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Show t " covMMr RIGHT-COURTNIY RYLEY COOPER. . W.N-U. SERVICE awakened, sharply and with terror The smell of fire! Realization full upon him, he strove to rise, only to drop to his knees and weave uncertainly there. At last he began to crawl. From behind him, outside the cabin, had come a peculiar, shifting crackle, ending in a puffing roar, as flame) now eating through the cracked window into the tangled bush, swept up the dry bark of a dead spruce, leaped to the resinous top of a full-needled tree and there exploded. explod-ed. It gave Hammond the strength of terror, calling into play all the highly developed forces of recuperative recupera-tive ability bred in him by years of tremendous activity. Jack Hammond Ham-mond came from a phase of existence exist-ence where life depended upon huge reservoirs of strength. Slowly his muscles began to lose their horrible horri-ble weariness. He gained his feet and reeled to the door. It yielded to the plunging plung-ing weight of his body; he half-stumbled, half-stumbled, half-fell outside, into a world of red. But, as yet, there was more noise and smoke and color than danger. He shook his head, as if to clear it from painful cobwebs. Dazedly he looked about him, arms loose, shoulders sagging. His bloody jaws, contorted. Then he weaved into the trail. Soon he had gained the strength to increase his speed to a dogtrot. The wind was spreading the fire swiftly behind him; now no longer were there long intervals between the creeping advance of the flame and the puffing outburst as it reached a tree top. The sound was almost continuous; the forest was lighted as if by flares. Hammond moved more swiftly. Both his brain and his fatigue were clearing. But at last he slowed his pace, his head cocked inquiringly. It came again, and for a third time, the agonized outcry of a man, ' somewhere deep to the right. Ham- Townspeople crowded about them then, shouting questions. Hammond answered only by shifting his burden bur-den and moving nearer Timmy's airplane. Snade was fully conscious now; he kept up a continuous mixture of groans and whimpering. At last he turned to Jeanne, gasping: gasp-ing: "Make 'em get me to a doctor. Don't let them put me in that jail-here jail-here " "Nobody's going to put you in that jail," Hammond said crisply. "It'll be gone in an hour." "What happened?" Sergeant Terry Ter-ry demanded. Hammond glanced concernedly toward Jeanne. He had remembered remem-bered the day of the robbery and her fears of publicity. "I didn't think what I was saying," say-ing," he apologized miserably. She faced him, unafraid. "It's all right. I wrote the whole story home with that money." Hurriedly Hammond related through thick lips what had happened hap-pened in Lew Snade's cabin. Sergeant Ser-geant Terry wheeled. "Hey, you!" he shouted to two miners who had been assisting Tim-my Tim-my at the plane. "Come get this fellow. And you " he indicated another an-other gold seeker, "see if you can find a cot somewhere. Put it in that plane we've got to take this man to Rupert. And hurry I" The commands were obeyed. Whimpering, Lew Snade was carried car-ried away. Jeanne looked after him. "Do you think he'll live?" "He's got to live," Hammond answered an-swered grimly. "Until we find Bruce Kenning." "Not necessarily," said Terry crisply. "A death-bed statement is valid evidence." He reached into his red tunic for a notebook. "Better give me the whole story." "Must it be now?" Jeanne begged. "Jack's hurt " The man rubbed a hand over his swollen face. "I've got some salve up at the cabin," he said. "I'll smear it on." "But" "Hammond's hard to kill," cut in Sergeant Terry. "He'll be all right." Jeanne Towers shook her head as though' she did not believe him. Hammond forced a laugh. "I'm all right, Jeanne. I'd take twice this to do what I did to Kenning. Stop worrying about me." Then, as tersely as possible, he obeyed Terry's command for the entire story of his fight. There was no time to be wasted in long descriptions or wordy theories. The fire was coming closer; from behind be-hind them the twisted streets of the little town were loud with howling huskies, the cries of women and the commands of men; the exodus toward the life