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VOL. Clx NUMBER 1
“WWW
~§' “3:. [ SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 1920 §m€
= (I) 5 '5 E
U
i Mecx Egand‘
Author oi " 'l'he Untamed," " thltlren oi the Nvight,” “ Trailin’,” etc.


NOT since Max Brand took the reading public by storm withhis tremendous
success, “ The Untamed,” has a character appeared in these pages like W hist-
ling Dan. In the person of Clung. the hero of his new novel, Mr. Brand has
created for us another bathing but fascinating character who seems to disprove
the universally accepted truism “ East is East and West is West.” By blood a
white man and by training a Chinaman. he seems to combine the subtlety of an
Oriental with the dexterity of an Occidental. He is by all odds at new type in
fiction, and his character and career will furnish you with no end of speculation.
Enter C lung.





CHAPTER I.
_ THE MAKING OF CLUNG.
HE Lord having made Clung and
placed him where He did, the rest
followed by the inevitable law of
sequence.
Nobody understood this, Clung least of
all. The whites said he was “ just a plain,
no-good Chink, growing up for a rope neck-
lace”; the Chinese said he was possessed
of a devil.
Clung probably thought that both parties
were right. He never said so, but then
Clung was not given to words. The whites
would probably have lynched the “boy save
'for two things: first, Clung confined his
_ attentions to the “ greasers ”; second, every
one had a warm spot in his heart for old
Li Clung, the boy’s father, who ran the
laundry in that Arizona town.
In the Southwest they will tell you that
when a Chinaman is good he’s not too
good to bear watching, and when a China-
man is bad—well, he’s awful. Clung was
bad. He killed men. Everybody knew
his record, or at least a part of it, but for
the sake of old Li, they postponed the in-
evitable hanging.
Nevertheless, if Clung had been built in
a different way, or had lived in a different
place—
The lot of a weakly man in the South-
west is peculiarly unfortunate. There is
no place for him; people wonder why he
exists. He’s a public incumbrance—an eye-
, sore.' Clung was weakly. For a China-
man he was tall; among whites he was of
middle height; but he was exceedingly
frail. His hands were like the hands of
a woman, small and almost transparent.
His wrist was so slenderly made that if a
1 A-S


2 ALL - STORY WEEKLY.
strong man had grasped him there. the
bones would have crunched together.
Obviously, he was a half-breed of some
sort—perhaps his mother was Spanish.
though old Li would never speak of that.
She must have been white; otherwise there
was no accounting for the fine, pale com-
plexion of Clung. His eyes, too, were not
slanted, but wide, gentle, brown. His hair
was black and as smooth as silk.
Being weakly, Clung was early forced to
find something which would take the place
of physical strength, because without pro
tection of some sort he was sure to perish
early. For this was the Southwest, and
the border was in continual need of taming.
Clung had not far to look before he found
out what he must do. He became expert
in the use of weapons. Knife work, of
course, comes by second nature to an Orien-
tal, but Clung’s accomplishments were as-
tonishingly varied for one of his blood.
Nothing is ever really mastered unless
it is commenced in childhood. A man must
begin to learn acrobatics before he’s ten.
The same thing is true of language study.
arithmetic, et cetcra. It is also true of
guns. Clung began using revolvers when
he was hardly more than an infant. His
father, old Li, pampered the boy; he used
to show off his accomplishments to his white
patrons. When he was eight years old
Clung had a little twenty-two rifle. And
he practised with the weapons continually.
Li paid the bills and Clung banged off
countless rounds of ammunition. The cow-
punchers showed him many ways of car-
rying a gun and how to pull it, and whirl
it, and shoot with a quick'turn.
Of course he could never have been great
with a gun if he had not had the instinct
for it; any one in the Southwest will tell
you that. A man may practise all his life,
but unless he has an instinct for shooting
quick and sure, he will never be a startling
success near the border.
Those early times were golden days for
Clung. The'whites teased him and talked
with him; old Li adored him. Little Clung,
when he was not playing with his knives
or his guns, sat cross-legged on a table
near the front'door of the laundry and
kept his blank, brown eyes fixed on the
passers-by, and smiled the faint, faint smile
of the Orient. He always wore his pigtail
twisted in a funny knot on top of his head,
and Li kept it tied at the end with a ribbon
of black silk. When he turned his head,
with one of his catlike motions, the ribbon
fiounced foolishly from side to sidev Then
the golden days ended.
Clung had grown up; he possessed his
full portion of slender, erect height; the
cow-punchers were beginning to ask him
when he would open a laundry of his own.
and Clung, in place of answering, would
wave those fragile hands unmeant for work,
and smile the faint smile of the Orient.
Then on a day a stranger came to town
and entered the laundry. He was a Mexi-
can of much importance; he had two fol-
lowers in the street on horseback.
The Mexican did not know Clung. How
should he? Neither did he know that after
the midday meal Clung loved to sit in the
sun on the little table near the door, with
his legs folded catwise under him, and sleep,
and smile into the sun while he slept. Also,
Clung did not like to be roused from that
afterdinner siesta. Of all of this, however,
the Mexican was ignorant. He came in
with the sun flashing on his silver braid
and startedto ask Clung a question.
It was not answered, so he snapped Clung
on the end of the nose with his riding-
quirt. It must have hurt exceedingly, but
Clung merely opened slowly those wide,
brown, gentle eyes and his smile never al-
tered. He looked beyond the Mexican and
into a thousand years of space. It angered
the Mexican to see that impassive face.
He reached out to grip Clung by the shoul-
der and shake him into complete wakeful-
ness. Then it happened. '
Before that hand touched the Chinaman’s
shoulder a knife appeared from under the
silken tunic of Clung, and the knife-blade
passed in and out of the palm of the Mexi-
can’s hand. There is no place on the body
more sensitive than the palm of the hand.
Perhaps that’s why schoolmistreses whip
refractory children there. Strong men have
been known to weep when hurt in the palm
of the hand. The Mexican screamed with
pain, leaped back, and drew his revolver
with his uninjured hand.


CLUNG. 3
There was a white man in the laundry
at the moment, and he swore in court after-
ward that the gun of the Mexican was out
of the holster before Clung made a move.
Then a gun appeared, as if conjured out
of thin air, and the Mexican dropped in a
heap with a bullet fairly between the eyes.
His followers started shooting from the
road; Clung killed them neatly and with
despatch; a bullet through the head of each.
And he remained sitting on his table by
the door. The marshal found him there,
smiling into the sun. The judge cautioned
him, declared it self-defense, and dismissed
the case.
CHAPTER II.
SPRING srcxmzss.
N the Southwest any man, even a China-
man, can be excused for one shooting-
match, provided that the other party is
'Mexican; but a second affair causes people
to frown, and a third is almost sure to bring
down the heavy hand of the law. Now,
within a week Clung killed his fourth man;
within ten days he had killed his fifth.
Always he was apprehended sitting cross-
legged on the little table at the door of the
laundry, drowsing after dinner; always his
excuses were allowable; always the Mexi-
cans were the aggrgsors. They were aven-
gers come to wipe out the blood-debt. They
waylaid Clung and fell upon him at weird
times and in strange places, and they were
killed suddenly, neatly, with bullets through
the head.
This caused his markmanship to be more
admired than ever, but the cow-punchers
ceased to linger at the table of Clung and
he was no longer asked to show his skill
with the guns shooting at fantastic targets.
This caused Clung to wonder. Finally he
went to Li with one of his rare questions,
but Li merely raised his caloused hands to
the witnessing gods and shook his head.
The silent feud went on. The greasers
had marked Clung and now and again they
came in parties, or one at a time, heated
with mescal and eager to win a great name.
They departed again the worse for wear,
and Clung still sat cross-legged on the little
_returned with a little Victrola.
table near the laundry door. This con-
tinued; men began to refer to Clung as a
U bad 71111.}!
In the end it was sure to result in tragedy
to some one more important than a Mexi-
can, but the fatal day delayed. Li grew
older, more withered, more like a yellow
mask of grinning comedy; Clung continued
to bask in the sun.
And so it came to a spring day when
the air was cool and a little crisp and gently
fanned the cheek of Clung where he sat on
the table. Deliberater he uncurled his
slender legs and asked money of Li, and
received it, for the old Chinaman had for-
gotten how to refuse. Clung went out and
It played
with a wheeze and a rattle, but, neverthe-
less, it kept a rhythm. Clung brought in
a half-breed Indian girl and in the evenings
he learned to dance.
He practised diligently, silently, for hours'
and hours, until the half-breed would drop
to a chair, exhausted. Having mastered the
steps, he wound his pigtail in the most ob-
scure of knots and put on store clothes—-
the clothes of the whites—and rode many
miles to a country dance.
'Now, as any one from the Southwest
will tell you, this was very rashly done. and
any Chinaman other than C lung would un-
doubtedly have been horsewhipped within
an inch of his life and given warning to
leave the country for fear of worse things.
Men were loath to touch Clung, however.
They would as soon have put hands on a
rattler, coiled to strike.
It seemed that tragedy would be averted
again from the path of Clung and the day
of reckoning postponed, for it chanced that
there was in the crowd a marshal exceeding-
ly wise in the ways of the border. He came
to Clung and spoke softly—with his hand
on the butt of his gun. He explained that
Chinese were not welcome at dances of
whites. The dreamy smile returned to the
lips of Clung. He tried to shove his hands
into the alternate sleeves, but was prevented
by the unaccustomed cuffs of the white
man.
He stared about the hall until he saw
a girl laughing at him. She had pale-yel-
low hair and the light burned like a fire


4 ALL - STORY WEEKLY.
in it, and her throat was white, and the
bosom that curved out below it was as
keen as snow. Clung turned very pale;
he was whiter than the whitest man in
that room. He managed to wriggle his
fingers into the alternate cuffs; he bowed
to the marshal, and turned on his heel.
According to all rules of man and the un-
written laws of the Southwest, the thing
should have ended there, but where the
laws of the Southwest leave off, John Bar-
leycorn often begins. He stepped in here
in the person of Josiah Boyce.
Now, Josiah wore guns because every
one else wore them, but he had never been
known to use them, even on a rabbit. He
probably wouldn’t have known what to do
with them if they had been naked and
loaded in his hands. Ordinarily, Josiah
was a sleepy fellow who sat in corners twist-
ing his long mustaches and looking out
upon the world from beneath shaggy brows
with moist, pathetic eyes.
But when he had a few drinks of whisky,
Josiah became a noisy nuisance. He was
always either extremely confidential, going
about and assuring every one that they
knew him and that he was their friend;
or else he waxed boisterous and insisted
on telling gray-bearded jests. He was in
his boisterous mood this .night. Unfortu-
nately he forgot for a single second about
the record of Clung. The moment the
marshal turned his back on the half-breed
Chinaman, Josiah rushed up, clapped‘his
hand on the shoulder of Clung, and whirled
him around as if he were a top. He started
to bellow out that the damned Chink ought
to be horsewhipped, and that if no one
else would do it, he’d take the job on
his own hands.
Every one laughed, except the marshal,
who started on the run. Clung was smiling,
and the marshal had seen that smile before.
What Clung really saw was not Josiah at
all, but the convulxd mirth of the girl
with the yellow hair. The laughter, appar-
ently, thrilled Josiah with joy. He saw
himself at last in the role of a successful
entertainer, and grasped Clung by his pig-
tail, preparatory to dragging him out of
the hall.
The marshal was only a step away when
this happened—only a step away- -one step-
too late. He arrived just in time to receive
the toppling body of what had been Josiah
Boyce in his arms. Clung vanished through
the door.
They started a half-hearted pursuit, but
Clung rode one of the best horses in Arizona
and his weight was so light that the marshal
knew he had no chance of wearing down the
fugitive. He called off the chase and went
back to the town to have Clung outlawed.
In the mean time Clung cut back by a
sharp detour and went to the house of his
father.
Li sat on a cushion on the floor with a
taper-light rising high on either side of
him. Across his knees a large volume was
opened; he wore on his head a little black
silk cap with a crimson tassel. Clung closed
the door softly behind him and stood very
conscious of his store clothes—respectfully
waiting.
When Li finally looked up, it was with a
slow glance, starting at the boots of Clung,
and the further the glance traveled up the
person of Clung, the paler Li became, until
he looked like parchment which has first
been yellowed with age and then bleached '
in the sun. Then he got up without a
word and went to a little safe at the side
of the room. He opened it and took out
a bag of money—a canvas bag plumply
filled.
“It is all I have, my son,“ said Li.
“ Go! " ,
Clung took it in his hand, weighed it,
and slipped it into his pocket. He seemed
very excited, and his nostrils were quiver-
ing, so that he was not a pleasant sight
to see.
“ I have killed a white man,“ he said.
“ It is true,” nodded Li.
They talked much better English than
the whites around them, and Li, for some
reason, would never speak their native
tongue with his son.
“Father,” said Clung, “I am not well
about—the stomach."
The old Chinaman ran to him swiftly,
making a little sound of dole. a sort of gut-
tural whine.
“ No,” said Clung, “ they have not hurt
me, except here."


