Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 25, 1924 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

ARGOSY-ALLSTORY VOR; CLALVy SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1924 NUMBER 1 eS a , AAW - ee . Yale YORK ERSKINE Author of ‘‘ The Confidence Man,’’ ‘“‘ The Laughing Rider,’’ etc. CHAPTER I. CHICKEN-HEARTED! “J VHE sun shone relentlessly that after- noon. It pressed with intolerable heat upon the vivid earth of the table-lands, and the earth sent that heat, quivering, into the air again. The mountains loomed above the foot- hills through a palsied haze. Seen through that moving curtain, the high peaks took upon themselves the aspect of a wild fan- tasy; they were like the drop curtain of a dream. 1A David reclined upon the red earth with his back against the only tree in sight. It was a cypress tree, motionless, gnarled and twisted as though it had been turned to stone in a moment of agony. It was stunt- ed for lack of sustenance, and the spread of its deep green branches gave the emi- nence on which it grew the strange appear- ance of a hilltop in the Orient. But it threw a deep shadow, and the outbuildings of the abandoned ranch house which lay beyond further deepened that shadow. Because of that shadow, David had chosen this spot, and he had chosen it also Gomichbooks (E@)