Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 1, 1922 — page 137: what you’re looking at

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

THE GUN-FANNER. shield. When with gun drawn he reached the shack he banged the door open. For a moment he stood peering mto fhe opening until his eyes dilated to the dark room, and then entered, leading the girl by the hand. The musty little room still retained the heat of the desert day. Its odors were the odors of an unventilated but forsaken kitchen. Some odds and ends of cowhide, bits of dusty harness, frying pans thick with black grease, a bar of borax soap, were all that remained of the outfit. A single glance showed Cal that there was no food—or signs of it except the pots and a few empty cans. This was the answer to all of Cal Trig- gers’s doubts, and the moment that his eye had circled the room he knew he was trapped. At the same instant the door frame darkened; Cal turned, felt the dull, hard stab of a pistol barrel. He found himself facing the quiet, suave, triumphant Saul Meakin. . “Keep calm, Mr. Triggers,’ Meakin said with a genial note. ‘‘ You have to raise your arm to fire. All I have to do is to tighten my finger. Now open the palm of your hand so I can hear your gun clat- tering on the boards.” Cal obeyed. ‘ You’ve got a lot of nerve, Meakin. But how do you know you won’t start the herd out there stampeding if you fire that gat?”’ | Meakin paled. It was not from fear. It seemed more like the white heat of anger. The girl saw the narrowing eyes, the tight- ening of the upper lip, and from pure hor- ror at the look on Meakin’s face she rushed frantically in between the two men. “ You aren’t going to commit this murder right before my very eyes!” she cried. | “ It’s for your sake!”” Meakin shot back, raising his voice out of its suave coolness. “ Then if it’s for my sake, don’t do this horrible thing! I] hate the very thought of you for the rest of my life!” Meakin looked down at her. The very feeling of the girl throwing herself at him had complicated the murder that was in his thoughts. He stood motionless it seemed for a long interminable period, while the herd outside which had begun to mill, beat up a slow thunder of sound. 927 Saul Meakin, looking into the girl’s eyes, saw something there which he had not bar- gained for. She was actually pleading for the life of the gunfighter, and in her look —if not in her voice—there was the tragic mark of a woman pleading for something she loves. A change had come over Nan which Meakin sensed—a change which the girl herself was not aware of. The tense forearm to which Nan was clinging—the arm which held the gun—re- laxed. The girl—as if it were merely the strength of that murderous arm which had sustained her weight—sank to the floor. ‘“‘'We may decide this thing some other way,” Meakin said. ‘I want you to un- derstand that I am a fair man.” CHAPTER XXIII. MEAKIN PLAYS FAIR. T the lower end of the canon the herd was still churning up its clouds. Scrub Hazen, who had taken charge, saw that the steers, tortured with the thirst which the long ride over the alkali desert had kindled, had no intention of bedding that night. As soon as the vanguard had been swung about on the bedground the whole mass followed, circled, and formed what the cattlemen most feared—a mill. ‘““ Now we're in for a nice slice of hell,” Scrub said to his punchers. When the night horses were brought up he warned his men to keep in their saddles. ‘“ A few of them locoed steers are eager to eat some- body up, and it’s good-by to any cow dog as they catch on foot.” The chow cart, the cook, the day horses and such of the men as were allowed to rest during the evening, were posted in a little barranca a half a mile from the opening of the cafion, where they were in comparative safety from drags. But this issue held nothing of importance for Scrub Hazen. He was concerned with two things of much graver meaning than the personal danger of a few of his herders: the milling herd and the little drama a half a mile further up in the center of the canon. Death was fermenting in both of these scenes. Scrub Hazen circled the big mill of comicloool C©