CLUNG. ' 5
And be pressed both slender hands
against his breast. ‘
He said: “ I have seen a white woman
and I am hungry with a hunger that food
will not fill up; and I am weak and sick
here.”
Old Li cried out in Chinese, a harsh wail.
“ Mix herbs for me,” said Clung rapidly.
“ Make me strong before I leave, for I have
far to go. These men will never leave my
trail.”
“Oh, my son!” moaned Li. “ There is
no drink of herbs that will help you. No
water will put out the fire of woman; it
will burn you to ashes; it will make you
hollow.”
5‘ You,” said Clung in his soft voice, “ are
not like me. No woman could make ou
burn or make you hollow. Why a I
different?”
“ Your mother was white,” said Li.
“I am neither white nor yellow,” said
Clung. “ Father, I am damned two ways.
I go.” '
He stood stiff against the door, one hand
raised high over his head; old Li stiffened
in the same manner. Then Clung tamed
and caught the knob of the door. He swung
it open and then closed it again. He turned
on Li.
“Your eyes have told me one thing and
your tongue another,” he said. “Which
lie shall I hold to, father?”
One does not need to live in the South-
west to know that the last crime of a C hina~
man is to turn against his father. Li grew
green with horror; he could not speak.
“It is true,” said Clung, smiling his own
faint smile. “ You have lied to me. Now
tell me the truth.”

CHAPTER III.
CLUNG ASKS A BLESSING.
“ 0U have doubted your father twice,"
' said Li. “ For each doubt you shall
be tortured a hundred years here-
after.”
“ And for the third doubt,” said Clung,
“ I shall be tortured terribly for a thousand
years. I doubt you again. Why am I
different?”
- “ It was the will of God that made you
unlike your father. You are all your
mother.” '
“' It is true,” said Clung. “ You have
been good to me, but if I were like you,
father, I would take this knife, so!—and
cut my throat wide and die. As it is, I
grip my knife, sol—and take you by the
throat, sol—and hold this blade at your
breast, so!—and say: ‘ The truth—tell me
the truth!’ ”
Old Li was a brave man, as many a
riotous cow-puncher had learned in his time,
but now a tremor like the palsy of old age
struck him. He stared fascinated up to the
changed face of Clung.
“' A ghost!” he whispered.
“ Of whom?”
“ Of your father.”
The knife glimmered, twisting slowly in
the hands of Clung.
“ Devil!” he said.
father?”
“ A white man—an American," said Li,
“and your mother white also.
“ But,” said Li softly, “ you are my son!
See? The knife trembles in your hand—-
you are shaking with hunger to strike—
but you cannot—you are my son.”
“ I,” said Clung slowly, “ am white?”
He stepped back; he uncoiled his pig-
tail with a single movement, held the hair
taut, and severed the sinuous, snaky length
with a single slash of the knife. The black
hair, springing back, fell wildly about his
face.
“Why?” said Clung.
“A man wronged me,” said Li. “ His
wife died, leaving a child. I stole the baby,
I made him my son.”
“ Who?” said Clung.
“ He is dead; she is dead.”
“And I am living,” said Clung.
“ As my son. Will the white men believe
you are white? Will the yellow men believe
you are yellow? No, you are nothing but
my son. In your mind you may know that
you are the son of whites; in your heart
you know that you are my son. It is done;
it is perfect.”
“ You are not afraid?” asked Clung.
“ Shall a father fear his son?”
“Yellow devil!”
“ Who was my


8 ALL - STORY
WEEKLY.
He did not mind the loneliness-all his
life he had had it, and it might be said that
he was educated for the part of a lone rider
of the mountain-desert. Only one vision
returned to disturb him both by day and by
night, and this was the picture of the girl
with the pale-yellow hair, laughing some-
times, sometimes merely smiling; but al-
ways with an air of mockery, as if she had
something to confide in him if he could
only reach her and listen.
It was-because of this troubling vision,
perhaps, that he started riding one day
before the dusk had set in. His goal was
nameless; activity was his only end, until.
in the slant light of the late sun, he caught
a flash of color. He swung the gray to the
left and raced for two miles up a gully; then
he dismounted and crept to the top of the
ridge and sheltered himself behind a bush.
in due time the color reappeared—bright
blue, with a splash of yellow, developing
into a girl riding at a dog-trot. The blue
was the color of her waist, and the yellow
was the straw of her hat. She passed close,
but not close enough for 'Clung to see her
face.
He followed her with his eyes until she
had passed out of view, around a winding
of the trail; the moment the sun .winked
for the last time on the bright yellow of
her hat, something went out in Clung. It
was as if a light had been shining in him
and, being puffed out, he was suddenly left
all dark and cold inside. ‘
He went back to the gully, swung into
the saddle, and pursued the blue-and-yellow
vision, keeping always just out of her sight,
lurking, and trailing her like a dangerous
shadow until she came to the largest ranch-
house that Clung had ever seen. It was
rather more like some fine old Colonial
house in the South, and around it, on every
side, stretched a deep veranda, with a roof
supported by white pillars. There were
evidently artesian wells near the house, for
green things grew around it—a stretch of
lawn—a hedge of some unfamiliar plant—a
number of spreading palms whose fringed
limbs brushed together, like whispers in
the wind of the evening.
The barn behind the house was almost
as large as the residence itself, and-up to
this the girl rode, dismounted, tossed the.
reins to a man who came from the barn
door, and ran into the house carrying a
small parcel. All this Clung witnessed from
behind the brow of a hill, squinting his eyes
to pierce the distance and the uncertain
light of the evening When she disappeared
into the house the darkness rushed trebly
deep upon Clung. He was literally besieged
with waves of shadow, and now that the
lights were beginning to glimmer through
the windows of the big house it seemed to
him that all the brightness and the hap-
piness in the world was bounded there by
the four walls. Truly, he was marvelously
lonely.
He left his horse again, waited until the
darkness formed a sufficient screen, and then
approached the house, soft as one of those
oncoming shadows of the night. It was
completely dark, now, and he sat comfor-
tably on the moist, cool sod under a palm,
only a few yards from the front of the
veranda.
A servant appeared—a Chinaman—and
Clung smiled to himself, tilting back his
head with half-closed eyes; the yellow race
were servants in this land—-l)ut he was one
of the white brothers. There is no warmth
like that of self-content. It stole over Clung,
now, like a man from the arctics warming
himself before a pleasant fire and caressing
objects of comfort with his eyes.
The servant lighted square-framed Japan-
ese lanterns; at once the veranda grew
bright with the soft flames—the space be—
tween the white columns was illumined as
an expression of happiness lightens the
human face. Now the Chinaman went to
the edge of the steps, screened his eyes.
and peered out into the night. His face
was withered and yellow as old ivory; a
mighty thankfulness flooded through Clung
that he was not as one of these.
The servant turned, his pigtail flopping
awkwardly, and now the door clicked shut
after him—the screen door banged.
The doors opened again almost at once,
held wide by a little old man in black
clothes with a white vest, crossed by a gold-
en chain. He was stooped from work at a
desk, and age had bared his head as religion
bares the head of a monk. Against the


CLUNG. 9
redness of that bald head the circle of sil-
ver hair made pleasant contrast. As he
held the doors he was smiling and speaking
back toward the hall within, which lay
just out of range of Clung’s vision.
Next came an invalid-chair wheeled by
the girl he had seen riding. Her clothes
were now filmy-white, to be sure, and un_
til this moment he had never seen her
face; nevertheless, he knew that it was she.
He closed his eyes. He felt that he could
tell her presence as one tells the species
of a flower in the night-by its peculiar
fragrance.
Clung had the Oriental love of perfumes.
He could construct the history of his life
out of the smells he had known. The
peculiar, steamy aroma of the ironing-room
in the laundry, to be sure, was the back-
ground out of which all else grew, but
against that background other things were
trebly precious. Old Li had some rare
silks from China and there hung about
them a faint lilac fragrance which had
clothed Clung’s boyhood as with an atmos—
phere of poesy. He had loved to handle
those silks, and guess what other bands
had touched them. .
Then there was the garden of Marshal
Clauson. Flowers were to Clung what wine
is to others. There came a time in spring
when among :the dark-green of growing
things in 'the marshal’s garden, there ap-
peared sudden shoots of yellower tinge, and
from these, all in a day, came little points
of color, as if spring were peeping out at _'
the world- and preparing to surprise it with
a sudden tide of splendor. Such a tide
burst forth every year in one day. After
that Clung loved to walk past the garden of
the marshal in the night, slowly, inch by
inch, breathing deeply—his head back and
his eyes half closed—distinguishing the
various scents and naming each unseen
flower in the dark.
He thought of this when the girl came
out on the veranda, wheeling the invalid.
He hardly knew whether she were beautiful
or ugly, young or old; he merely wished
suddenly to be close enough to have the
wind blow a fragrance from her to him. He
sat there on his heels in a sort of happy
expectation until this thing should be.
It was a rather sad emotion, also. It
reminded him of centain paintings of flowers
upon silk—Chinese work which old Li also
owned and brought forth on state occa-
sions.
Clung had loved those paintings, but they
always made him sad. There were other
flowers, to be sure, which he could have
and enjoy, but these peculiar beautiful ones
which the artist had painted, they must
have been dust a thousand years before. It
was the same with the girl. She entered
his life with the scents of the flowers of
other years and with the beauty of the
painted flowers on .their graceful stems;
she was apart from him, unpossessed, un-
possessablewanother age and another
world.
He wondered that the two men did not
sit before her as he would have done——with
his head tilting back and his eyes half
closed, drinking in her presence. This
thought made him lower his head with a
frown and look more closely upon the two
fortunate ones who sat so close to her»
see! They could reach out their hands
and touch her, if they wished!

CHAPTER V.
THE consr: 0F UGLINESS.
HIS rapturous possibility, strangely
enough, left them quite unmoved.
They were as irnpassive as Li discuss-
ing with a customer the prospects of col-
lecting an old bill. Age in the one and sick-
ness in the other doubtless explained it.
The old man had tilted back in his chair
and lighted a cigar; now he was turning
the cigar slowly in his lips with one hand
and insulting the night with drifting clouds
of stench. They reached to Clung and
made him curl his upper lip in that smile of
which Marshal Clauson so strongly dis-
approved. Contempt unutterable filled the
soul of Clung, and hatred for one who could
so violate the sweetness of the night air.
He turned his disgusted stare on the invalid.
prepared to be displeased. His fullest ex-
pectations were surpassed.
The man was large, a gross and heavy
largeness. His shoulders quite filled the


10
'ALL- STORY WEEKLY,
chair from side to side, and even though
he were wasted away, Clung knew what bur-
den those large bones must be; he could
almost feel the weight pressing on the cane
bottom of the chair. Even in the distance
C lung could accurately measure the size of
the man’s hand on the cane arm of the
chair—it was fearfully wasted—it had
strength left only to meet the grip of death
~~but still it was appallingly vast: the
knuckles thrust out as if they would break
the skin. Such a hand, filled out with
muscle, could have crushed the bones in
the fingers of Clung.
Indeed, as he stared he felt a pain run-
ning up to his elbow. Disease had made
the sufferer ugly. His eyes were sunken,
his neck was a gruesome thing of cords and
sinews which stood out and left long,
stringy hollows when he turned his head,
and about those mighty, wasted shoulders
the faint wind shook the clothes.
It was at once apparent that the fellow
had not even the strength to raise himself
and sit up in the chair, but what energy
remained to him he consumed in endless
shifting about. No position pleased him
long. He kept shrugging his shoulders,
moving his feet, clasping and unclasping
his hands, twisting his head suddenly. His
lips were never still. Now he attempted to
whistle, now he scowled, now he talked—
the complaining tone drifted across to
Clung. 4
Since it was apparent to all eyes that
the man was to die, why did he not bear
fate with inscrutable countenance, smiling
most when pain wrung his vitals? Clung
remembered when a devil entered the body
of his uncle, Chu Wee, and sat in Chu’s
stomach. It took Chu Wee six months to
die, but all the time he sat irnpassive, smil-
ing, amiable; when he was well he had been
a snarling demon. Truly the way of the
yellow man in meeting death was much
more beautiful than the way of the white.
Clung was very glad of his double in-
heritance; he would take the best from
the yellow and the best from the white.
The old man on one side of the invalid,
and the girl on the other, were very pa-
tient. She, in especial, continually rose to
shift the pillows behind his shoulders and
rearrange the robe which covered his men
mous lank legs. The sick man coughed
violently, and made a furious gesture to-
ward the old man, who at once threw away
his cigar, but he did it with an ill grace
which Clung could very easily see. He
caught their voices now. The invalid had
stretched out a hand to the other.
“ Mr. Sampson,” he said, “ I’m a terrible
weakling—but that whiff of smoke just
then—it nearly strangled me! "
“ Beast!” thought Clung. “ Why did he
not strangle and say nothing?”
“ H-m!” said the other. “ It’s all right,
Will. I’m—I’m really through smoking,
for a while.”
“ And you, my dear! ” said the sick man,
turning to the girl.
She reached out with a smile and took
his hand between both of hers. At that
the world reeled before the eyes of Clung.
It was plain: it was written clear; she was
the man’s woman! He forced his eyes open
again and looked with his own faint smile.
“You ought to be out in the world of
action and pleasant things,” said the man.
His voice was bass, but sickness had raised
it into a nasal key. “ But I keep you down
here in my little hell, burdening you with
my own small misery. Good Heavens,
Winifred, sometimes I hate myself. I
wish to God I could die now and get the
thing over with.”
“My dear!” she cried. So beautiful a
thing must have such a voice. It was not
high, and yet its quality was? light, and
‘there was a vibrant quality about it—a.
tone that pierced like the muted G-string
of a violin. Now the man laughed, harsh-
ly and briefly.
“But sometimes I’m sure,” .he said,
“that you never would have told me you
loved me if I had not been so sick.”
“Will,” said the old man, “sometimes
you’re just a plain damned fool! Excuse
me, Winifred;- I’m going inside."
He got up and stamped into the house.
It was all very disgusting to Clung. He
thought of the girl as of a rare blossom
which grows out of a foul soil.
“ I wouldn’t say it like that,” murmured
the girl, “ but you are foolish to think I
don’t love you, dear.”


