The Argosy, Vol. 76, No. 3 — page 226: what you’re looking at

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

696 about at the graves beneath their feet, lowering the lantern as though to find their bearings. Then they moved slowly across a narrow pathway toward where he was lying and stopped again within twenty feet of the mound that hid him. “ Here it is,’ one of them said, and there followed the thump of spades and a pick-ax dropped from their shoulders. The lantern was set on a grave, where its feeble.ray fell upon the spot beside which the men stood, and then each seized a spade, sank it into the soft earth, and began digging. Whitey lay motionless, almost afraid to breathe. Had the two been the ghostly apparitions he had expected in his first instant of terror he could not have been more desperately fright- ened. He had a vague hope for a few moments that the two shadowy figures were neighboring farmers, belated in the town and taking a short cut through the cemetery. But when they began operations on the grave and he heard the spadefuls of dirt strike the ground in a rapid succession of thuds, the horrifying truth slowly permeated Whitey’s dull brain. He had heard grisly tales at the gatherings in Jessup’s cigar-store of body-snatchers who worked in the dark of the moon when honest folk were abed and won fabulous rewards in their desperate calling. And here were two of them before his starting eyes! For a half-hour the lad lay watch- ing, while the men toiled in frantic haste, throwing out a mound of earth on either side of the grave. They were shoulder-deep in the hole by that time, and as they paused to rest a mo- ment and exchange the only words they had spoken since setting to work, the light of the lantern fell full upon their faces. Whitey almost shouted aloud in his surprise and consternation, for the two daring grave-robbers were the THE ARGOSY. sons of Martin Nash, whose farm lay across the road from Lem Apple- gate’s. He stared at them in disbelief as they leaned on their spades and wiped their perspiring foreheads. This sec- ond view left no chance for doubt. There was Joel Nash, with his close- set eyes and forbidding face—Joel, who had thrashed Whitey two years before for letting Applegate’s cows break into the Nash corn-field. And beside him stood Andrew, two years his junior, but a giant in strength, who had been baiting muskrat traps with Whitey the week before. He knew both men as well.as he knew old Lem, on whose farm he had been a “hand” since he was old enough to hold plow-handles, but not in his wildest dreams had he thought either one the daring outlaw they were proving themselves to be. After a minute or two they bent to their task again, and Whitey suddenly heard the thud of a spade against the top of a coffin box. They were near- ing the end of their labors. Joel crawled out of the grave and dragged the pick-ax back into the hole. -With a shudder Whitey heard the splintering of boards and the wrench- ing loose of nails and screws, but he watched the Nash boys with a fasci- nated stare until Joel climbed out again, and Andrew, exerting all of his strength, passed up to him something long and black and fearsome that he dragged hurriedly into the darkness outside the zone of the lantern light. Then, with flying spades, they filled the grave again, heaving in the light sand so speedily that before the watch- ing boy realized it their work was done and they were roughly shaping the mound into the form in which they had found it. This done, they rolled the body into a horse blanket which they had brought with the tools, ex- tinguished the lantern, and, carrying their swaying burden between them, made their way down the wide cen- tral path to the gate. COMicdoo S CO@