Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 18, 1925 — page 130: what you’re looking at

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

280 canter, that canter was not an even one. And added to the deviltry of the red mare, there was the play of the wind. The gale lashed him like a desperate op- ponent, roaring down upon him in a blast of thunder as he crossed the mouth of this cafion, or that arroyo. Behind every crag the gale seemed to lay in ambush; waiting to leap out upon him with a force which more than once threw the curvetting red mare from her balance. As he intruded more deeply into the mountains, this combination of fretting mount and turbulent gale grew from an exasperating obstacle to a grave menace. For the trail in the mountains wound through rugged mazes which were often pre- carious. Here it arose to twist about a shoulder of rock in a flimsy footpath where a misstep threatened death. Then it drew to the edge of a steep bank floored with shattered rock. The blackness of night made invisi- ble the depths into which that bank fell away, and the narrow trail, disappearing on the verge of it, gave no promise of integrity. But Cosgrove could not hesitate; he could not halt his mission here. There was a resolution in his heart which would have dared chaos. He paused on the rim of the bank be- cause Thunderbolt, precariously keeping her feet in the treacherous, sliding ground, had to turn sidewise, bracing herself and her rider against the fury, of the wind. The red mare paused thus, for a moment, and shuddered with a fear her rider did not feel. But an instinctive care for his mount might have given him hesitation, had he not in that moment pictured vividly the fleeing Lederer, pressing an exhausied mount through the darkness for the border. And Cosgrove could not see Lederer go. In one moment of his trial he had known that this adventure must end in the inevitable, romantic manner. He would marry Hazel Farley, and on the ruins of the edifice his enemies had built Hazel and he would establish a life of hap- piness. But the ruin must be made com- plete. He knew that. For her sake; for the happiness of Hazel Farley, the ruin of Lederer and Farley must ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. be made complete. They had not hesi- tated to stretch the net for him—and it had broken. He must now gather up the ends, for it. was only by so doing that he could remove from her life a menace which might even in this moment of victory turn her jubilation into grief. Cosgrove, swung the red mare across the turbulent pathway of the wind, and a lash of the quirt, such as she had never felt since the day he broke her, sent her sliding, Struggling forward into the blackness. They came to the bottom in a chaos of hoofs and struggling, writhing bodies; horse and man together fighting for hold and equilibrium. . And they found themselves in a gale lashed, smothering flood of white water. Frantically, the red mare fought to ex- tricate herself from the mountain stream gone mad, and Cosgrove struggled to retain his hold on the mare, shouting to her with resonant, encouraging words. While she writhed with lashing hoofs and _ tossing, frenzied head, slipping on the stony bot- tom, thrown again and again with her foot- ing all but regained; now upright with fore- feet striving as if for a grip upon the howl- ing, thunderous air; while she thrashed about in that bedlam of wind and waters, he gained the saddlé, and, heroically, he kept it. He kept the saddle, giving the frightened animal encouragement, soothing her with great shouts which vied against the wind, And his firm hand calmed her. Thunder- bolt, her confidence regained, thrashed the waters of that stream until she regained the opposite bank. And there she pulled her- self ashore, like a swimmer, using her fore- feet as a man might use his hands, pulling herself up onto a high bank, to stand there quivering, awaiting Cosgrove’s bidding. He bade her follow the bank, and this she did, stumbling along a rugged shore until, with a sure instinct, she found the trail. In the oppressive darkness, he felt her quiv- er beneath him, he felt her start, and turn with short, excited steps which opposed the bit, and, leaning forward, he saw that her ears were pricked up, her nostrils eagerly sniffing the air. At once he knew that she divined through EOPMIC MOO KS (E@)