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Show i A i rj P fTj fl Robert J.C. Stead J til iJiiiiii 0 zkui in J i I IRWIN MYERS i t 5 i t Cjpyrlifht bj Eirpr 4 Brothers i : C ''''''----- C ? s tu dj MS jO t4s CHAPTER XII. Continued. 19 "He'll soon j,. w. -I I . don't you think, mister? I,. ,s.,;,i hl. wou;j tje well when the holidays: " Put Dave's expression stopped the boy, who-,; own face went suddenly wild wl-h fear. "He Is well now", ( 'Inn-lie," he said, as steadily as be fould. "It Is all holidays now fur him." The match bad burned out and the room was in utter darkness. Dave beard (he child drawing bis feet across the floor, then suddenly whim-Iiering whim-Iiering like a thing that had been mortally mor-tally hurt. He groped toward him, and at length his fingers found his .shock of hiir. He drew the boy slowly Into his arms; then very, very tight. . . . After all, they were orphans or-phans together. "You will come with me," he said tit length. "I will see that you are provided for. The doctor will soon be here, or we will meet him on the way, and ho will make the arrangements arrange-ments for the arrangements that nave u no made, you know." They retraced their steps toward the town, meeting the doctor at the broken bridge. Dave exchanged a few words with him In low tones, and fhey passed on. Soon they were swinging again through the city streets. Even with the developments of tho evening pressing heavily upon his mind Dave could not resist the temptation to stop and listen for a moment to bulletins being read through n megaphone. "The kaiser has stripped off his British regalia," said the announcer. "He says he will never again wear a IJritish uniform." A chuckle of derisive laughter ran through the mob ; then someone struck up a well-known refrain "What the h do we care?" Up and down the j street voices caught up the chorus. . . Within a year the bones of tminy in that thoughtless crowd, bleaching on the fields of Flanders, showed how much they cared. Dave drove direct to the Hardy home. After some delay Irene met him at the door, and Dave explained the situation sit-uation in a few words. "We must take care of him, Reenie," he said. "I feel a personal responsibility." or course we will take him," she answered. "He will live here until we have a some place of our own." Her face was bright with something which must be tenderness. "Bring him upstairs. We will allot him a room and introduce him first to the bathroom. And tomorrow we shall have an excursion downtown, and get some new clothes for Charlie El-den." El-den." As they moved up the stairs Con-ward, Con-ward, who had been in another room In conversation with airs. Hardy, followed fol-lowed them unseen. The evening had been interminable for Conward. For three hours he had awaited word that his victim had been trapped, and for three hours no word had come. If his plans had miscarried, if Dave had discovered the plot, well And here at length was Dave, engrossed in a very different matter. Conward followed fol-lowed them up the stairs. Irene and Dave chatted with the boy for a few moments, then Irene turned to some arrangements for his comfort and Dave started downstairs. In the passage he was met by Con- warci. "What are you doing here?" Dave demanded, as he felt his head beginning begin-ning to swim in anger. Conward leered only the more offensively, of-fensively, and walked down the stairs beside him. At the foot he coolly lit another cigarette. He held the match before him and calmly watched it burn out. Then he extended it toward Dave. "You remember our wager, Elden. I present you with a burned-out match." "You liar!" cried Dave. "You infamous in-famous liarl" "Ask her," Conward replied. "She will deny it, of course. All women do." Dave felt his muscles tighten, and knew that in a moment he would tear his victim to pieces. As his clenched fist came to the side of his body struck something hard. His revolver! re-volver! He hurt fnrmtlon . not in the habit of carrying it. In an Instant he had Conward covered. Dave did not press the trigger at once. He took a fierce delight in torturing tor-turing the man who had wrecked his life even while he told himself he could not believe his boast. Now he watched the color fade from Con-ward's Con-ward's cheek ; the eyes stand out in his face; the livid blotches more livid still; the cigarette drop from his nerveless lips. "You are a brave