I CLUNG.
II
“ I don’t doubt it," said the sick man,
“but you never showed much liking for
me while I was on my feet. When I got
down and out you discovered—well, Wini-
fred, to put it frankly, you discovered a
place where you could be of service, and
you took the place.”
“ Hush!” she said, and laid a white fin-
ger across his lips. The man kissed that
finger and then rolled up his eyes to her
with a ghastly smile. Clung shuddered;
it was as if she had touched flesh white
with leprosy; it was as if he had stood idly
by and watched a holy thing polluted, and
now his lithe, slender fingers coiled about
the hilt of his knife. Even at that dis-
tance he could have thrown it accurately.
He could have struck the colorless gash of
the man’s mouth; better still, he could have
buried the blade in the hollow of the
gaunt throat. She spoke again, and, lost
in the pleasure it gave him of hearing her
voice, his nerveless fingers uncoiled and fell
away.
“ Surely I have proved how dear you are
to me, Will?”
“ Don’t think I complain,” he said. " I
thank God that I can have even the sight
of you for a moment. It’s a thing to just
about die for—as I’m doing!"
“ No, no! You are much better to-day.
In another month, when the warmer, drier
weather begins—”
He cut her short with a rude gesture of
impatience.
“ Don’t argue with me, Winifred. Don’t
pull the wool over my eyes. I know I’m
weaker every day; I’ve given up hope; I
know I’m going to die; I know I’m never
going to live to make you my wife. Die!
And at my age, with all the world before
me. I feel—oh, God!——sormetimes I feel
as if I were already buried alive; and every-
thing beautiful fills me with horror be-
cause I have to give it up—Winifred—even
you!”
The wan, bony, shaking hands twitched
up and covered his face; he wept loudly,
catching his breath between sobs with a
groan. Every sound cut Clung to the heart
with horror and rage; he whipped out the
knife and poised it—but the girl had leaned
close and gathered the weeper to her, pil-
lowing his face against her shoulder and her
breast. \
Her head was raised, and Clung saw her
smile of ineffable pity and tenderness. It
shone out to him like a light that pierced
him to the soul and withered the strength
from his nervous arm. Once more the knife
dropped idly to the ground. It was then
that Clung knew he must be near her~<
even if she were the defiled thing of another
man. He knew it and confessed it to
himself with an infinite bitterness of heart;
that was the white man’s blood speaking in
him; if he had been as he was a month
before he could have turned away and
shut her out of his thoughts as easily and
as swiftly as he turned his back; but as
he was, the gods of the white man claimed
him.
Then it came to him as plainly as if a
door had opened and he had seen another
room: the man was sick, but chiefly sick
in his mind. He was sure of his death, and
therefore he was sure to die.
Clung went back to his horse and rode
straight for the house, the hoofs clattering
loudly on the beaten path. He pulled to a
halt and whipped from the saddle to the
ground. There he stood with his hat off,
staring blankly at the couple on the porch.
The girl rose and shaded her eyes to peer
into the dark and make out his form. He
suppressed a smile. She would have to
look harder and longer than that to make
him out, or see him even in the broadest
daylight.
He said: “I am riding north; it is night.
May I sleep here?"
He spoke slowly, as always, with a little
pause between words. It gave the effect
of a man of much culture who chooses his
words and is proud of his choice, and, in-
deed, to Clung, words were not light things.
They were not unlike arrows loosed from
the string, as he remembered from one of
his few books—they could not be recalled;
whereas a bullet may miss or a knife fail
to strike home, the spoken word never fails
to reach the heart.
The sick man scowled at him, his upper
lip lifting loosely; it was very ugly. But
the girl smiled and beckoned toward the
r.
doo “awaits!” 0‘
itunms name.


12
'ALL- STORY WEEKLY.
“ You are very welcome,” she said.
“I thank you,” said Clung, and led his
horse around the house toward the barn.

CHAPTER VI.
THE BRINGER 0F SLEEP.
FTER he had pulled up his horse he
entered the house by the back door
which opened on the kitchen. There
were two Chinese servants there, working
at the cleaning of dishes and the pans.
They hushed their shrill chatter at his com-
ing, and he stood a moment staring idly at
them, enjoying the silence with which the
yellow man acknowledges the presence of
the white, a silence crammed with mean-
ings, all of which Clung knew.
Then he went on and passed an open
door beyond which sat the old man in an
air blue with smoke, reading. There were
around him, lining the walls, more books
than Clung had dreamed were in the world.
The old man glanced up at him over his
spectacles, wrinkling his forehead in a
quizzical frown. Clung stood in the door-
way, straight and slim, and hat in hand.
“ I am John Ring,” he said in his somber
way. “The lady on the veranda said I
might stay in this house till the morning.”
The other opened his lips to speak, but
Clung had bowed like an automaton and
gone on toward the front of the house.
He passed across floors as smooth as
glass and glimmering under the lights; he
passed through rooms wide and lofty where
one might breathe more freely than in most
rooms; he passed through and sensed a
somberness of color—chiefly browns. He
sensed also a pleasant order as of a place
where many served and few were masters.
The air of this place was choice as incense.
He began to wish that he were clothed
as he had once seen a traveling man who
passed through Mortimer—in white trou-
sers, sharply pressed, graceful, cool, always
hanging straight; and in a. thin white shirt
with a white collar and a necktie of bright
colors pinned down with a golden pin. In
the midst of these wishes he came to the
front veranda, noiselesst opened the door,
and stood beside the couple.
They sat silent, the man' moving cease-
lessly, the woman staring out into the night,
and Clung imagined himself sitting once
more under the shadow of that tall, dark
palm, watching another self step boldly out
on the porch, boldly into the presence of
the woman, into her fragrance, stealing the
breath of it from the man who was its
rightful owner. He was wronging the man:
therefore he hated him.
It was the girl who looked up first and
saw him. He was conscious of her eyes
on his riding-boots, her eyes on his belt,
her eyes on his tan shirt, her eyes on the
bright bandanna around his throat, her
eyes on the hollows of his lean face, her
eyes, last of all, shocking against his
glance—a perceptible thing like a stone
dropped into an unplumbed depth of water.
“My name," said Clung, “ is John
Ring.”
‘* I am Winifred Sampson,” answered
the girl, “ and this is William Kirk.”
In China one bows in acknowledging an
introduction; on Fifth Avenue one bows in
the same way, though not quite so low and
not quite so gracefully. The girl stared at
Clung.
“ Will you sit down?” she asked.
The chair was the one which the old man
had sat in; it faced the girl, but it was
near the horror~the sick man.
“I have ridden all day,” said Clung;
“' I like to stand.”
So saying, he stepped back just a trifle
toward the wall of the house so that all the
breeze that blew passed across the girl and
then to him. He caught the fragrance then
—nothing he could name, but a fact which
he would be able to recognize thereafter.
The other two had forgotten him, and he
was glad, for as the silence deepened, his
mind, his will began to reach out, past the
invalid chair, and toward the girl. He
looked fixedly at her; she glanced up; he
stared blankly off into the night. It was
nothing, an accident, perhaps, but to Clung
a proof of power. The sick man kept shift-
ing and muttering.
At length he cried out, throwing his
shaking hands before him: “Winifred,
why can’t I sleep? Can’t I even sleep and
forget?”


16
'ALL - STORY WEEKLY.
‘" It was a beautiful picture," said Clung,
“ even if it lasted for only one night, for
you."
“ For me?” she answered, whispering.
“ For you,” said Clung. “As for me, I
never forget."
She knew a thousand men who might
have said some such trifling thing, but the
solemnity of this stranger stopped the smile
even as it began on her lips. He did not
seem to say it to flatter her. He was an-
nouncing an impersonal truth. She had
happened to make part of a charming pic-
ture which John Ring arranged; that was
all. Now that the morning had come she
was no more to him than a design on the
wall—a picture in a frame—a painted
thing. She could not help a little twinge
of irritation.
“ Was he peaceful all night?” she asked
coldly. .
“ He moved a little,” said Clung.
“When the sun came up he sighed. That
was all. He will sleep now until noon.
You may go; he no longer needs you.”
“I know him better,” she said—for it
seemed as if this_was a calm negation of
all the effects of her patient nursing.
“ Even when he’s asleep he knows whether
or not I’m near.”
“That,” said Clung, “ was when he was
very weak. It is different now. He is
stronger. He does not need you.”
“ It is not true!” said the girl angrily.
“Try,” said Clung.
She frowned at him, and then moved to-
ward the door, her glance behind her, will-
ing with all her might that the sick man
should stir and moan at her departure. But
he did not move; she reached the door and
glanced at Clung. He stood, as she had
known he would stand, with his head back,
his eyes half closed, his lips smiling faintly.
She stamped, but lightly, for fear of waking
the sleeper.
“I could hate you!” whispered the girl,
and was gone.
It startledgClung out of his dream, and
he stared blankly after her. But finally
he shrugged the thought away and began to
pick up the flowers which she had shaken
to the floor. It had been a beautiful pic-
ture, all that night. He examined tenderly
the petals of the blossoms; they were al-
ready fading, and here and there they were
darkly bruised.
CHAPTER \‘III.
THE OPEN noon.
N the fifth day thereafter, William
Kirk wu strong enough to dress
himself ; on the tenth day he stood
up and walked about; at the end of two
weeks he climbed into a saddle and rode
about the place at a soft‘trot; the next
day he told Winifred that the time was
come for them to marry and go north again
into the world of business.
It was a drowsy, late afternoon, and
they sat on the veranda, dressed in cool
white, watching the idle brushing of the
palm branches across the sky—a blue-white
sky which would soon be taking on colors,
for the sun was dropping rapidly toward
the western horizon and already the shad-
ows were growing darker and deeper among
the hills, covering the speckled growth of
mesquite.
“ Besides,“ concluded Kirk, “ I’m on my
feet completely and ready for harness; your
father is getting nervous—everything is set
for us to call in the minister and jog back
north.”
“ Why,” said the girl, “ you’re not near-
Iy your old self, Will!”
“Near enough to marry you, dear.” he
answered, “ and get back to some man—
sized work. I‘m sick of this dreamy life,
sitting about, chattering, twirling my
fingers. Not cut out for that sort of thing.
Can’t do it decoratively the way Ring
can.”
“ Where is Ring now?” asked the girl.
“Where he always is during the bright
part of the day—inside sitting in a dark
corner, looking at pictures in some old
fool book. But that isn’t answering me,
Winifred.”
She said gravely: “I’ll tell you frank—
ly, Will, that I don’t feel like answering
to-day. I’m tired—somehow.”
“ Confound it!” he said with some heat.
“ You‘ve been this way ever since Ring
appeared!”


CLUNG.
17
She answered without smiling: “ Now,
that’s the silliest thing you’ve said for a
long time, isn’t it?”
“ It is foolish,” he admitted, “ but that
chap—confound it!——I know he’s not one
of us—I know I owe him a lot—”
“ Everything-4’ she said coolly.
“ Everything, I suppose, but at the same
time he makes me uneasy. By the way,
who the devil is he, where does he come
from, where is he going? Do you know?”
(l Yes-H
“ The deuce you do! Let’s have it!”
“ I’ll tell you just what he told me. He
came from there "—she waved a hand
toward half the points of the compass to-
ward the south—“ he is going there ”——she
waved the other hand at the other points
of the compass toward the north—“ and he
is just a man.”
“Sounds like Ring, all right.
knew the fellow to answer a question the
way any other man would. Personally I
have very grave doubts about him.”
“ What sort of doubts, Will?”
“But let’s get back to the important
thing: Winifred, I wish awfully that you’d
shake off your weariness and tell me I can
bring out a minister_ and have the thing
finished up.”
“Somehow,” she answered, “I like to
have it kept in suspense for a while.”
“But we can’t go on drifting like this
-—besides, my business will go smash if I
don’t get back into the harness.”
“I think the drifting,” she said, “is
rather pleasant—Jock, now! the white goes
out of the sky—the darker blue begins——
the sun will be golden in a moment and
begin to bulge out at the sides like a child
puffing out his cheeks. It’s nice to sit here
—and not talk—and not think—in the
warmthk’,’
“ That,” he said angrily, “ is a transcript
from Ring!”
“ I suppose it is.”
This startled him erect in his chair.
“Winifred,” he said, “ I don’t want to
make a complete ass of myself, but I’d like
to know just what you think of Ring.”
“ Ask him,” she said. “He can tell you
better than I can.”
And she waved a lazy hand toward the
I never
open door. The man considered her with
a serious frown. He set his teeth over
something which would have been rashly
said.
“Are you trying to irritate me, Wini-
fred?”
“ You know I’m not, dear.”
“ There you go again! There isn’t the
slightest emotion in your voice—you talk
exactly the way Ring talks—damn itl—I
beg your pardon, Winifred!”
“Don’t; but go ahead. Tell me how
Ring talks. I like to hear about him.”
“ You ought to know how he talks; he’s
with you enoug .”
“Altogether,” she said thoughtfully, “I
think he’s averaged about twenty words a
day since he came. Most of the time he
simply sits and looks.”
“ I know. He looks as if he were lis-
tening to you talk hard and fast when
you’re saying nothing at all. Confound
him; he worries me. I’ll be frank. I
wish you’d tell me exactly how you feel
about him.”
“ I don’t mind in the least.”
She leaned back in the chair, half closing
her eyes, and smiling. Kirk swore softly,
for it was Ring’s expression made delicate-
ly beautiful on her face.
“I think I know,” he murmured, “but
go ahea .” _
She said: “ Most of us live rather ugly
lives, don’twe, Will? We’re pretty much
discontented with to-day, we despise yes-
terday, and we only drag ourselves along
through a hope of what a brave to-morrow
may bring. That’s the way it has been
with me, at least, and I’m sure that’s the
way it is with most 0f the people I know.
Do you agree?” I
“ Yes, I suppose life is pretty rotten if
you take it cold bloodedly like this. But
this isn’t an age bf romance, Winifred.
People are looking for action—and they’re
finding i .”
“They are. My life has been filled by
people who are leading lives of action; \I
really began to think them the only people
in the world who amount to anything. I
was like a person going down a straight and
narrow corridor with monotonous walls on
either side and no prospect except the same
2 A-S