rafts already was beginning. There would not be room on them for everyone many must take their chances in the shallows of the lake, lying there with their nostrils barely above water. The rafts, in fact, were only for women and weaker men. Sergeant Terry finished taking his notes and slapped shut his memorandum mem-orandum book. "I've already sent out the other planes to Fourcross and Vanderhoof to get help," he said crisply. "I had intended to shoot Timmy Moon into Rupert alone. But I'd better go with him and take that man's statement on the way." He started to follow. Timmy was in the cockpit, cock-pit, with the motor idling. Two men stood on the pontoons, shoving a cot through the cabin door, while two others waited on shore with the whining Snade in their arms. Jeanne went to the injured man and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Don't be sore at me," he begged "I never planned it; honest to God, I didn't." "I'm not sore at you," the girl said slowly. "I guess you couldn't help yourself. You've never been able to help yourself, Lew." Her hand lingered for a moment, then was withdrawn. Pale with emotion, Jeanne made one more plea to Jack to care for his hurts. Then she turned and went slowly back toward town and her store; the groceries on its shelves might be badly needed in the days to come. Sergeant Terry looked after her. "She must have thought a lot of that fellow at some time or another." an-other." the mounted policeman said. "She must have," Hammond answered, an-swered, in a queer voice. "To be able to have forgiven him like that." There had been something humbly hum-bly sublime about it. Jack found himself wondering what Kay would have done under such circumstances, circum-stances, the vilification she would have heaped on this man, the questions ques-tions as to what would become of her. All in a night, Jack Hammond Ham-mond had gained perspective. It was as though his subconscious brain had been gathering evidence for months, that it might await the proper moment to lay a convincing case before his conscious mentality. mental-ity. Now it had been done, and .11 that was left was the hurt of it and his shame for himself. Suddenly, however, he put his thoughts aside. (TO be coxtisued) encd to the trap as a deadfall. Even in spite of its weight, Jack saw that Snade, in his desperation, had dragged it a few feet. "Get me out of it," the wounded man pleaded. "My legs have gone out-"n meI'm blcedi"g my life For a moment, Hammond forgot enmity. Snade was only a weak trapped animal, without enough courage to snarl. "How'd you get off the trail?" He had seized the trap and was straightening it, steeling himself against the man's outcries, that he might gain sufficient leverage to exert ex-ert his muscles on the heavy double dou-ble springs. Snade gasped the answer: an-swer: "Kenning led me over here. He said we could get down to the lake this way and circle the town. Then people wouldn't know we'd been at my cabin." "He knew better than that." An agonized cry came from the trapped man as Jack attempted to press open the trap. The prospector pros-pector desisted. At last Snade went on: "Sure he knew better. He knew this trap was here. He must have-he have-he the same as said so, after he'd walked me into it." "Has he gone crazy completely?" complete-ly?" "He talked like a wild man-about man-about how everything he'd worked for was gone. He kept cursing himself for doing a dumb thing like lighting that fire kept asking me why I let him do it." "I guessed you fellows pulled that." Hammond now was straining at the deadfall to move it forward and thus relieve the strain on the trapped man. "Didn't the idiot know he'd set the bush afire as well as that cabin?" "That's what set him so crazy. He was awfully groggy there in the cabin, almost knocked out. He kept telling me it was my fault he did a fool thing like that. After he'd walked me into this thing, he tried to find the guts to knock me out but I guess he's pretty well shot. All he could do was just stand there and stare and yell at me that somebody some-body had to take the fall you know, they'd find me here and blame me for having set that cabin afire and firing the brush." The man shuddered shud-dered with pain as Hammond again