The Argosy, Vol. 76, No. 3 — page 45: what you’re looking at

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

GOLD GRABBERS. he harping on it? Did he feel himself shipping and was he unwittingly ma- king a stand against an event alto- gether possible ? His spirit was-up in arms against himself. While climbing the slope and striding along the ridge his thoughts circled around ways and means for gathering both Mallorys in the same snare he was preparing for Big Steve and Chombo. ‘“‘ If she’s in this,” he vowed, “ she'll pay for it. I warned her. Whatever the cost, these foes of Deane’s are to be put out of business. They can’t wipe me out before I’ve had my way with them.” When he had got back to the head- quarters adobe and had locked himself in the stuffy rooms, he looked at his watch and found that it was two o’clock. His work for the next day, and for many days to follow, was cut cut for him. It was time he was in bed. His thoughts, however, gave him no rest. .He fumbled for his keys and started to open the drawer containing the ball of amalgam and the other things, and angrily caught himself up. short. “What do I want to look at that stuff for?’ he mentally asked himself. And he had no logical answer for the question. The Mallorys were hand-in-glove with the amalgam thieves. Otherwise, how it was that he found that first ball of amalgam on the scene of his strug- gle by the Phoenix town ditch? “She’s as guilty as the rést of them!” he muttered savagely. With that conclusion firmly in mind he dismissed the whole subject of his night’s work and went to bed. CHAPTER XII. ENTER MICHAEL O'HARA. THE entrance of Michael O’Hara upon the gloomy scenes of this chron- icle was excellently timed for Bremer- 515 ton. A sordid struggle, inspired by the greed of men, blackened by treachery and tragedy, and with a plaintive note of injustice to some one somewhere ringing through it all, needs the touch of an O’Hara to renew faith in the fitness of things as they are. He should have been “ played on” with a rollicking quickstep, but not too wild, not too clashing. A nocturne, perhaps, in two-four time, dreamy in places, but with here and there a laugh at the world for its follies. Mostly the strings, if you please, with a lilting of the wood-wind, and once or twice— but no more — the drums and the brasses. That was the spirit of the O’ Hara, the soul of him. ‘But there was trouble in setting it to music. For this reason, maybe, he chose personally to express himself through his own flute. He came suddenly. It was a habit he had. And gently and unobtrusively. That.was another habit. Bremerton had first discovered hint in the desert. His burro was dead, his food and water were gone. With his back to a sahuara cactus, he was wait- ing for the Reaper—waiting and try- ing to breathe out his soul through the flute with ‘The, Harp That Once Thro’ Tara’s Halls.” For two years after that he and Bremerton were inseparable. They found gold, those two, but it was the gold in each other’s heart. They strug- gled, they starved, they broke rock and ripped holes in the flinty earth, and they settled down at last to sink a shaft on the “Light of Hope,” their only find. But the light went out and hope died and they. had a hole in the ground for their pains. Between two days O’Hara decamped, leaving a note and sixteen silver dollars for Bremerton. The note said briefly: “Id fight for you, I’d die for you; but all hell can’t make me saddle you longer with the cursed luck of the O’Haras.”’. The sixteen dollars were all he had in the world. And when he went it COMicdoo S CO@