18
ALL - STORY WEEKLY.
dull passage to the end, and then—dark-
ness. Now suppose a door suddenly opens
on the side of that corridor and I pass
through the door to find a world of won-
derful beauty—flowers, rare perfumes, a
garden filled with exquisite things perfectly
arranged. That is what Ring did for
me“)? I
“' As much as that—are you serious,
Winifred?”
She went on as though she had not heard
him:
“ He taught me how to enjoy living for
its own sake—taught me how to revel in
it every day as it comes. He is still teach-
ing, and I—well, he’ll be out here in a
moment, and then you'll see. He always
comes when the color of the evening starts.
Before that he has no interest in the day.”
Kirk stood up. He seemedv very large,
outlined against the growing color of the
west. Those strong hands, too, were fill—
ing out, hands that could have crushed the
slender wrists of Clung with a single pres-
sure.
“You’re quite sure of all this, Wini-
fred?” he asked tensely.
“ What is there to be tragic about?"
- “ Don’t you see that if you feel that way
about him there is no room for me?”
“ But I feel for you in such a different
way. 1—” _
“How much do you feel?“
She frowned at the floor.
- “Will,” she said, “if you really care
very. much, don’t press me for an answer
just now.”
“Then you’ve really changed, Wini-
fred?”
“ Please don’t ask me.
whirling just now, Will.”
“ I was right about it. You cared for
me only as long as I was sick; I was just
something to mother, Winifred, wasn‘t that
it?”
“ Do you insist on an answer now?”
“ No—for God’s sake—not a word!"
' He slumped into a chair, breathing hard.
Then: “ I’ll tell you what I think Ring is
—for various reasons. No, it would be
easier to show you than to tell. He’s inside
--in the front room. Go to the window
and watch him. I’m going to enter that
room and say something.”
She obeyed, wondering, smiling faintly
in expectation of the game to follow. Kirk
stole to the inner door of the front room,
and she saw him press it cautiously ajar.
It made not a sound, and John Ring, sit-
ting with his back to the door, in a corner,
slowly turned the pages of a large book,
poring over the illustrations. There was
not a sound from the entrance of Kirk,
that she could have- swom, but suddenly
Ring sat erect, stiffening in his chair—the
pages lay unstirred before him.
“ Hands up!” called Kirk.
1 It was as if a gunshot precipitated John
Ring from his chair. One instant he sat
there motionless; the next he was prone on
the floor behind the chair. By magic, as if
conjured from the thin air, a revolver was
in his hand and leveled at the form of
Kirk.
My mind is
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK. Don’t forget this magazine is issued weekly, and
that you will get the continuation of this story without waiting a month.
U U
U U
P A N
BY H. THOMPSON RICH
UNNY little goat-man. called God Pan—
Who’d ever dream him a music man?
Went to the river, got him a reed—
And blew till the very stats gave heed.
Made such music, they made him a god—
Funny fate for a goat-man clod!


arm. “ Come on. Looks to me you’re
pretty well rigged up in good togs to be
living in one of these boarding-house hall
rooms.”
Percye’s reply was smothered in the rain.
He climbed the front steps of Mrs. Whit—
ney’s establishment with the officer beside
beside him and pushed the bell. The water
was running off his Panama hat and oozing
out of his shoes and little streams were
running off his clothes. He shivered.
“ What ’re you pushing that bell for—
ain’t you got a key?” asked the cop harshly.
“ Oh, I forgot about that,” stuttered
. Percye, fumbling in his vest pocket for his
key. “ Why—why I haven’t got it; I left
it home with my money.” ‘-
“ Sure, I knew you didn’t live here; come
on with me!” .;_
“ But wait—” "
“ Come on,” roared the policeman, draw-
ing his night stick from beneath his oilskin.
At that moment the light in the hall was
turned up and the door opened.
“ Why, Mr. Pally, you’re soaking wet!”
It was Miss Furney, who had heard the
bell. Perhaps she had not been sleeping as
hard as might be, knowing that Percyce
was out and that it was raining. '
“Does this man live here?” asked the
policeman.
“ Oh, yes; that’s Percye Pally—he lives
here.”
The policeman grudgingly departed.
“Man can’t even be on the streets late
without being bothered by cops,” said
Percye feebly as she closed the door behind
him.
“Go up-stairs and get those wet clothes
off as quickly as you'can,” said the practi-
cal Miss- Furney. “ I’ll make you a hot cup
of tea and bring it up.”
Then noticing something lacking about
him she asked: “Why, did you lose your
stick?”
“ No, I threw that away, said Percye
grimly as he stamped up the stairs.
Later she brought him the hot tea.
If she was surprised to note through the
open door that the photograph of Miss
Evelyn Lang had disappeared from his
dresser she failed to mention it.
There was a sparkle in her eyes as she


)7
PALLY’S SOCIAL CLIMAX.
171
regarded Percye bundled in his bathrobe
with his good-looking hair rumpled.
“ Gee, this is good,” he said taking a sip
of the tea. “ Why are you so good to me,
Miss Furney?”
“ Oh, men never understand those
things,” she replied vaguely. “ I hope you
won’t take cold, Mr. Pally.”
“ Don’t call me Mr. Pally,” he remon-
strated, noting how lovely her profile looked
in the half-light of the hall. “Why don’t
you call me Amos?”
“ Amos! I thought your name was
Percye.”
“ Amos is my middle name—I’m—I‘m
going to use it in the future!”
“ All right,” she answered as she bid him
good night.
P. Amos Pally closed his door and
downed the rest of the tea. Then he took
a package of engraved calling-cards from
the drawer of his table and dropped it into
the waste basket on top of an autographed
photograph which was already there. He
looked in the glass and noted with satisfac-
tion the determination which showed in his
face.
Next he opened his wardrobe door and
removed his dress suit—worn three times——
from its hanger. He did it up into a neat
bundle, wrapped it in paper from the top
shelf in the wardrobe and tied it securely.
“ Any pawn broker will give me three
weeks board for that and maybe four," he
muttered to himself. “ And I ought to get
five for the cane. I’ll pay up Mrs. Whitney
to-morrow and—I ought to be able to save
some money this fall.”
Then he tiptoed out into the hall and
down-stairs to Miss Furney‘s room on the
floor below.
He rapped gently.
“Are you still up, Leonia?” he called
softly.
“ Why, yes, what-"
“ I probably won’t see you in the morn-
ing because I’m going down early and I
wanted to ask you—what do you say if we
go to a movie to-night?”
“That would be just fine!” she laughed
in a whisper from the other side of the
door.
And P. Amos Pally went up-stairs to bed.




‘ i Max Brand,- ‘
Author of “ The Ulla-ed," " Children of the Night.” “ 'l'nllil',” etc.
PRECEDING CHAPTERS BRIEFLY RETOLD
THE whites of the Arizona town pronounced Clung “ a no-good Chink.” but they were willing
to allow his father, Li Clung, was a law-abiding laundryman.
and pistols to soiled linen.
Young Clung preferred ponies
At a public dance he killed Josiah Boyer,'who attempted to eject him from the hall on the
score of his color, which, as a matter of fact, was as white as any man's.
By stealth he returned to his father‘s house before he took the long
done for four Mexicans.
Previously he had
trail. Then Li Clung confessed Clung was not his son by blood. Li had taken him while yet a
baby after his mother’s death from a man who had grievously wronged him.
his heels, Clung rode into the desert.
With a posse at
Later he came to a big ranch-house, where he found Winifred Sampson, her father, and her
fiance, William'Kirk. The latter was a querulous invalid, whom Clung put to sleep and then
cured by the strength of suggestion and a harmless tea.
On his recovery Kirk sought to marry Winifred at once, but she, too, had come under the
influence of Clung, and refused to be hurried. Moreover. Kirk had his suspicions, and determined
to put Clung to the test.
Kirk called out: “Hands up!"
CHAPTER IX.
THE OUTLA\V.
though he had shrunk back against
the wall. “Only a jest, my dear
Ring. Gad! Looks as if it nearly turned
out serious for me, eh? Pardon!”
He retreated through the doorway and
rejoined Winifred on the porch.
“ You saw?”
' “He is a Westemer,” she answered,
“ born with a gun in his hand, It was only
natural for him to draw a gun.”
“ Don’t you see?” smiled Kirk. “The
worst law-abiding Westerner knows the
game is up when he hears that ‘Hands
up! ’ and he puts his fists high over his
head. But a man to whom arrest is the
same as death will fight it out even if he’s
cornered.”
“ You mean that Ring is an outlaw?"
“ That’s plain."
I " COME, come," called Kirk cheerily,
Unexpectedly entering a room where Clung was occupied with a book,
In another moment Clung was on the floor behind his chair,
and in his hand was a revolver, leveled at Kirk.
“ I wonder!”
“ Seems to please you, Winifred.”
“ I think it does.”
“ Good Heavens, my clear, why?”
“My only doubt of Ring has been that
he’s too nearly effeminate. If he’s an out-
law—well, you’ve removed my only objec-
tion to him, Will.” ' '
“j Winifred, did you see his face when he
lay there on the floor with that gun
pointed?" _
“ Yes. It looked like murder, didn’t
it?”
“ And you can smile at such a thing?”
“ Nonsense. Nothing happened.”
“But suppose, to complete my jest, I
had had a gun in my hand and leveled at
him.”
“ Then I suppose, Will, that I would
now be closing your eyes and bidding you
a long good night. Something about our
friend Ring makes me feel that he seldom
misses.“
. This story began in the All-Story Weekly for April 10.
:7:


CLUNG.
173
The big man answered: “And I begin
to think that it’s time something were
done—”
“ About what, Will?”
“I’ll tell you after it’s happened. Here
comes your outlaw.”
He stood in the doorway, perfectly se-
rene, smiling at them in his own peculiar
way. They had provided him with white
clothes and now he came with small slow
steps across the veranda, seeming to luxu-
riate in the straightness of the creases in
his trousers and reveling in the neat cool-
ness of his costume. Kirk turned on his
heel and strode into the house.
He went on through until he reached
the barn behind. There he said to one of
the men who cared for the horses:
“How long will it take you to reach
Mortimer?”
“About fifteen hours of ordinary riding.
Make it in eleven on a rush.”
“ This,” said Kirk, “ is a big rush. Ride
for Mortimer and see that man you spend
so much time talking about—the gunman
——I mean Marshal Clauson. Tell him that
on this ranch there is a man of medium
height and of a very slender build, brown
eyes—deep black hair—handsome—under
thirty in age—hands as small as a wo-
man’s—and very quick with weapons. Ask
him if that man is wanted in Arizona by
the law. That’s all you need to know.
Now ride like the devil.”
He waited until the messenger was out
of sight on the southern trail. Then he
went back to the house. The voice of
conscience, which speaks so small and
carries so far, was beginning to trouble
him; but when he came again, softly, to
the front of the house, and looked out on
the veranda, he saw the man called John
Ring sitting near Winifred with his head
tilted back, his eyes half closed, and a faint
smile as of mockery on his lips. Beyond
them the western sky was a riot of deep-
ening colors, and toward _this the girl was -
looking; but John Ring gave it not a
glance. His eyes were fixed steadily on
his companion. Kirk turned away. The
voice of conscience troubled him no more.
Early the next morning Winifred sent
one of the servants to tell Kirk that she
' have a surprise, and a corker.
wished to speak with him. He sent back a
note;
I think I know what you want to say. I'm
asking you for your own sake just as much as for
mine to wait until to-morrow noon at the least
before you say it. Will you wait?
She did not send a written answer to
the note, but when she saw him later in
the day she said: " Of course I’ll wait—
as long as you want me to. And I know
you’re not going to be foolish, Will?”
“ I’m glad you’ve confidence in me,” he
answered dryly.
She said with a sudden concern: “ What
is it, Will? You act like a little boy with
a surprise to spring on the family.”
“ To tell you the truth,” he said, “I
That is, I
think I_have. I ought to know by to-
morrow morning. Will you wait?”
“Of course. I’ll ask John Ring. He
ought to be good at riddles.”
“At this riddle,” said Kirk, “he ought
to be very good!”
“There’s something nasty behind that,
Will?”
“ Only a riddle.”
And so he left her, and spent the rest
of the day by himself; but in the evening
the man called John Ring came to his
room. He spoke simply and to the point.
“ We have been friends. We are friends
no more. Is it because of the woman—
your woman? Tell me, is it because of
your woman?”
The face of William Kirk contorted with
pain, and a perverse desire to torture him-
self made him spring to his feet and fairly
shout:
“Damn your eyes, don’t you see that
she’s no longer my woman? I don’t know
whose woman she is—maybe yours. And
you and I? No, we’re no longer friends.
Now get out of my room!”
“A loud voice,” answered Clung, “says
foolish things.”
But he was smiling as he left the room,
and Kirk knew with a cold falling of the
heart that the stranger had gone straight
to the girl. What would happen he could
not well guess, but he knew her to be as
honorable as a man. She had given her