bent over the trap. Suddenly, "He'll have his wish, all right." "Easy now," the prospector insisted in-sisted through swollen lips. "I'll get you out of this. You'll have to stand this. When I give the word, pull as hard as you can try to walk away on your hands wait a second now go!" Screaming, the man escaped, dragging his useless legs grotesquely grotesque-ly behind him. Then limp, sweating, sweat-ing, he sank to the ground. Hammond Ham-mond leaped swiftly beside him, ripping off his shirt and tearing it into wide strips. He twisted these. Then with quick, sure movements, he tied a tourniquet around each leg. The heat of the fire momentarily grew more intense. A deer jack-knifed jack-knifed along the trail, halted as if in mid-air, stared at them, then went bounding onward. A spark angled downward, falling on a mound of leaves, where it lay smoldering. smol-dering. The roar of flames was becoming more thunderous, like the rumble of rushing water. Jack Hammond Ham-mond bent and slowly lifted the half-conscious half-conscious man. Then, with a swinging swing-ing motion, he slipped the limp form across his heavy shoulders. With short, running steps, staggering stag-gering at times, he reached the main trail, and starting his downward down-ward course, moved out of the forest for-est toward Sapphire. CHAPTER XI It was a stricken town which Hammond sighted, when at last, moving down the slope, he came within the range of marsh grasses, leading to Sapphire. Already, brownish-black smoke had blocked out the surrounding mountains, hanging low over the valley like a dirty fog. The village itself seemed to swarm with people. They ran from cabin to cabin, or merely hurried into the street, to stare futilely at the ballooning plumes of smoke in the distance, then again rush for cover. The whole district was lighted light-ed as if by stage effects, a queer back-light glow which rose to brilliancy, bril-liancy, dimmed to sullen carmine, then burst forth again with glaring intensity. The fire was burning closer. With this wind, the town had little chance. There was activity down at the lake. Hammond turned in that direction di-rection with his burden. The man on his back was in urgent need of surgery: crushed ankle bones, severed sev-ered veins, deeply lacerated flesh were something which could not be treated in a frontier camp, harassed by the threat of destruction. Jack, dog-tired, forced himself to a final effort. At last, someone sighted him and shouted. Then Sergeant Terry broke from the throng where Timmy Tim-my Moon, a pudgy demon in the fire glare, was gassing his plane. A second figure joined the mounted policeman, crying out as she came. It was Jeanne Towers. "Jack," she cried out, for the instant intent only upon the sight of his battered features, the crusted blood on his cheeks and throat. "You've been hurt you've been hurt." "Had a fight," Hammond answered an-swered grimly, then jerked his aching ach-ing head lower to indicate the man in his arms. Jeanne gasped. "It's Lew Snade," she exclaimed. i -w' CHAPTER X-Continucd ji ' 14 i ' fl..,, had begun to tire, stagger-4T stagger-4T . "nL their punches losing some ;S US11""' , i t-cf Konninf Au. -f their power. At last, ivcninn 01 fuo his attempts to knock the !?her man out by body punches; 3ft 1 he ceased striking entirely, fd clasping Hammond tight, tried 5i wrestle him from his feet. A Wot"1 smeared pair, they tl crached from one end of the room JM fte other, throwing each other 'ft lear rushing together again, arms flailing, only to clinch and I stxug-2 stxug-2 eie striving desperately to kick, to tite to claw; all sense of contest luv1 tad' become lost. Now this was a I. struie between two great ani-malsT ani-malsT each enduring great suffer-ing suffer-ing but content if he could give a "?,, little more than he received. At ife last, tight gripped, they stumbled S and sprawled to the floor, rolling J madly for the advantage. By a it tremendous effort, Hammond forced sH the geologist beneath him, and legs tiht gripped about his chest, straightened for the onslaught of . blows that would bring uncon-Kt, uncon-Kt, sciousness. f.i A sound came from behind him, ji like a door opening. Jack gave -;tj jt do attention. But suddenly, 'K aware of clattering