The Argosy, Vol. 90 No. 1 — page 49: what you’re looking at

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

THE but she never let on to me. En when I got my mittens and come along out—”’ ‘Shut up.” The man with the warrant shoved Ed from the wagon, and he climbed down, impeded by his gaiters. Hilairy was already on the ground. She wanted to scream: “He is under the beets. have it over with!” But she made no sound; only stood watching, the damp on her forehead, while the beets were thrown out in shovel loads. Now as they threw aside a shovel load they came on the false bottom. A half- cozen beet-haulers were helping in the work; they cheered shrilly like dogs yelp- ing on a rabbit trail, and attacked the false bottom. The nails in the boards were slow to yield. The eyes of the men looked red in the lantern light and their arms moved like hounds’ paws. At last Hilairy heard the scream of the yielding nails parted from the wood. The deputy sheriff swung his lantern. In the space the false bottom had covered—- They saw a little hay, a scrap of cloth cuught on a nail, dust and darkness. Hilairy .crept a little nearer. It was true.. By some miracle Rawley had escaped from the beet-wagon. Take him and CHAPTER V. THE ESCAPE. HEN the passenger train passed Buck- ingham Dump, Hilairy had been al- lowed to go aboard. She left it at the flag- station, the one at which Rawley was to have taker his train to safety. There were tine woods all about this place and piles ot cut logs waiting for shipment. The freight had been delayed. Wherever he was he would surely try to reach this station in time. As she walked up and down the track and he did not cume, she squeezed the fingers of one hand with the other or clenched each hand by itself. It seemed to her she would die if he did not come. At last she heard some one in the weedy growth near the tracks— MAN WHO MUST BE HANGED. 43 It was not Rawley, but a man on a horse; no, two men on horseback. She hid behind a pile of lumber. And the two men took posts in the shadow of the woods to wait. It seemed to Hilairy that many hours passed. Every moment she strained her eyes into the darkness of the woods, afraid of seeing Lord. He did not come. She heard the whistle of the freight—at last. Then she slipped around her lumber pile and into the woods, unseen. As she crossed the ditch by the edge of the woods her foot touched something soft and alive. No sound came from it; and she held her breath. The freight rushed up. Under cover of the noise she whispered: “Keep still. Right where you are, Rawley!” The glare of that headlight seemed to fill the whole world. Its searching beams went far into the darkness, scouting ahead; they penetrated the depression of the ditch and placed a bright circle on Lord’s cheek. Then the train rushed on, and the two men turned their horses away from the sta- tion. Lord waited an instant—till he heard their hoof-beats in the canon. Then he whispered: “Can you guess how I got out, Hilairy? It was like this: ‘I suppose you heard a lot of beets fall out at the back of the wagon as we were going through that depression across the culvert? Well, that was because I had worried the end board loose. I began to work at it as soon as I heard those voices; I didn’t like them a bit. I threw out a lot of beets; and when the wagon got down there in the dark, I dropped after them. I went into two feet of water.” He reared his shoulders from the ditch, and they were dripping. “But .I don’t mind a wetting,” he laughed. She was down on her knees beside him, her ear close to his lips: “ Hilairy, I didn’t want you dragged into this. I begged you to keep out of it.” She put her arms around his neck. All her life she had suffered for her men: for a drunken father who had once been a good actor; then for the brother whose oO Comicbooe S CO