174
'ALL - STORY WEEKLY.
word to wait until the next day, and be
felt fairly confident that not even John
Ring and his silence could make her speak
before that time.
Yet it was a night of no sleep for him.
He went to bed late and tossed about for
a while. At length he rose and began to
walk up and down in the dark room. A
.low, orange-colored moon caught his eye,
and he went to the window to watch its
setting. It rolled lower and lower. Just
before it sank out of sight. while still half
of its broad, lighted shield hung over a hill—
top, two figures walked across its image-—
a man and a woman close together.
Right before that moon they paused.
The woman was looking up, and now she
threw up both her arms. The man stood
with folded arms and his head was bent.
The moon rolled down below the hilltop;
the two figures melted again into the dark
from Which they had come; and Kirk
knelt by the window and buried his face
in his hands.
He went down to a late breakfast the
next morning, hollow-eyed, nervous, his
hands twitching violently so that he could
hardly eat. There was such a growing
weakness that he began to fear a relapse.
He had barely finished his grapefruit when
the two entered—John Ring and the girl.
They had been through the garden, gath-
ering flowers, and now they spilled a rich
tide of color across the table, and stood
there on either side of them, the girl laugh~
ing. He knew that Ring stood with his
head back, smiling faintly; but he dared
not look up and make sure. If he had been
right he would have had to jump at the
man’s throat.
“ Look!" cried the girl.
outside and sunlight inside!”
She raised a double handful of yellow
blossoms and let them shower down upon
the table.
it n
kitchen.
He dropped to the floor, a gun in either
hand.
“ Clung!" called a voice from the other
of the room.
" Clung! Clung!” They were all around
him.
“ Sunlight
called a Voice from the
“We‘ve got you, my boy,” called the
voice of Marshal Clauson. “ Are you going
to let us take you, or do we have to make
a killing here?” '
And Clung, thinking swiftly. thought of
the fusillade of bullets—some of them going
wild, perhaps—the girl—bloodshed—hor-
101'! He rose and tossed his guns upon the
table. He pulled another six-shooter from
the front of his white trousers; he threw a
long knife after the rest. Then be folded
his arms.
“ I am ready,” said Clung.
Marshal Clauson appeared at the door
of the kitchen. His eyes were narrowed,
like those of a man prepared to do a des-
perate deed. He held two revolvers poised.
“ Get your hands over your head,
Clung!” he ordered. “ Come in behind
him, boys, and shoot if he bats an eye.”
“ I will not make trouble,” said Clung.
The marshal, still white-faced and nar-
row-eyed, got between his victim and the
table where Clung’s weapons lay.
“ I begin to you won’t—and I’m
damned glad of it, Clung. For a Chink,
you show an amazing pile of sense.”
There were six other men entering the
room from variousangles, each with lev-
eled guns, yet even those who approached
Clung from behind came softly, stealthily,
as if each man was attempting a desperate
deed alone.
“ Get the irons on him," ordered Clauson.
They were produced, a new, glittering
pair; Clung held his arms patiently in posi-
tion, and the manades snapped shut.
“It was you,” smiled Clung to Kirk.

CHAPTER X.
~ THE CHINK.
UT Kirk turned. from those eyes as
if he found them difficult to bear. He
ran to Clauson and touched him on
the shoulder. “What d’you mean by
‘ Chink ’P” be asked.
“ What I say. This gent looks white,
don’t he? Well, he ain’t. This, ladies and
gents, is Clung of Mortimer—half-breed
Chinaman, son of old Li Clung~same
town."


CLUN G.
175


.H’ ‘-
The hands of Winifred, as if frozen in
place, had held the last of the yellow blos-
soms. Now the fingers curled over it,
'- crushed it shapeless, colorless—a bruised,
ugly mass, which dropped now unheeded
' ~50 the floor.
“Who sent me word?” asked Clauson.
"He gets half the reward."
“ I don’t want the—blood money,” said
_ Kirk. \
“ Wash your hands of the business, eh?”
grinned the marshal. “Well, if you know
Clung’s record I don’t blame you.”
He passed a large silken bandanna across
his forehead.
“It’s the cool of the mornin’, all right,
but I don’t mind saying that I’ve been
feeling some warm. Yep, even when we
had the drop on this bird I wasn’t particu-
lar happy. I tell you, I’ve seen this same
Chink— Well, why talk about what’s
done? We’ve got him. That’s all. And
he’ll be hung nice and regular if I can keep
the crowd from lynchin’ him at Mortimer.
What’s the matter, lady? You look sic .”
A sickly pallor, indeed, had swept over
Winifred’s face, and now she moved' for
the door leading to the front part of the
house. The course brought her unavoid—
ably close to Clung, who st00d with his
head high, tilting back, eyes half closed,
smiling faintly. One instant she paused,
near him, and surveyed him from head to
foot. Then an uncontrollable shudder
swept over her; she covered her face with
her hands and ran from the room.
“Makes her sick to know she’s been in
the same room with Clung, eh?” said the
marshal easily. It was a great day for
him.
ain’t so bad—for a Chink. Only one white
notch in his record. And that was the
fault of old Boyce, I guess. Lead him out,
lads.”
“One minute,” said Kirk, and he ap-
proached Clung. /
“Listen,” said Kirk, speaking so softly
that no one else might hear. “I’m sorry,
but I had to do it. I suspected something
was wrong; I didn’t dream it was as bad
as this. For what you’ve done for me, I’m
grateful. Tell me what I can do to make
your last days happy. and—”
“But I tell you, gents, this Clung '
“Wash the thought of what I have done
away,” said Clung.
“Let me pay you for the medicine you
used, at least.”
“The medicine was concocted of com-
mon herbs. A few cents would more than
pay the cost. I healed your mind, not your
body.”
“ Making a fool out of me from the first,
eh? Still, I feel like a dog about this—er—
Clung.”
“ It was not you,” said the other. “ It
was fate. I have forgotten you already.”
“Damned if I don’t think you have.
Cool devil you are, Clung. It was the girl;
the thought of her drove me on, Clung.”
“ You have lost her,” said the prisoner.
“ She is gone from you.”
“ Nonsense! The moment you are gone
she’ll come and cry her shame away on my
shoulder. A Chinaman! Gad, poor Wini-
fred will be under the whip!”
“ The flowers,” said Clung faintly, “ they
will save her from you.”
“ Damn your yellow hide!” muttered
Kirk. “ I wonder if I understand you?”
“ No, you can never understand. Mar-
shal Clauson, will you take me?”
They led him outside and helped him
to the saddle of his own gray horse.
“ Now,” said the marshal, “ there’s some-
thing about you—damned if I know why,
Clung—that makes me start sympathizin’
with you. Foolish, I know, but I can’t help
it. Listen here. If you’ll give me your
word, I’ll let you ride back to Mortimer
like a white man—with your hands free
and no rope around you to suggest a lynch-
ing to the crowd. Gimme your word?”.
“The marshal is kind to Clung,” said
the other. “ He has a garden of flowers—”
“Best in Mortimer, eh, lad? First I
remember of you, Clung, is seeing you
snook around that same garden. Here,
Johnson, unlock those irons.” _
And so it came to pass that Clung rode
like a free man into Mortimer. A crowd
gathered at the first appearance of the
cavalcade and there were 'murmurs and
some threatening shouts.
“But they won’t do nothing,” said the
marshal to Clung. “Partly because they
know me, and partly because they see you


CLUNG.
177
chair. He seized first on a massive book,
and then on the butt of a gun, but still old
Li did not move; Marshal Clauson deliv-
ered himself of his favorite curse, famous
through the length and breadth of Ari-
zona.
“ Thunderin’ hell!” he roared.
a fool or jest plain crazy?”
“ Am I

CHAPTER XI.
THE HEART OF LI CLUNG.
HE Chinaman drew himself erect; dig-
nity fell about him as visibly as the
toga of a Roman senator carrying an
appeal to the leader of plundering barba-
rians at the gates of the imperial city.
“ It is all- that Li Clung has,” he said
in his faultless English, “ and his money is
not stolen.”
He opened the bag and spilled the con—
tents across the desk. There was gold of
three denominations and there was an in-
termixture of silver.
“Li Clung,” he said, “ has gone to his
friends. Li Clung has borrowed what they
would give. Li Clung makes a gift to the
marshal—a little present.”
The marshal, wi‘th wildly staring eyes,
gathered the money and poured it back in
the bag.
Li Clung held out his calloused hands.
“ Li Clung will work,” he said-—“ he will
be the slave of the Marshal Clauson,-if
this money is not enough.”
“You damn fool,” said the marshal
hoarsely, “it’s gettin’ too near my price.
Take your fool money away!”
“Li Clung,” said the unmoved China-
man, “ is a poor man, but he will bring
much money. He will sell his house. He
has silks and pictures. He will sell them
and bring the money to the marshal. He
will eat stale bread and drink only water
and bring to the marshal all that he makes.
Every month he will bring money—a little -
money. A present to the marshal from
Li Clung. Li Clung will bow to his gods,
who are very strong, every day. He will
beg them to bring a long life to the mar-
shal and much happiness. They are strong
gods. They will bring children to the wife
of the marshal. They will fill his house
with peace and happiness and many voices
of his friends.”
“ My God!” whispered the marshal,
staring as if he saw a ghost.
He rubbed his knuckles across his eyes,
which were dim. ‘
“ Can a Chink be like this? Li Clung,
you hear me swear to God that if there was
a chance for your boy he’d get it, but he
ain’t got a chance. The law won’t give
him no look in. If it would, I’d see that
he got out, and it wouldn’t cost you no
money. But it can’t be done, Li. Your
son is a Chinaman; maybe he’s half white,
but his father’s a Chinaman, and the boys
want blood for the death of old Boyce. A
Chink can’t get away with a white man’s
death. You ought to know that.”
A pallor fell on the face of Li Clung;
-it was like a shower of ashes.
“Li Clung will tell the marshal a little
story,” he said, “ if he will be heard.”
“ Li,” said the marshal, “there’s some-
thing inside me that’s aching as if I had
“a son of my own—and as if you was white.
Sit down and talk, Li.” '
“ It is not a good story,” said Li, over-
looking the proffered chair. “Li Clung
has been a strong man and a bad man. Li
Clung was in Cripple Creek.”
“ The hell you were!”
“ And there was a man called John Pem-
berton.”
“ I knew John well. He was a hard one,
was old John.”
“ Li Clung had a young wife, and Li
Clung had two little sons. Li Clung loved
them all. Sometimes it seemed to Li that
his heart would break, there was so much
dove in it for his wife and for his two sons.
He had room for them all, but it swelled
the heart of Li Clung. And every morn-
ing and every evening LilClung bowed be-
fore his gods and made himself humble for
fear his gods should be jealous, Li Clung
was so happy.
“ But the gods of Li Clung are fierce
gods and strong gods. They grew angry
with him. They took all his happiness—
See! they took it as suddenly as Li Clung
takes the stalk of this flower and bends it
and breaks it—there are three flowers gone
3 A-S


178
ALL- STORY WEEKLY.
because that stalk is broken. So it was
with the gods of Li Clung. '
“ They sent John Pemberton to the
house of Li for money, for John Pemberton
needed gold. He came to find money, and
he came very drunk. He found no money,
but he found my wife and my sons. She
made crying out, being a woman. He
struck her in the face, and she fell and
struck her head against a stone, and died
so—being a woman. And the two sons,
when they saw their mother die, they made
much noise, screaming together, so that
John Pemberton, he feared that they would
bring many men upon him, so he took them
by the heels—”
“ God!” whispered the marshal.
“Li Clung came home that night and
his heart was singing with happiness. He
found his two little buds dead, and he
found his flower faded and dying. But
there was a small voice left in her no bigger
than the humming of a fly, 'and with that
voice she told- Li Clung how all that had
filled his heart had been poured out again
and thrown away like water on the sand.
Then Li Clung buried his dead.
“He waited. John Pemberton took a
woman to his house. The woman bore
him a son and died. Then Li Clung was
ready. He went in the middle of the night
and tied the mouth of John Pemberton
with cloths so that he could not cry out.”
“ But Pemberton was a big, strong man,
Li.”
“Li Clung was not weak,” said the Chi-
naman. “He tied the mouth of John
Pemberton so that he could not cry out,
and then he made him know by signs that
Li Clung would take his son and go away.
'And Li Clung went away with the boy;
afterward John Pemberton died.”
“By God!” cried the marshal.
your boyris young Pemberton!”
“ My boy is Clung,” said Li solemnly.
“I begin to see. Yet you’ve got a. yel-
low skin, Li. Well, my eyes are getting
.Wide open.”
“ Li Clung hated the little boy he had
stolen, but after a while he came to love
him. The hands of a baby are strong
hands.”
He made a gesture which the marshal did
“ Then
not see, for his face was buried in his
hands.
“Li Clung loved the boy and took him
into his heart, which was empty. He gave
him all things that he could give him.
Then he saw that Clung carried the blood
of a white father in him and that he was
a destroyer, and sometimes Li was glad,
because he did not wish well for white
people, and Clung would be like a plague
of locusts, consuming. But now the son
of Li Clung is about to die, and Li Clung
is very weary. He has no strength, and
he is sick about the heart. He has brought
gold to the marshal. Is it worth this life?"
“Li, if this yam would be believed—
we’d get off Clung. He’s only killed one
white man, and that was in self-defense,
more or less. But d’you think you could
convince the boys that Clung is all white?
Nope; they‘re out for blood. I’d take a
chance and let him go, but there’s another
appointment due for this job, and if I let
Clung go another man is pretty sure to get
my place, and—”
But Li Clung was already disappearing
through the doorway. >
Marshal Clauson sent his wife to the jail
with fresh flowers for Clung, and took a
long, hard ride through the country to.
shake off the thought of Clung. But when
he came back the same case attacked him
again.
This time it was in the person of the
girl whom he had seen in the room at the
time of Clung’s capture. She was all in
white, with a white hat, and a white plume
curling softly around the brim, and she
seemed to Marshal Clauson the most beau—
tiful woman he had ever seen, except Molly
Clauson on a certain night when she had
said—but that was long ago.

