Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 1, 1922 — page 143: what you’re looking at

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

THE GUN-FANNER. ashen fear, broke in through the door of the hut. A low rumble of sound. outside announced the first bolt, and this sound swelled gradually to a roar and then to something like a deafening, continuous crash. Nan could not hear Meakin’s frantic cry to her, but she sensed the fact that they were trapped in the path of the stampede when Meakin slammed shut what remained of the smashed door. Both rushed to the window in the rear of the shack and through it they caught sight of the girl’s pinto bolt- ing up toward the upper end of the canon. Meakin’s own pony had been hidden be- hind a rock a hundred yards away, and now it loped after the runaway, both riderless horses tearing madly to the upper end of the cafion and the granite gate. Meakin was about to vault out of the window and run when the first wave of the stampede reached the hut. Ye turned back, his face blanched and wet, and in the next moment the little shack was surrounded on every side by the tumuit. A sudden darkness came and the room filled precipitously with a choking dust. The front wall was battered by the fear-blinded steers. Hors rammed in. The door and part of the wall fell inward as a big bull crashed head foremost into it. The boards fell upon Meakin, pinning him helpless to the floor. It seemed to Nan now as if she were in a little doll’s house which was about to be engulfed in the opening chasms of an earth- quake. The sounds beat into her head, the darkness engulfed ber and the dust filled her throat so that she crawled numbed and terrified into the pitch dark corner under a table. But from this ridiculous little refuge she caught a glimpse through the window at the back of the shack of the upper end of the canon. It was like a glimpse of light which promises help during the pitch blackness of a storm at sea. Nan could discern that at the upper end of the cafion toward which the steers were racing Cal Triggers was about to be de- livered into the hands of the sheriff and his posse. The posse were riding slowly down to the cafion when they saw the steers 933. heading up for them. It was a dangerous place to be caught up there at the narrow gate, and the posse seemed to be aware of the fact, for they wheeled their horses and fled to safety—unmindful of the prisoner who was being brought to them. The two riders who held Cal in custody were also visible through the window. The girl watched them, and saw that apparently they had no desire to be left in the bed of the canon, even though they were mounted. The single life of Cal Triggers meant little to them now in the face of the spectacular disaster they were about to witness. Cal Triggers, they also realized, could not escape from them without riding directly into the hands of the sheriff. If he desired to save his own life it was necessary for him to mount his horse and follow them. This his two captors left him to do, and the girl saw them lash their horses into a wild gallop for safety. As Nan’s gaze followed the fleeing men toward the upper end of the cafon she saw that, having attained a ledge of rock safe from the oncoming stampede, they had paused, turned and were now prepared to watch Cal’s fight with the herd. And they would watch, Nan knew, with much the same blood-lust in which the Romans watched the ancient combats of men and beasts in an arena. Looking down into the canon again Nan saw Triggers vault on his horse, wheel about and look down in her direction. The girl knew that the only point with which he was concerned was her own safety. She knew that the wrecked cabin in which she was hiding was—at least temporarily— dividing the herd. Farther up the ore- crusher, although mashed to splinters, had caused a pile-up of yearlings, whose screams were like the screams of dying human be- Ings, as the bigger Galloways trampled upon them. At this scrambling, bawling heap the general flow of the stampede again di- vided. Still nearer to Cal Triggers, at a giant bowlder, the mass split again—almost like the branches of a delta. And beyond this Nan saw Triggers mounted on his horse. He had dug his heels into the flanks of his mount, and, instead of fleeing to the upper end of the comicloool C©