Argosy All-Story Weekly, January 21, 1922 — page 45: what you’re looking at

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

THE BLOOD-CALL. the crowd surged in around the group of horses and men. “I was hit—” “They got you, too!” Taurog bellowed furiously. ‘You damned, clumsy, slab- sided wart!” Taurog paused, seeing Trilles’s expres- sion. “Say, where is China Pell, anyhow? China Pell was the best fighter of the whole gang of you! Where’s he at?” None df the riders was disposed to an- swer this question. They looked at each other with sidelong troubled glances, then Trilles blurted out: “Chief, I got to tell you what I saw. I was took in the house—and my wound dressed. China Pell was like you say—a damn good fighter. He was one of the three of us what rushed the front door of the ranch and—a damn good man he was, chief. The best among us, savin’ you—” “ Well, out with it! What the hell do you mean by this here stammerin’? Where is China Pell?” “ He got hit, too, chief. He’s daid.” The entire gang was frozen with silence at this news, and every face was turned to the chief. Smoo Taurog would avenge this, if he ever avenged a death in his life. The giant figure straightened up so that he seemed to overtop the whole mob. He walked forward to the snubbing-post where his horse was hitched, and a wide lane opened automatically in the crowd. “Ym warnin’ you, chief,” Trilles cried, ‘about that there hell-bender—the stran- ger—”’ Taurog, seemingly without paying any attention to the last speaker, unhitched his horse and tightened the cinch. “The stranger is comin’ here, chief. The stranger is comin’ here after you.” “ That’s what I’m given to understand,” Taurog said: without a change of expression on his grim mouth. : “His name is Jim Quade—says you killed his brother.”’ | ‘Tf he’s comin’ here to- Lava,” Taurog rejoined, “I'll meet him half-way—out there on the desert road. And Ill ax him about China Pell. Ill ax him to— What did you say his name was?”’ ‘‘ Jim—brother of Sterry Quade.” 30 “ Sterry Quade?” ‘‘ Remember the old Quade Ranch? Big Bess Quade? Peter Belge, foreman—” “ Sterry Quade— This is his brother? Yes, I—I—””_— Taurog did not finish. He gave the cinch Strap a final pull as his horse took in wind. In another moment he had stepped de- liberately up to his saddle, gathered his horse, wheeled about, and started on a fast trot down the main street, then northward to the desert and the road which led to the Tumbling L. CHAPTER XI. KIRBIE. AUROG struck out for the huge allu- vial plain which lay between Lava and the Tumbling L. He could see the road stretching across the. almost boundless expanse of sage. After a mile of sand and an almost obliterated trail through dunes dotted with sage, barrel cactus and yucca, the horseman found himself in the long final stretch of road. The pungent smell of the brush still clung to the earth, even though the night air was thin—so thin that the sky seemed ablaze with stars. On that interminable road, Smoo Taurog judged, he could meet the stranger from the Tumbling L. But he had no intention of meeting him. Despite his boast deliv- ered to the crowd in front of the Dead Cow Saloon, he had formulated a very different plan. To meet this stranger out on the middle of that sage-plain in the dead of night, and pick a fight with him, was a very foolhardy thing to do. In the first place, he had no idea what his adversary looked like. This would prevent Taurog’s hiding in the sage and potting at him as he rode past. He might kill ten men before getting the right one—a hard thing to ex- plain to Mule City juries. Furthermore, his imaginative picture of the stranger did not inwite him to hasten conclusions. What details Taurog had of his enemy’s. appearance he had obtained from the hysterical depictions of wounded men, with thesresult that this man gunning for him assumed an aspect of the most COMmiclboo SS C©