boots on the rough floor, he tried to turn. Now he saw Lew Snade at the pile of firewood beside the stove. Snade p had a stick in his hand; he ran " forward, both hands clenching the ffi weapon IKr'a The pain of the blow lasted only an !at,j I instant, a shattering, horrible feel-K) feel-K) ing, as though Hammond's head , had been separated from his body. ''" His eyes seemed to split with the Hash of blinding lights, only as " I quickly to be smothered in dark- TO-':! MSS' t r Kenning rolled clear and was ' staggering to his feet. He stum-OMf stum-OMf bled forward, looking dazedly down 1 J at the motionless form of Jack Hammond. Then, with a hand fum- Ming weakly at his swollen mouth, he glanced slowly about him. "See if there's still a fire in that I stove." Lew Snade crossed the room. V "Yeh. There's some coals left." . "I "Let's dump them out on the V floor." "What for?" B "If the place burns down, no-w no-w body'll know who was in it whose J I skeleton it is," came thickly. ' J Lew Snade looked up. J( "They'll know it isn't me if I'm Jl around." y "Then you'll have to hide out." -j He gestured impatiently. "Well, hur-JW hur-JW ry! Scrape those coals out on the j floor. And put some kindling and 3 wood on them." H stood reeling while Lew Snade f obeyed; clarity of brain was gone: Bruce Kenning was foggy, mentally inert. At last they toned for the door Kenning looked back at the ""king bed of coals from which Pe-S al flames were beginning to char t ? clean wood which had been piled atop them. Then he glanced to-rd to-rd the still form of Jack Ham- l Jl?3!?"1'8 moving!" Lew Snade ,k " said. "He ain't dead.. -H A, ,"8 straigMened groggily. B iulV,iUbe'" cam thickly, as he Pushed Lew Snade through the door. flampf minUt6S Passed- The tiny V ore d W00d beca discol-Jhd, discol-Jhd, suddenly to break into yellow J a blsh lick of fire be- J fate we lts way alone the floor. lZf'tVOm the spattered rjl S palr" A quarter of an 'Oi'' from tht k' AtWlndow "ad cracked ' P run aIng the ed" fCK" this at last tfft all t Hammo"d to stir. That 'M loose 3 moment, merely a aS,Ted mVement of toe pssrfrihrs'which h-: "lent cam,, Then the move-v4 move-v4 moving T agm' the arms rose-aisslyt0 rose-aisslyt0 UdThnS h6ad' t0 are licked h groaned-I groaned-I emninz fn ser; u now was lbeamrgt Wnthe alng the cross- tni darted nl SomethinS leaped Jester w , the tonSue of a )UlCli(isagair,tW(eanly lowered his J"11 rett S,ieht But slowly, 1 !0eeP- anrt T Senses' there bit i '"Sly lwIdeew to his grudg-PknoledE(. grudg-PknoledE(. tw consciousness the fl " Peculiar hm T he air contained a J peasant 1 den bite, a queer, ,0o.1 aded hi', I g qualuy which ' Jch at7waSal Passage-m Passage-m S Ihr, St torced itself to !as like thl This acrid dor "Cnl woo r ot death; sud-; sud-; W00dsmen instincts were i I til mw-i s - - -' iWA I The Agonized Outcry of a Man Somewhere Deep to the Right. mond started along the trail anew, only once more to halt. There was the cry again, of someone in terrific pain; Hammond instinctively turned in its direction. A short period of search followed; at last he began to follow the filmy outlines of a game trail, winding in rambling fashion through the bush. He shouted; a groan answered him from only a short distance ahead. Hammond obeyed the call, and rounding a tangle of sapling spruce, stood staring. Lew Snade lay there, writhing in agony on the ground. He shrank at the sight tof Hammond. "You got out?" he gasped. "Yes, I got out!" Temptation told him to go on; to leave this man where he lay but it was only temptation. temp-tation. "Come on get out of here!" he commanded jerkily. "That fire's coming fast!" The man's tongue protruded. His eyes were set with pain. "Get this thing off my legs!" he begged. "Before I bleed to death." Hammond moved swiftly forward. In the red light of the forest fire, the blood - smeared underbrush where Snade had threshed about seemed painted, as with purple ink. Snade was holding himself off the ground by his hands; both legs were useless, queerly, loosely twisted; his ankles were caught, one behind the other, in the heavy jaws of an immense, im-mense, double-spring bear trap. A chain clinked under Hammond's feet, leading to a heavy log, which some prospector-trapper had fast- |
