Newspapers / The Elkin Tribune (Elkin, … / May 16, 1935, edition 1 / Page 8
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ELEVENTH INSTALLMENT The golden head stirred at last on the pillow. Long lashes quivered; gray eyes opened and looked dimly around the cabin. Meeting his, they dropped in bewilderment to the bunk. After an hour or so the pain be gan to relent. "I can't ever thank you, Bud", 4>he murmured. "Forget that and try to sleep. Maybe this will help." He brought a toddy he had been warming. When a real sleep of exhaustion presently stole over her, he went out to stable the mare. "I'll have to travel as soon as the storm dies," she said upon waking, hours later. "But why, Pete If it's because you need—" She shook her head in troubled reverse. "I made some money this winter cooking for a rafting outfit on the Teslin. I don't need any." "Homesick, maybe?" he suggest ed, "for that warm desert country cf yours?" "It isn't always warm in Nevada, or all desert." Pete smiled a little with an effort to be a brighter guest "There's lots of snow." He encouraged her to talk. "I guess, even if the place you grow up isn't wonderful," Pete mus ed, "you imagine it's so. Hardly any one ever can# near Bill's xfench, but I used to dream I had a friend out in the hills somewhere. He rode a big bay horse with a cream-col ered mane. When the hot wind blew I'd imagine I was holding to the saddle horn «nd we were leaving a long coil of dust into the blue water of a mirage. I asked Bill about it once and he said I'd been chewin' loco weed. There wasn't no such horse in the range. He said the only kin I had was a prospector who'd left Nevada, and he wasn't a man I would want to remember." The enigmatical figure of the man with the mukluks loomed across Maitland's mind. "Sometimes, when Bill was drink ing, he'd mutter about this pros pector— Dalton, he called him. He spoke as if he'd "grubstaked him once 'to be rid of him.' They had a jeal ous quarrel over,a woman Bill was married to, I think, and I was mix ed in it someway. He never talked of it when he Was sober." That fragment cast the shadow cf a strange triangle, though Pete seemed unaware of anything tragic in its reference to her. After this break-up she had lived alone with the brooding Owens—a secluded life. She did not say what had brought him North at last to join the prospector who had wronged him, nor what her own adventures had been after his death, or why she had recently left the rafters' camp on the Lewes with the inten tion of going out. "Did you ever find Dalton?" Maitland asked, after a silence. "I—saw him," Pete said, in an oddly withdrawn tone. More hesitantly Maitland asked, "Did you remember him?" "I don't know." Her voice had the same troubled constraint. "In a kind of way." f "This is none of my business, Pete, but why didn't he take you with hiirf?" Her hand brushed her eyes with a shadowy gesture. "I can't . . . . My head's kind of jumbled, Bud." "Anyway you're safe now, Pete," he said. "By the time you're able to travel, we'll figure something better for you than going out." * * * The cell of the Skagway jail was a plain thick-stiiddedl box, except for a small grilled vent in the sea ward wall, and the cot on which Speed was sitting, inwardly rafw with chagrin. Outwardly he wore en air of composure for the benefit of the heavily armed guard in the passage, on the other side -of the grated cell door. Being arrested on the charge of having murdered the shell dealer in this camp last fall, was bad enough. •-* NOTICE! - New Chicken Man In Elkin! W. A. Johannes, of Baltimore, Pays Highest Ouh Prices! lo cated at Brendle Produce Co. See as before yon sell! Brendle Produce Co. ELKIN, N. C. But he had not disoerned the real i teeth in the trap until Fallon enter ; ed the marshal's office, just before x he was committed to the cell. r Now when he thought of his dog i house wharf, and of Drew waiting team waiting for him by the ware . at Tagish for the mail and freight he had been trusted to deliver, it t was all he could do to refrain from getting up and kicking the wall. The blizzard had caused a disrup ; tion in Drew's mail service at a critical time when the inspector was i short of a driver. A slfed shipment ; of gold was to be run to Skagway and a packet of mail brought back, i containing a considerable amount of bank currency consigned to Dawson against the gold. Drew's choice of a substitute courier had been good gambling. Speed knew that life had left marks on him legible enough to that veteran judge of men. On delivering the gold to the wharf agent in Shagway, he had not been able to pick up his sled load immediately for the return trip. A ship lay in the gulf in a twinkling flotsam of shore ice. Her arrival, delayed by the storm, was being celebrated as a harbinger of Spring £>nd spoils. Even the shiare crew was drunk, further retarding the loading of her cargo. Meanwhile the mail was brought ashore, and the agent, nervous enough at having custody of the gold, was still more uneasy about the police mail—an oilskin—wrapped and sealed packet cf bank notes in easily port'able form. His strong-box had been broken recently by thieves, and the lacket was presumptively safer in the game pocket of Speed's coat. Facts 'to be re&d by the marshal as indicating that Speed had stolen the regular mail runner's orders, had delivered the gold to obtain the mail, and had been prevented from taking the ship only by the long shore tie-up. The strangely timed event that left him open to capture, occured during the forced wait. With many hours to kill, he had decided to ! visit Steiner at what was now Skag way's General store. Money lend ing was one of his gold mines, and speaking of curious pledges, he men tioned an oddly shaped clover-leaf nugget on which he had loaned something more than its weight to a gambling client., Then the hunt was on. The client wore a dicer hat and .stuttered; was known as "Lefty" and suspected of being a pickpocket- Speed ran the man to earth in a gambling tent, where he cut into the same poker game, and dealing Lefty a hand on which the thief would willingly have bet his shirt, lured the nugget into the game on a raised pot. The shining; foliated piece of gold was weighed on the bar scales and played for twice its gold value. Speed won it with a straight flush. When Lefty disconsolately quit the table. Speed grilled him about the nugget. Under pressure, the thief maintained the extraordinary story that he had lifted it in 'Skagway from the pocket of a man now dead —the shell dealer, in fact, whom Speed had shot at the door of The Pack Train saloon. In order to learn something more about the man with the dicer, Speed had been looking for Rose when the marshal seized him. That the man he was accused of murdering should be the man who had brought the nugget to Skagway, was an apparently perverse loop of the influence he called luck. Now it lay in the marshal's safe, along with Speed's guns and the mail. Speed's breath smoked in the old cold cell. They had freed his hands, and had not troubled to remove his gun belt—signs that pointed to brief imprisonment and swift judgment, although this was his second day in the cell. He did not notice the darkening of the cell, or the wilder music that sounded from the camp during his long abstraction. It was the open ing of the street door that made him aware of both. There was a different tread in the passage; dif ferent, yet somehow familiar. "Take it in yourself," the guard giowled testily to a shadow by the grating. The big door was unlocked, and as the figure edged into the some what clearer light of the cell. Speed understood why he had been trying to place the footfall in his memory. The man who confronted him was Prenchy, carrying a plate and curv ing his chest to bring a deputy's badge into more formidable promi nence. Speed bit his cheek as he glanced over the contents of the plate with out accepting it. N "Well, you're a nice one, Prenchy," he commented mildly. "So they give you a deputy's star. Looks good on ye, too." The ex-fisherman squirmed back a little, not quite able to keep a firm front with that even voice in his ears. "You don't forget, neither, do you Prenchy?" his prisoner acknow ledged, eyeing the fish, and then the knife in his belt, on which his free hand had closed. "Are you the marshal's official sticker?" THE BLKIM TMBBWK. MJUM. NORTH CAROLINA Narrow black eyes beaded with a rankling heat which only blood could quench, as the cool gray ones of his defenseless prisoner lifted to his face. _ The pause grated on the impatient guard at the door. 'lf that's the best you can do, frog, back out here , with them plates before he takes your knife and carves ye." "Reckon tills feller don't know who lie's callin', Ffrenchy", Speed observed, as the fisherman backed an involuntary step or two. "Tell him what you done to Horse Mc- Ginnis of Spokane. Tell him you could lick ten half-backed deputies like him with one foot." An oath from the guard showed that Frenchy's elevation to office was not popular with the marshal's squad. He swung the door, and hooked the fisherman with a boot toe to speed his exit. In that finely measured instant, Speed jumped for the door. Speed reached the corridor in a bound. A gun blazed out of the dark tangle but he was already clear of the passageway and gone. • * * The ' canvas between the frame and the rafters was dark. Unfortu nately or otherwise, Steiner was out. Speed cut a slit in the canvas, and climbing through the apeture, drop ped inside. Though the tent had looked dark from outside, its interior was vague ly illumined by a filtered wavering flow from the kerosene flare in the street it faced on Rummaging un covered a crowbar of handy size. In a drawer he found a collection of six-shooters, which said little for Steiner's judgment of firearms, but he quickly picked out a .45, loaded it from his own belt and put it in the holster. Still the object of his search eluded him. He was beginning to think that the Jew had done some empty boasting when his eye fell on a longish box in the far corner, under a shelf. He pulled it out, and .