Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 13, 1925 — page 34: what you’re looking at

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

500 ing tangles of fern, rhododendron and heavily shadowed timber. The bloom of the mountain magnolia caught at the throat with its heaviness of scent. Then again, the way would climb into gorges, where the baldness of rock walls were licked smooth by centuries of watery tongues. Yet, she reflected, this time yesterday she had met Jock Harrison on one of the principal streets of Asheville, and to-day Jock Harrison was dead and the law was hunting for her! If the law had not found her, it was because this silent peasant had caught her away Irom discovery. At length, where a small creek bed purred along a gravel bottom, where geese waddled and hissed and small yellow butterflies hung about the water’s edge, they came to a shack store. There the man drew rein and dismounted. “You tarry hyar an’ hold ther mule critter,” he commanded. ‘ Give me thet thar slipper with ther busted heel. Like es not I kin git hit fixed hyar so’s ye kin light down an’ walk a spell.” He took the bit of collapsed finery with the heel that had broken Joose, and went into the rough frame building. Outside, the girl sat on the mule and waited. She was conscious of curious eyes bent on her from the open door, but she stared straight ahead and in ten minutes Wade Murrell reappeared. Besides the slipper, upon which a crudely makeshift job nad been done, he carried a package wrap- ned in newspaper which, as he remounted, he held under his arm. A clouded intensity brooded in his eyes and an almost sullen silence sat upon him, seeming to the girl to make his back stiff with hostility as he rode. When the afternoon was half spent, ihe mule, limping and footsore, forded a belly- deep stream and the man came again to a nalt on the far side. He nodded to Cynthia to alight, and said: ‘* We've done crossed over inter Tennessee now. North Cyar’liny sheriffs kain’t come over that water onlessen they’ve got papers. Does ye want ter stop off hyar somewhars an’ seek a place ter board at, or does ye aim ter go on with me still further?” ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, The young refugee’s eyes widened into an abrupt dread, and her cheeks went so pale that the rouge spots stood out on them in scarlet splashes. ‘“{-——I thought,” she gasped with throat and lips that seemed to stiffen into paralysis, ‘that you agreed to take me all the way. I thought you knew that I had no money— or next to none. If you leave me here, you might as well kill me—I’m worse off than when you found me! They told me back there that I’d be safe with you.” ‘“ Ts safe es wheat in ther grist-mill,” he replied slowly. “But since we met up unforeseed things hev done come ter pass, an’ now you an’ me we've got ter hev speech tergither.”’ The old instinct of distrust and _ self- preservation swept over her anew. The old feeling, that between the woman economi- cally or actively helpless.and the man who can help her lies always the old sex issue, came flashing into her mind and blinded her with futile fury. This sort of man she did not know, and with the shallow sophistica- tion of her kind, she tossed him into a category that she did know. He had played the simple preserver until! he had her in tHe backwoods far away from any other help. Now, presumably, he would reveal himself as the same old type except that he was infinitely cheaper, cruder. Tt seemed after all that what Jock Har- rison had been in a Tiffany setting, this yokel, who could pray and kill with equal enthusiasm, was in a five-and-ten cent store edition. She had escaped from the lust of aman to fall into the power of a baboon. The girl straightened with defiance blaz- ing in her green eyes and threw back her thick, short mat of red hair. Her painted lips curled, and the fire of desperation seemed to illuminate her into a sort of human bonfire that might burn quickly to destruction, but that would burn savagely to the end—scorching what touched it. “All right,” she said in a low, tense voice. “ Shoot vour proposition. What’s the big idea? You bring me to this God-forsaken dump-——and tell me we’ve got to taik. Why didn’t we talk back there where I had a Chinaman’s chance to do something besides C@ cCloooks C@