHANNING COMES THROUGH. I should die! Will there never be any end to it? What good does it do to kill a man? He has friends who will try to avenge him. Don’t you see what I mean? It will be just the same with them as with you. They shot Vallon. You avenge him. Their friends will seek you out and kill you! And, Larry, I don’t want you killed! “Don’t you see? I want you. And— and I thought—to-day when you urged me to buy that other ticket—I thought you wanted to go with me. I thought you too, had got tired of it all. I thought you knew that—that I wanted you to go with me! And now, Larry, I find that you think more of revenging yourself than you think of me!” He stood in the darkness. He was trembling. A pulse of great joy had shaken him. He was glad she could not see his face, for then she would have known that his thoughts were dwelling upon the irony of life. For ten years he had secretly i longed to have her: make the confession | she had just made; it had been a dream _which he could never hope would come true. ‘And now, when happiness was within his reach he found it barred by his rigid con- ceptions of duty to his friend. He hadn’t known that she loved him, had never even suspected it. All along he had been under the impression that she loved Warren, and his sole concern had been for her happiness. And yet he knew from her tone that though happiness might now be his for the asking, he could not attain it. It was near and yet beyond his reach. She had never condoned violence; her voice had always been against it; there had been times when he had seen her watching him, studying him, as though wondering at the Satanic impulse in him that had made him shoot other men. He had seen her eyes fill with something that was almost like horror when she had looked at the guns he wore; and to this day she had not fully recovered from the shock of her shooting Jay Ventray, even though the man had not been killed. He knew that he had only to tell her that he would leave Vallon’s assailants to the law, reclaim the ticket from Warren and go with her on the journey to happiness. And still he could not. 299 “I’ve hoped for this day,” he told her, his voice hoarse. ‘“‘ I’ve dreamed of it, but I never thought it could be. I’m mighty glad!” “Then you won’t go?” she exclaimed, joy in her voice. . “Eve,” he said gently; “I’d sure like to please you. More than at any time since I’ve known you I want to do what you ask. But I can’t forget Vallon.” There was a long silence. Eve stood perfectly still, and Channing watched her from the darkness of the room. ‘You mean that you are going after those men anyway? That you think more of Vallon than of me?” *You’re puttin’ it wrong,” he protested. “Tt ain’t that. I’ve always loved you. An’ there ain’t a thing on earth that I wouldn’t do for you. But Vallon was my friend. He ain’t here to do what ought to be done, an’ I’ve got to do it for him. If you’d wait a day or so, until—” “‘ Until the murders are committed,” she interrupted. The first scorn he had ever heard in her voice, directed at him, made him wince. But he let her go on, and he knew that what she was saying was final. “‘T am leaving here to-morrow morning at ten o’clock,” she said steadily, the sting still in her voice. ‘I have always abhorred violence, shooting. The first day I saw you, on the station platform at Red Mesa, I was afraid of your guns. I am still afraid of them. But I am more afraid of the im- pulses that cause you to use them on human beings. I know there have been times when you had to use them or permit your- self to be killed. I can excuse that, be- cause I know from my own shooting of Jay Ventray just what the instinct of self- preservation means. ‘You killed Krell, the gunfighter Bassett brought over here from Red Mesa. You killed Bassett. Both of them deserved to be killed. But the thought that you killed them is always with me. I have often wondered what your thoughts are. And then I see your other self; when you are gentle, considerate, kindly. That, I think, is the man I am in love with-—the Chan- ning who wears no guns. GOMIGIOO S (©