man, Conward," he said, and there was the rasp of hate and contempt in his voice. "You are a very brave man." Mrs. Hardy, sensing something wrong, came out from her sitting room. With a little cry she swooned away. Conward tried to speak, but words stuck in his throat. With a dry tongue he licked his drier lips. "Do you believe in hell, Conward?" M w v -M, U Vji, Wv". Dave continued. "I've always had some doubt myeif, but in thirty sec-, sec-, on, Is you'll know." Irene appeared on the stairway. For a moment her eyes refused to grasp the scene before them: Conward Con-ward cowering terror-stricken; Dave fierce, steely, implacable, with his revolver re-volver lined on Conward's brain. Through some strange whim of her mind her thought in that instant Hew back to the bottles on the posts of the Elden ranch, and Dave' breaking live out of six on the gallop. Then suddenly she became aware of one tiling only. A tragedy was being enacted en-acted before her eyes. "Oh, don't, Dave! Don't, don't shoot him!" she cried, Hying down the remaining steps. Before Dave could grasp her purpose she was upon him, had clutched his revolver, had wrapped her arms about his. "Don't, don't, Dave!" she pleaded. "For my sake don't do that 1" Her words were tragically unfortunate. unfortu-nate. For a moment Dave stood as one paralyzed; then his heart dried up within him. "So that's the way of it!" he said, as he broke her grip, and the horror In his own eyes would not let him read the sudden horror in hers. "All right; take it," and he placed the revolver re-volver in her hand. "You should know what to do with it." And before be-fore she could stop him he had walked out of the house. She rushed to the gate, but already al-ready the roar of his motor was lost in the hum of the city's traffic. CHAPTER Xlli. When Dave sprang into his car he gave the motor a full head and drove through the city streets in a fury of recklessness. His mind was numbed; it was incapable of assorting thoughts and placing them in proper relationship relation-ship to one another. He was soon out pf the city, roaring through the still autumn night with undiminished speed. Over tortuous country roads, across sudden bridges, along slippery hillsides, hill-sides, through black bluffs of scrub land in some strange way he tried to drown the uproar in his soul in the frenzy of the steel that auivered hp- fig MCA ;j He Took a Fierce Delight in Torturing Tortur-ing the Man Who Had Wrecked His Life. neath him. On and on into the night. Bright stars gleamed overhead; a soft breeze pressed against his face; it was such a night as he had driven, a year ago, with Bert Morrison. Was that only a year ago? And what had happened? Where had he been? Oh, to-bring the boy Charlie, the boy. When was that? Under the calm neaen nis mind was already attempting attempt-ing to establish a sequence, to set its outraged home again in order. Suddenly the car skidded on a slippery slip-pery hillside, turned from the road, plowed through a clump of scrub,' ricochetted against a dark obstruction! poised a moment on two wheels, turned turn-ed around, and stopped. The shock brought Dave to his senses. He sat on the running board and stared for a long while into the darkness. "No use being a d d fool, anyway, any-way, Dave," he said to himself at length. "I got it where I didn't expect ex-pect it but I guess that's the wav with everyone." He tried to philoso"- puue; to get a fresh grip on himself. him-self. "Where are we, anyway?" he continued. "This country looks familiar." famil-iar." He got up again and walked about, finding his way back to the road. He went along it a little way. Vague impressions suggested that he should know the spot, and yet he COllM nnl i.,n,;f,. I. rr-i. . " ... uul iuv-utuy il. j.iien, with a sudden shock, it came to him. It was the hiilside on which Doctor Hardy-had Hardy-had come to grief; the hillside on which he had first seen her bright face, her wonderful eyes. . . . " poignancy of grief engulfed him, sweeping away his cheap philosophies.' Here she stood, young and clean and entrancing, thrust before him in an instant out of the wonderf i! rr-s 0f the past. And would she alwavs follow fol-low him thus? With an unutterable sinking he knew that was so that the world was not big enough to hid-mm hid-mm from Irene Hard v. TN- no way cur. ttf JV Ms SM sv iC 4s Us sk U4C04 sWi lie started his motor, and even in his despair felt a