► • I "Just look at this «■» the brakes on this new Ford V-8 Hove more broking j surface per pound of cor weight than you'll find on any other car Jew than $1095, j 64 * * AISO, Ford is using full 12-inch brake drums, so you need less pressure on the pedal .to do the job inside the brake. } | ' [ "And more than that, Ford uses big 6 x 16-inch air balloon tires, so j thot your Ford brakes get a gOod grip on the rood —any roadf" ! : mJte : YOUR Ford dealer will answer ysur questions today aa little on a Ford V-8, and few adjustments are ever needed, he answers the brake question above . . . with facts , Go to your Ford dealer today. See this car. Drive hi' not general claims. Question it. You'll find the best answers to all your quea? Safety?— Besides the bigger and better new Ford brakes, tions in the Ford V-8 itself. • there's a welded all-steel body, a low, rigid, double channel _____ X-type frame, welded steel-spoke wheels. There's even 1 I m \M jf (j[ - safety glass all around on all new Fords at no extra cost! H-4 ■ II I 11 wkjftt^WL Comfort and room? —You'll find more room in this Ford UILG mJJ Jw V-8 than in many cars costing hundreds of dollars more. New weight distribution and the new 123H-inch springbase Standard r group indud. ' make this possible —and with it, a "front-seat ride" for ing bumper* and *par* tire extra, every passenger. +Ea*y term* through Universal Thrifty operation? — Economy of the V-8 Ford engine la J * utl ' an ' e * proved by now —and new refinements make thin one even , easier on gas and oil New parte and labor always COrt IMMEDIATE DELIVERY ALL MODELS ON TBJC Ant— roao SYMPHONY OHCRKSIBA, SUNDAY EVENINGS— run 1 WAKINC. THUB3DAY EVXNINCS—COLUMBIA NETWOBK ~lj}k ELKIN MOTORS, Inc. USED CMS *^ r PHONE 25 ELKIN, N. C. delicately prying It open with the bar, put his fingers inside. With a Brunt of relief, he removed the cover and took, out two sticks of dynamite. As he dropped in the snow and, paused to listen, his skin prickled v/ith a sense of some lurking pres ence close bp, soundless and un seen. He started swiftly back along his previous trail through the tents, without touching the gun at his belt. Speed crouched forwaiM tensely, gripping the bar, as a dark shape brushed along the tent wall within 8 yard of him. In that Instant of its disclosure, his hand lunged out and clutched a man by the throat. He laised the pinch bar. "D-d-don't hit me," he protested in a hoarse whimper. "I's f-f-for ye. I s-seen you prowl into the Jew's t-t-tent to get the d-dyamite. IIHP I s NATURE'S REFRIGERANT! I I I ■ | [ THERE IS NO I 11U L substi t ute I I tr- J PURE, COLD, FRESH MOIST AIR! I I fer* , DON'T BE MISLED! L -•.. ? WILL KEEP YOUR FOODS AT THE PROPER 1 1 | g y-TT TEMPERATURE IN A MODERN REFRIGERATOR! See the Beautiful New Refrigerators On Display In I I '» > 51,00 00WN sl.OO PER WEEK | I T7 "TNI CAROLINA ICE & FUEL COMPANY I PURE ICE PHONE 83 GOOD COAL D-d-don*t try It! What'd the m-mar shal take of y-yourn?" "My guns ana jack—they don't matter. The packet of mail I've got to get." Lefty caught his arm. "L-leave me case this trick," he whispered huskly. "You wouldn't have a chance in a m-m-million with dynamite. I seen that safe't once when the mar shal pinched me, and with a few minutes, I could f-feel the c'-combin ation. It used to be my racket." "I owe you a hand, and the "What's in it for you?" m-marshal a bad turn. G-give me the bar," whispered Lefty. "You wait here." "How—wait here?" "W-watch for the mob. Whistle if they get too close. But give me all the t-time you can." Speed yielded the bar. Lying in Thursday. May 16. 1935 the drift, his gun covered the only door to the Jail, so the chance of Lefty's playing him double was slight. Long minutes dragged be fore a distant trampling began to pound on his eardrums. A shore party had been combing the beach The empty boats at mooring and the ship in the gulf would naturally suggest that way of escape. As he sprang erect, his sharp whistle pierced the dusk. (Continued next week) GEORGE SPROUSE Contractor and Home Buitder Located at George's Place, South End of New Bridge, in Jonesville PHONE 207
The Elkin Tribune (Elkin, N.C.)
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May 16, 1935, edition 1
8
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