CHAPTER XII.
THE LONE TRAIL.
“ SUPPOSE,” said the marshal, after he
had seen her seated, “that you've
come about the Clung case? Want
to make sure that the Chink will get his?
Well, he will. There ain’t no reasonable
doubt about that.”


\CLUNG.
179
She winced deeper in the big chair, and
then raised her head in the way she had
caught from Clung. ‘
"I have come to find out if money will
be of any use to _him in securing a good
lawyer,” she said steadily.
“ That's the' way of it, eh?" queried the
marshal, and he shifted the lamp so that
the light fell more directly on her face.
“ Well, lady, I’ll tell you now that it would
be simply throwing away good coin.
There’s only one verdict a jury would
bring in a case like this, and an Arizona
jury, anyway. Josiah Bche wasn’t much
account, but then he wasn’t no harm to
anybody, neither. He’s dead, and there’s
a life owing somewhere to the law—a
Chink’s life at that.”
Every time he used the word, carelessly,
he noted that the girl winced. He went
on: “Boyce ain’t the only one. There
might be the ghost of a chance if he was.
There’s others. Clung has left a trail be-
hind hirn a mile long, and it’s thick with
dead greasers. He’s a nacheral born killer,
Miss Sampson, and that’s the shortest way
to the truth of the thing. He shoots too
straight not to kill.”
And- the girl, thinking back to the keen
picture of Clung, saw how he might be both
a lover of all things beautiful and also a
dealer of death. The marshal, watching,
saw the hardening of her face. He was
thinking many things.
She said, rising: “ There are a great many
twists in the law. Good counsel may save
him, and if it may, I want him to have the
chance.”
“ Ma’am,” said the marshal, “ there ain’t
many twists in Arizona law—not in a case
like this. You can lay to_ that. Maybe
I can ask why you’re so interested in this——
Chink?"
The blood stained her face at that.
She said with some dignity: “Why do
you keep forcing the word down my throat?
I know he’s a——Chinarnan, but he’s a rare
man, Marshal Clauson, no matter what his
nationality. If he took a white man’s life,
he also saved a white man’s life.”
“ Clung did?" _
“' The man who betrayed him to you,"
said the girl, whitening with scorn and an—
ger. “ He was sick, nearly dead. We had
given him up. Then Clung came and healed
him, sat by him day and night, would not
.leave him until the man was cured."
“ Hrm!” murmured the marshal, and his
hand moved automatically toward the butt
of his gun. “May I ask if this William
Kirk person is still at your house?”
“ No,” she said, “ he has gone North.”
“ Speaking personal,” said the marshal
slowly, “he’d better stay in his North.
He was a bit too far South for it to be
healthy. That kind don’t never prosper in
Arizona. Clung saved him, eh?”
“ If there’s a law of compensation,” said
the girl, “it ought to appear. A life for
a life; that’s what Clung gives.”
“ You’d throw in the greasers he finished
off, eh?” grinned the marshal. “And the
white men he didn’t kill, but just shot up
bad? Throw ’em in for good measure, eh?
Well, I don’t mind saying—but I got no“
_right to say anything. Miss Sampson, I’ll
have to be saying good evening to you. I
got a pile of things to do this night.”
“ And you’ll see that the very best coun-
sel is retained for him? Can we make you
our agent in that, Marshal Clauson? I
know you’ll keep the murdering cow-punch
ers away from him.”
“Lady,” said the marshal, rising with
her, “I’ve spread the news around among
the boys that if they tackle the jail to get
Clung, I’ll turn the Chink loose on ’em with
two guns. There ain’t no better way of
keeping Mortimer quiet. They’ve all seen
him in action and it makes a pile of ’em
sick to remember. Good night.”
She went, with bowed head; but the mo-
ment she had gone the marshal set to work,
cheerily, whistling as he proceeded. First
he opened a door so cunningly set into the
wall that the cunningest eye of suspicion
would never have “detected it, and,he took
from it a small saw, a lever of diminutive
proportions, rope, and a stout knife. These
things he bestowed about his person, adding
to his load an extra cartridge-belt and two
long forty-fives. Thus be equipped he
started straight for the jail and went to the
cell of Clung.
The “Chink,” as usual, was slowly pac-
ing up and down inside the bars, utterly


180 'ALL-STORY.
WEEKLY.
oblivious of all that passed in the corridor.
He did not even turn when the door opened
and then clanged shut; but when he dis-
covered that it was Clauson his face soft-
ened to a smile of infinite gentleness.
“Flowers!” he said, and stretched out
the delicate hands.
“Flowers be damned!” murmured the
marshal cautiously. “ Something better
than that, lad. Freedom!” v
“ For me? If I go—what will come of
the marshal?”
i
“ Shut up! Before I was a marshal I
done my share of hell-raising. I know.
Also I know another thing. I’ve heard the
story of oleri Clung. You’re young Pem-
berton, all white—whiter than your dad
by a damn sight!”
“ No,” said the other, “I am Clung.
am not ashamed.”
“ Neither would I be. Old Li is a rare
one. And you’d never have a chance of
making the world believe that you’re not a
half-breed. Let it go. Arizona ain’t the
only place. Hit out—let the wind take
you, south or north. And here’s a word
in your ear. If you go North, on the right
trail, you’ll find a girl that hasn’t forgotten
you. I think she might believe you. Any-
way, she’d try like hell to believe you.”
“And her friends?” answered Clung.
“ That’s the stickler. Rumor would fol-
low you; you’d still be the Chink to most
of the world.”
“I am Clung. I shall not change the
name. It is my pride. I will be what
I am. It is the better way.”
“The girl, Clung?”
In another man the change of expression
would have been almost negligible, but
knowing Clung, the marshal moved a pace
back, wondering.
“ She knew me for what I am,” said
Clung, stiffening, “ and when she heard that
I was ‘Clung the Chink,’ you saw her as
she passed me in the room. The pain of it
is still with me. If I had been ‘ all white ’
the pain was so great when she turned from
me that I should have groaned and fallen
on my knees and wept and begged her to
come back to me. But I made no sound.
I am Clung.”
“But think of her pride of race, Clung.
I
The world would have disowned her if she’d
stayed by you.”
“She knew me before. Only the mo-
ment before she was laughing at me over an
armful of flowers—she who is like a flower
of white—all white. And she changed.
When she heard my name she drifted fur-
ther away from me than a thousand years.”
I “ Clung, she came to-night and wanted
to know what her money could do in the
hiring of a lawyer for you. And the other
man—he has gone North. She hates him.
I think in a way, Clung, that I wouldn’t
have come here to-night if I hadn’t seen
her. She loves you, lad; she almost loves
you even while she thinks you’re a China-
man. Think of it!”
That smile which the marshal knew, that
stem curling of the upper lips, changed the
face of the other.
He said: “ If she came to me crawling
on her knees in the dust it would not change
me. She could not repay the pain of that
time when she first turned from me. Such
a pain, sir, would burn her away to light
ashes and dust—kill her like flame. She
cannot repay me. I do not ask repayment.
It was my pleasure; it is my pain. I am
Clung.”
“You go South?”
“ First I go to see my father; then I ride
South. And some day the time will come
when you shall need me. I will come. You
will not need to hunt far or call long. I
shall come. Time will not change me; dis
tance will not make me forget. I am
Clung.”
“ Clung, and a devil of pride,” said the
marshal. “ The lone trail is a long trail,
but good luck go with you. Your killings
are not ended, and you’ll die hard yourself.
But—there’s the saw. Oil, too. You can
cut through those western bars in a jiffy.
Once started—well, here’s two guns. I
know you’ll get loose. Don’t shoot unless
you have to. That’s all I ask; and then
don’t shoot to kill.”
As he closed the door behind him, he
raised his lantern and looked back; Clung
stood with folded arms, his , head tilting
bgck, his eyes half closed, faintly smiling.
The marshal went back to his house and
sat in his room waiting. An hour, two


CLUNG.
181
F
hours, three hours passed. Then he heard
three shots fired in quick succession. He
ran to the window and threw it wide; the
echo of the sounds still trembled through
the air.
“The South trail sure enough,” said the
marshal.
CHAPTER XIII.
I YO CHAT.
UT if the‘escape of Clung was due to
the kindliness of Marshal Clauson cer-
tainly there was not a living soul in
Mortimer or in any of the marshal’s wide
district'th faintly dreamed the truth.
The marshal was more widely famed for
a hard fist and a nervous gun than for a
gentle heart, and the reward which his one
act of unadulterated goodness brought him
was a general suspicion of growing ineffi-
ciency. People could not but remember the
length of time which Clung ranged the
desert, how he was at length brought 	o
bay by force of chance and numbers; and
now the desperado was set free to prey upon
society through the carelessness of Morti-
mer’s marshal. It was enough to irritate
a much quieter town than Mortimer; the
knowledge of it floated up to the higher
circles of authority and brought a cold,
brief telegram to Clauson.
He defied the higher authorities with a
snarl, for he knew that he was too valuable
to be dispensed with; but what spurred
him every day were the side-glances_of
careless contempt with which the cow-
punchers and miners of the town favored
him. Within a week Marshal Clauson hated
the entire population of the Orient, par-
ticularly the Chinese, andamqng the Chi-
nese be selected Clung himself for peculiar
anathema. With all his heart he regretted
the escape of the outlaw. That Clung was
really white made no difference to the
marshal—he could not separate his“ preju-
dice into fact and theory.
First he scoured the countryside and
combed the heart of the desert for Clung;
then he sen'bdeputies far and wide in a vain
effort to reclaim the fugitive from justice;
but Clung had vanished from the face of the
earth and not even a rumor of him floated
back to the ear of Mortimer. Yen-still
the town waited, sleeping with one eye open,
it might be said; and strong in the con-
sciousness that such men as Clung, whether
white or yellow, return eventually to their
earliest hunting-grounds and bring a not
inconsiderable portion of hell with them.
They had seen Clung in action, and the
picture would not fade readily from their
minds. In the mean time they cast a glance
of angry suspicion upon Marshal Clauson
and were fain to remark in his hearing that
all men are apt to grow old.
Which explains the mood of Clauson him-
self when on a certain day his deputy en-
tered from the outer office, leaned against
the door and said: “ They’s a Chink out-
side wants to talk t’ you, Clauson.”
The marshal looked up with a start.
“ A Chink?” he growled suspiciously.
“ See me? T’ hell with him. Tell him I'm
busy.”
“I already done it,” said the deputy.
“Tell him I’m sick.”
“ I already done it,” said the deputy.
“ Tell him I’m out of town.”
“ I already done it,” said the deputy.
The marshal narrowed his eyes _wistfully.
“Partner,” he drawled with dangerous
calm, “you ain’t kidding me a little, are
you?”
“ I’ll tell a‘man I ain’t,” said the deputy
hastily. “ ’S a matter of fact, Clauson, I
told the fool Chink he’d be takin’ his life
in his hands if he come in talkin’ to you
jest now, but all he does is stand there with
his hands shoved up in his sleeves and bat
his eyes at me and say: ‘ All same Yo Chai
see Marsh’ Clauson.’ I never see such a
fool!” ~
“ H-m!” said the marshal. “ Yo Chai?
Don’t remember the name. What sort of a
looking Chink is he?”
“ Kind of tall,” said the deputy, “for a
Chink; skinny; round-shouldered; wrinkled
old yaller face; long pig-tail; got a mus-
tache that—looks like a shadow of yours,
marshal—just a few stragglin’, long hairs
on each side of his mouth.”
“Tell the old ape to beat it,” grunted
the marshal, “I had enough of Chinks.
Wait a minute. How’s be dressed?”