thrill of pride as the faithful gears engaged and the car cliinbed back to its place on the trail. Was all faithfulness, then, in things of steel and iron, and none in flesh and blood? He followed the trail. Why stop now? The long-forgotten ranch buildings lay across the stream and behind the tongue of spruce trees, unless un-less some wandering foothill fire had destroyed them. He forded the stream without difficulty. That was where he had carried her out. ... He felt his way slowly along the old fence. That was where she had set up bottles for his marksmanship. . . . He slopped where the straggling gate should be and walked carefully Into the yard. That was where she had first called him Dave. . . . Then he found the doorstep and sat down to wait. When the sun was well up he arose and walked about. His lips were parched; he found himself nibbling them with his teeth, so he went to the 1,l,t,"u' "O LIHIMJ, UUL lie U1IIUK only a mouthful; the water was flat and insipid. . . . The old cabin was in better repair than he would have thought. He sprung the door open. It was musty and strung with cobwebs. cob-webs. He did not go in but sat down and tried to think. Later he walked up the canyon. He must have walked swiftly, for the sun was not yet at the meridian when he found himself at the little nook in the rock where he and Irene had sat that afternoon when they had first laid their hearts open to each other. Suddenly one remark stood up in his memory. "The day is coming," she had said, "when our country will want men who can shoot anil ride." And he had said, "Well, when it does it can call on me." And today the country did want men who could shoot and ride, and he had flown into the foothills to nurse a broken heart. . . . Broken hearts can fight as well as whole ones. He could be of some use yet. At any rate there was a way out. Some whim led him through the grove of spruce trees on his way back to the ranch. Here, in an open space, he looked about, kicking in the dry grass. At length his toe disturbed a tew bleached bones, and he stood and looked with unseeing eyes far across the shimmering valley. "Brownie," he said at length. "Brownie." The whole scene came back upon him the moonlight, and Irene's distress, and the little bleeding bleed-ing body. And he had said he didn't know anything about the justice of God ; all he knew was the critter that couldn't run was the one that got caught. . . . And he had said that was life. ... He had said it was only nature. And then they had stood among the trees and beneath the white moon and pledged their faith. . . . Again his head went up and the old light flashed in his eyes. "The first tiling is to kill the wolf," he said aloud. "No other innocent shall fall to his fangs. Then my country." Darkness had again fallen before Dave found his car threading the streets of the city, still feverish with its newborn excitement of war. He returned his car to the garage; an attendant looked up curiously it was evident from hie crlanna ihn, rin 1 j luui uttYC uau already been missed but no words were exchanged. He stood for a moment mo-ment in the street, collecting his thoughts and rehearsing his resolves. He was amazed to find that, even in his bitterness, the city reached a thousand hands to him hands of habit and association and customs of i mind all urging him back into the old groove; all saying: "The routine is the thing. Be a spoke in the wheel ; go round with the rest of us." "No," he reminded himself. "No, I can't do that. I have business on hand. First to kill the wolf." He remembered that he had given his revolver to Irene. And suddenly she sat with him again at the tea table. . . . Where was he? Yes, he had given his revolver to Irene! Well, there was another in his rooms. In the hallway of the block in which he had his bachelor apartments Dave almost collided with a woman. He drew back, and the light fell on his face, but hers was in the shadow. And then he heard her voice. "Oh, Dave, I'm so glad Why, what has happened?" The last words' ran into a little treble of pain as she noted his haggard face. "YOU Edith?" hp mnna, Whatever " She came toward him and placed her hands on his. "I've been here a hundred times ever since' mornin ever since Bert Morrison called up" to say you had disappeared that there was some mystery. There isn't is there, Dave? You're all right, Dave I aren'i vou, Dave?" ' i '.TO BE CONTINUED.) |