Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 27, 1925 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

S62 She thought of him as a youth because he was loafing at recess time with school- bays. But no business of educating himself brought him there, and the bloodshot eyes in his saturnine face, which was already definitely shadowed with the beard of later adolescence, bespoke recent communion with the liquor flask. He stood almost six feet tall and must have weighed close to a hundred and sixty pounds. Cynthia met his eye defiantly, but the young moron glared back at her, then, as deliberately as a baseball pitcher, ‘“ wound up” and let fly his missile with the force of his full weight behind it. It was evident that he was not merely trying to frighten her, for the thing hurtled shrilly past her ear, and the assailant reached down for an- other. Then before Cynthia had quite realized the gravity of her peril, rocks and clods of clay were flying around her head, and from the firing squad came yells of genuine mob frenzy: “ Kill ther strumpet! Kill her!” Recognizing that if she was to be saved, she must save herself by flight, the girl turned and ran for the woods. A heavy bit of shale struck her on the shoulder, wheeling her about as she ran. A clout of heavy mud landed full on the back of her head. She turned, facing her pursuers, as a mouse turns in futile despera- tion on a cat, and her head went back under the impact of a blow full in the face. She thought at first that her jaw was broken, and she knew that blood was flow- ing from her nose and her gashed lips. That last blow might well have crushed bones or broken teeth, except that it had come not from a stone but a clay lump pressed like a snowball. Cynthia Meade stood stunned and reel- ing. Some sense of need kept her still up- right, though she rocked on her feet. She was face to face with actual destruction at the hands of a little mob of morons. Once more she turned wildly appealing eyes to- ward the schoolhouse door, and there, still slouching and inactive, stood the teacher. To the unlettered and unlighted mind of that dull thing the scene he was witnessing was a thing sanctioned by the law of Moses. Women were safe and protected here in the ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. hills, but among them one was not to count witches and fallen women. They were evil —when one stood out in the public eye, however much to be desired or sought in secret. To lift a defensive hand was to array one’s self with sin. Besides, the teacher was afraid of that big youth who was leading and urging on his squad of youthful but potential murderers. The rocks and clods were coming thick and fast now. Their punishment was in- supportable. She was being stoned like some adulterous creature of Bible days— and in a few minutes more this thing must mean death. Her face was bleeding and her body was a mass of bruises. Her brain reeled, and always in her ears sounded those maniacal shrieks of “ Kill ther strumpet!” With the sickening shock of another blow, Cynthia went down. It would have been a merciful thing had she become insensible, too, but although her consciousness was blunted, the realization of pain remained, seemed even unendurably heightened—and with that was a confused realization of what was going on about her. She heard a shot. It would seem that stones from the creek bed were not enough. But to her amazement at that sound, the volley ceased and her assailants began scur- rying in every direction as quail scatter be fore a gun. She could not be sure now that her eyes were serving her because she was too stunned and groggy for any certainty. She lay in a crumpled heap where she had fallen. The warmth of blood that tasted salty was in her mouth and its wetness was stealing down her face. Then, in cloudy fashion, she realized that rescue had come. Wade Murrell, with a smoking pistol in his hand, splashed through the creek. “Don’t run, or afore God Il kill ther last one of ye,” he bellowed. ‘Git ye it ther schoolhouse, an’ go speedily!” The teacher had scurried out and had made a break for the laurel, but a second admonitory shot from the pistol halted him dead in his tracks, and he sloped back into the building. Murrell came hurriedly and bent ové her. His face was death pallid, yet not 9° ashen that the scar was not whiter, He GOMIGDOOo C SS Co