182
WEEKLY.
ALL - STORY
“ Like a swell. All silk-padded stuff like
a quilt, y’ know. Red hat with a tassel;
fancy Chink shoes.”
“ Well,” sighed the marshal, “ let him in.
I s’pose somebody’s been swipin’,his dope
and he wants help.”
The deputy nodded and disappeared.
His place at the door was taken almost at
once by Yo Chai, a slender, rather bowed
figure, carrrying about him that air of dis-
tinction which goes with any gentleman no
matter what the color of his skin.
But the marshal was in no mood to ap-
preciate fineness in a Chinaman.
“I’m busy,” he greeted his visitor.
“ Start talkin’ and- finish quick.”
A soft voice answered: “ Yo Chai wait
till Marsh’ Clauson got plenty time,” and
he turned back to the door.
But the marshal, at the sound of that
voice, leaped from his chair and shouted:
“Wait!”
Yo Chai turned, and at the sight of him
Clauson lapsed back into his chair, staring
in manifest bewilderment. The Chinaman
bore this scrutiny without changing a mus-
cle of his face.
“ Close the door,” said the marshal
hoarsely at last, “and sit down.”
Yo Chai obeyed, and as he sat down,
murmured: “ Ta hsi "—great happiness.
Marshal Clauson let out a great breath
which blew forth his mustaches, and the
light of battle died from his little eyes.
“ I was thinkin’ for a minute,” he sighed,
“ that you was—well, it don’t make no
difference.”
“The eyes of Y0 Chai are old,” said
the Chinaman, “ but he sees clearly.”
Again, at the sound of that voice, the
marshal started, leaned forward with a
scowl, and then settled back into his chair.
“ Go on,” he said. “ What d‘ you think
you seen?”
“ Marsh’ Clauson thought Yo Chai much
like Clung. Speak same.”
“Ah,” said the marshal with renewed
eagerness, “ you know Clung?”
“Little bit,” said Yo Chai.
“ If you can lead me to him,” said Clau-
son, “ I’ll—I’ll be your friend, Yo Chai——
and a marshal’s the sort of a friend that a
Chink needs in Mortimer, eh?”
I
“ Marsh’ Clauson want Clung?”
“ Do I? I’ll tell a man I do!”
H Why?"
“ Because he’s a devil, Yo Chai."
“ T’ao ch’i?” nodded Yo Chai, which
means “ mischievous,” “young devil,” and
several other things.
“ Yep,” said the marshal, who had a
smattering of Chinese, “t’ao ch’i” and a
lot of other stuff. He’d got me in wrong
with the boys. Life’s just one long misery
to me ever since Clung got away. Yo Chai,
can you lead me to him?”
(I Yes."
“God!” cried the marshal, and leaped
from his chair with a shout of joy. “ Yo
Chai, you ain’t lyin’ to me? Give me one
crack at him and I’m your man. You’re
talkin’ straight to me, Yo?”
“ Shang Ti,” said the Chinaman sadly,
“ hears me.”
“ And how much d’you want for actin’ as
a guide?”
_“ Nothing.”
“ Nothing?”
“ It is not worth money. It is a little thing
to lead Marsh’ Clauson to Clung. Also,
Clung once belong Marsh’ Clauson.”
“I had him once, so you don’t want
anything for bringin’ me back my lost prop
erty, eh? Yo Chai, I see you’re a good sort.
Where is he, Y0?”
The Chinaman withdrew from the sleeve
of his silken ma kua, or horse-coat, a slen-
der, dark-yellow hand and pointed to his
breast.
“ Clung is here.”
The marshal merely stared.
“I,” said Yo Chai calmly, “ am Clung.”
“ You?” gasped Clauson. “ But Clung—
your skin—”
He broke down, stammering.
“With soap and water,” said the other
quietly, “ I can make my skin white again.”
“And you come back,” roared Clauson,
“ to show me how clever you are, eh? You
come back' thinkin’ you can slip out of my
hands again? Clung, no man can’t do it!”
“ Clung knew,” said the other gravely,
slipping at once into perfect and fluent
English, “ that Marshal Clauson hated
Clung. So he has come to give himself
back. Marshal Clauson gave him a gift not


184
ALL - STORY WEEKLY.
the slender man, “and there came a time
when he learned that he was white. not
yellow—white like his skin all the way
through. He was very glad. He went
.among white men and they were brothers
to him. They were very ugly in many
ways, but they were his brothers. He loved
them. But one of them stung him in the
palm of his hand like a snake that he had
warmed by his fire' in winter, and others
hunted him like a coyote up and down the
hills, and there was a woman—”
He stopped short and his breast heaved
once.
“Oh!” said Marshal Clauson. “I be-
gin to follow you for the first time, Clung.
Well, if it’s the woman that rides your
mind, Clung, you can be easy. She come
in to me before you went free and asked
what she could do for you. She was will-
ing to do all you could ask a girl to do for
a Chink, and if she knew you was white—
well—”
He finished with a suggestive smile, but
the face of Clung hardened. He was pick-
ing up his guns and his knife again from
the table and replacing them under his
coat, and the way he handled them was
not pleasant to seeT—the knife went home
with a little jar that made the marshal start.
“Does the color of the skin,” he said,
his voice evil and low, “ change the color of
a man’s heart? If she knew me to be
white would that change me? No, the
white man sees only what his mind tells
him to see. He follows stupid and ugly
gods. Clung is dead, and Y0 Chai remains.
He has gone back to the gods of his fathers,
to Shang Ti and others. He is happy with
them.”
The marshal moistened his lips and then
went on with less assurance: “ D’you mean
to tell me, Clung, that you’d rather be a
Chink than a white man—one of the salt
of the earth?”
“ Is a white man more honest?” asked
Clung, with an uncanny brightening of his
eyes. “ Is he cleaner at heart? Does he
talk less and more wisely? Does he know
better what is beautiful and good? No!
He chatters like a coyote over a dead beef —-
all noise and no meaning. He licks the
hand that feeds him and then he bites it
to the bone. He sees_what his friends see,
but nothing for himself. He loves a horse
because he pays a great price for it; he
loves a woman because her body is beauti-
ful. But the horse may stumble before it
wins a race and the skin of a woman may
be cheap under rich clothes.”
The marshal stepped back, a little
abashed, and his eyes wandered while he
hunted for another argument with which
to meet this tide of words, but the other
swept on: “ Who was Clung? K’e pu chill
tao t’a shih shui! (I do not know what he
was). He was half white and half yellow.
To be all white is not good. I have seen
and I know. So I have killed Clung. Now
there is only Yo Chai. He is all yellow.
He will sleep on a kang,' he will pray to
the gods of his fathers; he will eat yang
jou tsuan wan tau, and yang jou ssu, chu
[>0 )0 and {>00 ping. Behind his clz’ien men
—front gate—he will sit cross-legged on a
mat of reeds and smoke—pah! Clung‘
hated the smell of tobacco-smoke! But
now he will be all Chinese~all yellow. To
be white is to be a fool; Clung was a fool!”
“ Clung,” said the marshal, scowling,
‘f some of what you say sounds kind of rea-
sonable, and some of it I don’t follow, and
some of it is Chink chatter that no white
man wants to know, but I sort of gather
from your drift that what you said toward
the end was enough to make me fight, eh?”
“Ah!” said the other, and his voice and
manner softened instantly from harshness
to a gentle dignity that came from the heart.
“Marshal Clauson is my father and I am
ta shih ju—your big servant. Y0 Chai must
go."
“ And this is the end of Clung?” said the
marshal, half sadly. “Well, lad, you done
your bit while you was hanging around
these parts—nobody ever done more. But
if you go up to Kirby Creek you’re going
straight to trouble, Clung. Around Morti-
mer, maybe, you could get by with your dis-
guise, even in front of people that knowed
you, but up in Kirby Creek it won’t be the
same. I know what I‘m talking about.
They’ve got a tough lot up there. There’s
Dave Spenser that some calls the Night
Hawk. A prime bad ’un he is, Clung, and
no mistake. But he ain’t all that’s there.


CLUNG.
185
“ Ibeen to Kirby Creek and I tell you
straight from the shoulder that it’s fuller
of fights in the night than a big city. Every
other shack is a saloon and dance-hall, and
the ones in between is gambling joints.
And the men that go to a gold rush is chiefly
crooks and fellers that ain’t made a go of
it other places. They got nothing and
they’re ready to risk their hides for a dol-
lar. Don’t go to Kirby Creek, Clung.”
“ Yo Chai,” said the other, with a swift
glint of his dark eyes, “is not a dog. He
will not run because men bark at him. If
they bite, he has teeth.”
And to prove it, his slow smile bared
a row of white, perfect teeth.
“ That’s just what I mean,” said the mar-
shal anxiously, “before you been there a
day you’ll get in a fight, and when you get
in a fight the devil ’11 turn loose in you—
and no man that’s ever seen you pull your
guns once can ever make a mistake in you
if he sees you work a second time. Clung,
I know!”
“What does it matter?” said Clung sol-
emnly. “I will not be a white man, and I
cannot be all yellow even if I wish. There
is only one thing left to Yo Chai, and that
is to die. And if he dies, he hopes it will'
be with steel in his hand. So!”
And speaking, his head tilted back in that
familiar way, and his eyes half closed, and
his smile dreamed on the far distance—as
if he once more sat on the table in his
father’s laundry and exulted in the yellow,
hot sunlight against his face.
“ I go,” he said, and, thrusting his hands
back into the alternate sleeves, he bowed
until the black tassel of his red cap almost
brushed against the floor, “I go, Marsh’
Clauson. Once more: Clz’u men chien hsi!”
And with bent shoulders and jogging pig-
tail, he strode through the door at a pace
of grave and sober-footed dignity.

CHAPTER XV.
stsn TORTURE.
O at least one person in Mortimer the
passing of Clung from the town that
day would have been a great joy had
he but known of it. That person was John
Sampson. For a fortnight he had trailed
Winifred about the town while she strove
vainly to discover clues of Clung. As a
rule, she hunted alone, escaping from him
with any pretext, for when he was with her
he would ejaculate at every other step:
“ All this for a damned Chink!”
“ For a human being! ” she would respond
angrily. '
“Half human, maybe,” John Sampson
would answer.
“ You mean because he’s half white? As
a matter of fact, dad, it isn’t the white in
him that interests me, but the yellow blood.
He’s the most unusual mind I’ve ever met.”
“ Now, to be frank, Winifred, the whole
point is that you want another person to
take care of, just as you’ve been taking
care of poor Billy Kirk. As soon as Bill
was well you sent him away and don’t care
. if you ever lay eyes on him again. It ’11
be the same with this Clung—if you ever
find him, which you won’t.”
“ Won’t I?” she would respond with that
little touch of mystery upon which a woman
always falls back when she is thoroughly
baffled. “ I have some tricks left with
which I’ll catch him.”
“ But no trick as good as the oned have
for scaring him away.”
“Would you do that?”
“ For heaven’s sake, my dear, are we to
throw away our lives simply because Billy
Kirk called down the law on the head of
an outlaw?”
“On the head of a man who saved his
life,” she would answer bitterly, and this,
as a rule, ended the argument for the time
being, until John Sampson recovered his
wind and his bad temper. For he was a
little plump man with short legs, and men
of this build are not meant to withstand the
heat of the Southwest. They grow wet
and their clothes stick to them if they so
much as rise and walk across a room, and
the only sound which pleases them is the
crooning of an electric fan.
So John Sampson, as a rule, persisted in
following Winifred through the morning.
but when the afternoon came his will-power
became a less vital factor than his irrita-
tion, and he retired in dudgeon to his room.
However, this routine could not go on


186
ALL- STORY WEEKLY.
forever. It was manifestly impossible that
he should fry himself on the griddle of
benevolence in the Southwest until dooms-
day. He decided to put an end to this
tiresome quest; he would unearth a thor-
ough-history of the wild exploits of Clung,
some of which he had already heard, and
armed with this tale he would go to Wini-
fred and relate it to her with some embel-
lishments of his own. If this tale of vio~
lence did not revolt her, nothing would.
To do him justice, John Sampson was a
thoroughly kindly man, and if he showed
malevolence on this occasion, the shortness
of his wind and of his legs must be re-
membered, and the tireless insistence of a
woman bent on doing a good deed. A chari-
table woman, undoubtedly, is an angel to
the evildoers, but she is designed by God to
try the patience of respectable men who
possess a surplus of everything except time.
Their smiling insistence of purpose is like
the Spanish torture, water dropping stead-
ily on the head—it drives men mad.
It was something of this madness which
wssessed John Sampson on this day. He
had trudged from one dusty end of Morti~
mer to the other pursued by a haunting
mirage—a cool room in his club—far, far to
the north. Having made up his mind to un-
earth the whole gruesome story of the kill-
ing of the outlaw, he decided to start at the
beginning and wheedle something from the
mouth of Li Clung, the reputed father of
the man-killer. And he went, accordingly,
as fast as his pudgy legs would carry him,
straight to the laundry of Li Clung.
Now, the smell of a laundry in any land
and in any city and clime is not that of a
garden, and the odor of a Chinese laundry
on a hot day in the Southwest, with the
scent of sweaty laborers and the sharp taint
of desert sand all mingling, is pungent, in-
deed, but not poetic. John Sampson stood
at the door and stared down the row of
bobbing heads that wagged steadily from
side to side above the ironing-boards.
“ Haloo!” called John Sampson, but not
a head stirred. While he waited he observed
a little table at his right hand, full in the
glare of the sun. Interesting things might
have been told him about that table, and
at least one story that would have made
the face of Winifred Sampson turn pale.
Presently a little Chinaman in white, loose
trousers and a black cotton coat, the for-
ward part of his head completely shaven,
hobbled from the back of the room. He
had the gait of most of the Chinese we
see in this country, walking as if he carried
a great burden.
“ Li Clung?” asked John Sampson.
“ Li Clung,” nodded the Chinaman, and
removed the long stem of his pipe from his
mouth. John Sampson saw a death’s head
of leanness, the skin pulled so tightly across
the forehead that it shone, and the cheeks
sucked into little holes at the center. A
sparse growth of black hairs covered the
upper lip and the removal of the pipe re-
vealed several isolated, very yellow teeth.
A head of ghastly ugliness, save that the
slant eyes, weary and patient past belief,
redeemed the hideous mask in which they
were set. The head was supported by a
marvelously lean neck, on which the skin
hung in witheredv folds; and the skin both
of the neck and the face was everywhere
crisscrossed by myriad tiny wrinkles, like
innumerable little incisions Yet there was
about this old, tottering wreck of a China-
man the suggestion of strength and further
capacity for labor that moved a sense of
dim respect in John Sampson. He began
to see that it was possible for this old
grotesque to be the father of slender, hand-
some Clung, the killer of men. Granting,
of course, due predominance to the blood of
the white mother. But asuredly he must
bring Winifred on the morrow to see this
spectre of the Orient.
The thought of this meeting made it pos-
sible for him to smile almost with kindness
upon Li Clung.
He said: “You have a son?”
Instantly the countenance of the China-
man, lightened, and his hand made a little
movement almost as if he were about to
reach out and touch the white man. The
expression changed almost at once, how-
ever, to one of suspicious grief, and the
wrinkles grew sharply into the forehead,
arching high toward the center.
“ I have a son,” he answered simply, and
his moist old eyes fastened earnestly on
John Sampson.


