Argosy, Vol. 123, No. 1 — page 95: what you’re looking at

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

MIRRORS. He saw the cabin thirty miles back in the hills. He saw the object of his revenge sitting in the doorway just as evening was coming on. He saw himself peering from the forest, years of hatred in his eyes and the twitching of blood-lust in his fingers. Occasionally he saw the woman pass across the doorway of the cabin, with the man in the doorway ever between them. Curse him! He had come between Roper and this woman five years before, and even in the solitude of these woods, he still un- consciously sat between them. He sat like some eternal sentinel, forever to keep Roper from the woman who once was his oy love and by law. In vision, Roper again saw the woman come up behind the man in the doorway. He saw her hand lying upon his shoulder, and he saw in her eyes the light—the light which once had shone for himself, but which now made of his blood a molten current. of wrath. He remembered how he had to grip himself and set his teeth to keep from shooting both of them down from where he crouched in the forest. He had not been ready to slay them yet. thirsting hatred would not be slaked by so merciful a climax. He looked again—and saw the woman’s cheek bend to the man’s. He saw them thus for a minute, and then she sat beside the man—one arm about his neck, ‘his arms about her body, their faces merged seem- ingly into one. It would be fine to kill them thus—when they were so happy—but it would be far sweeter to kill them in the fashion he had planned. He saw them sitting thus until full dark- ness had come on—and, though he could not see them, still he knew they were sit- ting there, close together, always close to- gether. And then, as the man and the woman still sat in the doorway, Roper saw himself creeping from the forest—creeping like a reptile from the swamps up onto the white beach of happiness. And then Roper wondered if he had not been crazy—if he were not so still. For the sweetness of his revenge had grown _ bitter. Lying on the brink of that pool, he flogged it again and again from his Years of — 85 thoughts—but always it returned, like a mangy dog slinking back to a forbidden door-step. Though he tried not to see, yet he did see himself coming upon the man and woman out of the darkness. He saw them rise as he, a pistol in each hand, bade them rise. He saw them step from the cabin and he saw them back against its walls, hands. stretched high. He saw the wo- man, at his bidding, get a clothes-line and bind it round and round the body of the man—bind him helpless. | Then he had cursed them. Over and over he cursed them. He told them, there in the darkness, that he was going to kill them. He was going to torture the man before the eyes of the woman—and then he was going to shoot the woman. He heard her plead for a quick death for both. He talked to them of former times and gloated over the thing he was about to do. As ‘the man lay bound upon the ground, he saw himself struggling with the woman ——finally he saw her, also bound, lying near the man. It was then that he had conceived the hideous idea. He had remembered the woman falling in. love with the man’s eyes. He had heard her, in sleep, speak of the man’s eyes— just. a mere word, but enough to set his heart aflame with jealous rage. For five years he had planned to make of their death a terrible thing, but not until he had them at his mercy did he think of destroying the man’s eyes—his hated eyes—before the eyes of the woman. In all his fury, and it had been five years of fury, the thoughts of this man’s eyes had been uppermost— and now he got sweetness out of the idea which would make his triumph happy be- yond measure. And in all this time of preparation, the man on the ground spoke but once. ‘If you’re going to kill us,” said he, “ kill her first—quick;-. and then torture, or do whatever you want, with me.” But the plea of the doomed man had fallen on unheeding ears. The man at the pool wondered again if he had not been crazy. He copldn’t conceive, now that his revenge was com- COMICLAO© S C@