. r“
i“
I
I ._.
CLUNG.
"' And he is in trouble,” went on the
financier easily. “ Of course we all know
about that. Now, Li Clung, I am a friend
of a man whose life Clung saved. Under-
stand?”
He raised his forefinger to emphasize and
point his question, careful lest his vocabu-
lary should be too large for the brain of Li
Clung, but the Chinaman returned at once:
“It is true! Clung saved many men; he
saved even more men than he killed."
John Sampson could not refrain from a
little frown of irritation. It was not an
auspicious beginning. .
“ I don’t doubt it,” he went on. “ I saw
him save the life of my friend Kirk, and I’m
grateful to him for it. I want to do some-
thing to show that gratitude, understand
me?
“Of course, I can’t do anything for him
down here where the law is hunting him,
but if I could send word to him to go North
and meet me somewhere, there is a good
deal that I might do. Can you tell me
where he is, Li Clung?”
It was only the shadow of a smile that
touched the lips of Li Clung, but John
Sampson knew at once that the old man
would rather die a thousand times than
give the location of his son.
“ How should I know?” asked Li Clung,
and he raised his calloused hands, palm out.
“My son has gone. Can I follow the
wind?”
John Sampson smiled and there was a
great deal of kindness in his smile. He
could not help admiring the old man’s faith-
fulness and liking him for it.
ness is the one human light which all men
recognize independent of race and color
and breeding; this time it shone from the
face of John Sampson and reflected dimly
on the face of Li Clung.
“ You are a good man, maybe,” said the
Chinaman dubiously, “ Li Clung knows in
your house Clung was taken.”
“But you also know it was not my
fault.” '
“ That is true,” admitted Li Clung.
“Now, Li, I’m going to be straightfor-
ward with you. If I can get hold of Clung
I can do a great deal for him. You want
your son to be a wise man, don’t you?
Now, kind- '
‘187
Well, I can see that he goes to the finest
schools; I can see that he has clothes as
good as any white man; in a word, I can
set him up in life.”
His first note was the key that unlocked
the heart of Li Clung; for in China, old
and new, the one thing most highly prized
is education. It is mixed withtheir religion.
Every Chinaman has some of it—not what
Occidentals call education, perhaps, but at
least some mental training. Now Li Clung
laid his pipe by on the table and drew a
little closer to John Sampson.
“Li Clung,” he repeated, “thinks you
are a good man, and perhaps he can tell
you___!) '
“ But first,” said John Sampson, for the
last thing he wished to know at that mo-
ment was the exact location of the out-
law, “ first I must ask you some other
questions.”
“ Come,” said Li Clung readily enough,
and led the way back to his own little rooms
behind the laundry.

CHAPTER XVI.
ROBIN ADAIR.
“ N the first place,” went on John Samp-
son when they were settled in privacy,
“ I want to know something abont the
—-er—parentage of Clung. You see, it isn’t
always easy to place a boy of—er—foreign
birth in the best schools—”
But Li Clung broke in with a smile and
a wave of his hand.
“That is a small trouble,” he said, and
smiled so that all his yellow fangs showed,
and the wrinkled gums above them.
“ Clung is the son of a white mother—”
“ Yes,” nodded-Sampson, “ his skin shows
that much.”
“ And a white father," added Li Clung.
“A what?” roared John Sampson, and
bolted out of his chair.
“He is not of my blood,” said the old
Chinaman sadly, “but he has lived in my
house and eaten my food and learned my
lessons.”
The white man stared at him, transfixed
with wonder and a touch of horror. For
his daughter Winifred had seemed strangely


188
ALL - STORY WEEKLY.
interested in the outlaw, and had persisted
even when she thought him to be only
a half-breed Chinaman. If she learned that
he- was all white John Sampson shuddered
for the results. There flashed across his
mind a picture of his fortune descending
through his daughter to the hands of an un-
lettered whelp of the desert, a man hunted
by the law.
“ It's a lie!” he groaned.
“Li Clung,” frowned the Chinaman,
drawing up to the full of his withered
height, “ does not lie.”
And the white man knew it was truth;
his own anguish of spirit confirmed it, and
something he remembered having seen in
the eyes of Clung on that day when Clau-
son had made the arrest and when Winifred
had passed Clung without a word of adieu.
Then a grim resolve came to him to save
his girl from the possible horror of the fu-
ture through the hand of the law. He
shrank from it, but he had done harder
things than this in his day, and for lesser
reasons.
“ Where is Clung?” he asked at length.
Li Clung observed him with steady
eyes. '
“ Swear to Li Clung,” he said, “ that John
Sampson means only good to Clung, that he
means to give him schooling and make him
a man among men.”
The other set‘his teeth and swallowed
before he could reply: “ I swear."
But Li Clung hobbled at his burden-
bearer’s gait to a corner of the room and
took down an old and dusty book from the
shelf. -
“ The yellow man has his gods and the
white man has other gods,” said Li Clung,
and, returning, he placed an open Bible
before John Sampson. “ Swear again on
this book that you mean Only good to
Clung.”
John Sampson laid his hand on the crink-
ling page of the open book and scowled
at the Chinaman. The word came up in
his throat, up to his very teeth; and there
it stuck. His tongue was so dry that he
could not have spoken if he wished, and it
seemed as if the heat which dried his
tongue r0se from the book he touched and
ran along his arm and up to his heart.
“It is a little thing to do,‘1 urged Li
Clung gently. “ Swear on the book of the
white God. My son is hunted; I must
know if you are one of the hunters.”
But John Sampson suddenly raised the
book and hurled it across the room. It
crashed against the wall and dropped to
the floor again with a rush and rattle of
the leaves; then he turned on his heel and
strode heavily and quickly from the room
and out past the swaying line of ironers onto
the white-hot street.
Suppose a man buys a lead-mine and
finds that it produces gold; and suppose
this gold threatens, like the touch of ideas,
to divide the purchaser from all that he
holds dear in the world. From these sup-
positions one might strike fairly close to the
heart of John Sampson’s mood. He loved
his daughter as a vigorous, worldly man can
love an only child; he loved her energy-—
so like his ownWher beauty, her frankness;
her charm and grace of spirit which il—
lumined her in his eyes. Her charity,
doubtless, went hand in hand with her other
virtues, but it was the quality which he ad-
mired least and the force which now threat-
ened to debase her to the level of an un-
lettered man~killer.
For the same instinct which enabled him
to read the purposes of speculators in the
stock-market gave him insight into the im-
pulses of the girl. She followed the trail
of Clung partly because he had received
bad for good in a single instance, but most-
ly because of the very fact that he was an
outlaw, hopeless, beleagured by the hostility
of thousands. To her he held the charm
of a Lost Cause; to her he was what ‘a
young Pretender was to a Jacobite; some-
thing to be saved and therefore.something
to be cherished. Only the imagined taint
of his blood had kept her from regarding
him as a young girl might regard a desirable
man; now this single barrier was removed
and John Sampson sweated with fear as he
guessed at consequences. He went straight
back to the little house they had rented,
to rest and to think; he had a grave need
of thdught and planning.
But as he set foot on the lowest of the
steps leading to the front porch there rose
from the depths of the house a voice of


CLUNG.
189
thrilling sweetness; to John Sampson it was
like the bugle call which announces the
charge of the enemy’s horse. He drew in
a great breath and puffed it out noisily, as
a diver snorts when he comes up for air;
and the singing of Winifred rose and rang
in the slow cadence of the old song:
“ What made‘the ball so fine?
Robin Adair.
‘What made the assembly shine?
Robin Adair.”
The favorite song of Winifred, and he
knew that she only sang it when her heart
was at rest; he leaped up the steps with
the agility of a youth and stamped into the
house. At the banging of the front door
she came to meet him, still singing; but she
broke off in the middle of a note and run-
ning to him, eagerly caught both his hands
in hers.
“ Dad!” she cried gaily. “ Can you guess
the good news?” .
His heart stood still; perhaps from some
other source she had learned the true identi-
ty of Clung.
“ Clung?” he managed to articulate in
spite of his dry throat.
“Yes, yes—of course. And I’ve found
him! ”
H l!
“ Why, dad, you look sick!”
“ The damned heat,” he muttered in
impatience. “ Enough to kill a horse.
Where’s Clung?”
“In Kirby Creek. We start for it to-
morrow.”
He ejaculated: “ We start?
Creek?”
“ We do.”
“Winifred, d’you know that’s the hard-
est, roughest mining-camp in the South-
west? D’you know that that's the haunt
of Dave Spenser and a hundred other scoun-
drels who’d as soon kill you as ask you for
a match? What fool suggested that you go
to Kirby Creek?”
She sighed, and then fixed her eyes grave-
ly on him like one prepared for a long
debate.
“ No one has suggested it; but it was
For Kirby
Marshal Clauson who told me that Clung
might be in Kirby Creek.”
“Might?” cried John Sampson, seizing
on the straw.
But it would not bear his weight.
“ The marshal is almost sure that Clung
is there, but he made me promise not to
spread the news about. There’s something
quite mysterious about it, dad. You see, he
would say nothing to me about Clung and
seemed furious when I mentioned the name
of Clung. In fact, he called him a blahkety-
blank Chink.”
“ Quite right,” growled John Sampson.
“But,” went on the girl, “when I con-
vinced him that I meant nothing but good
by Clung and told him my reasons he
seemed a bit shaken and listened to me
pretty closely. At last he told me, in his
gruff way, that if I was really anxious to
find Clung the best way would be to go to
the worst bit of hell in the Southwest—
Kirby Creek. I asked him how he knew
that Clung was there. He answered, of
course, that he knew nothing, and that if
he were sure he’d go to the Creek and take
Clung in the name of the law. Then I
wanted to know why he gave me the hint,
but he only winked and then refused to
say another word. It was very queer, but
I’m sure that he had some grounds for
giving me the advice and I’m also sure that
he doesn’t wish any real harm to befall
Clung. Isn’t this enough reason why we
should go to Kirby Creek at once and at
least make the trial to find out if Clung is
there?”
John Sampson frowned, thinking hard.
He said at last: “Give me until next
Monday before we start. In the mean time
we’ll hunt for more clues in Mortimer.”
“ But if we don’t find ’em you will go,
dad?” -
He looked at her in whimsical despair.
“ Don’t I understand perfectly, my dear,"
he answered, “ that if I didn’t go with you,
you’d go alone?”
“ Poor dad!” she smiled.
“Poor Winifred!” he responded. and his
seriousness silenced her and set her think~
mg.
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK. Don’t forget this magazine is issued weekly, and
that you will get the continuation of this story without waiting _a month.




ajmond Lester
Vl—THE BETTER WAY
“ UT couldn’t one of your clever
_ agents steal the paper for me?”
, Mr. Paddington, chief of the Pad-
dingtor'r & Paxton Detective Agency, stared
across his desk. In his long experience, he
had met uncounted scores of strange clients,
listened to a host of peculiar tales, and been
given many unique commissions. Never
before, though, had he been asked to con-
nive at a robbery.
Not knowing whether to laugh or be
angry, he took off his glasses and polished
them vigorously. Meanwhile, he peered
short-sightedly at the thickly veiled lady
who had so calmly suggested that he lend
his aid to the committal of an illegal act.
“I will gladly pay you, any sum you
care to mention,” continued his client.
Mr. Paddington jabbed his glasses back
on his nose and glared angrily.
“I don’t care to mention any price for
so preposterous a suggestion,” he snapped.
“ Really, Mrs. Wilmot, you must have over-
looked the important circumstance that this
is a reputable detective agency, not a syn-
dicate of burglars.”
“ Oh! I am so sorry, I did not mean to
give offense—I thought that a detective
could do anything. That wretch, Carr,
holds me in his power. He has no moral
right to keep that paper.”
“ He certainly has not," agreed Mr. Pad-
dington, “' but as he has made no threat or
I9° L
attempted to blackmail you, our hands are
tied. Until he makes some move, we cannot
even attempt to trap him.”
“ But I am sure he will, or he would have
given it up. Next week, next month, or it
may not be for years, he will bring disgrace
and ruin upon me. Or worse still, he may
have calculated upon the possibility of my
death and is counting on victimizing and
blighting the existence of my daughter.
“ The suspense is terrible—killing. I am
helpless. Surely you can think of some
way to help. Can’t you do anything?”
Mrs. Wilmot’s hand groped in her bag.
There was a flash of white, and a muffled
sob came from behind the heavy, black veil.
The detective wrinkled his brows and
fidgeted with the papers on his desk. In
Martin Paddington, the milk of human
kindness had not been desiccated by the
friction of a calling where cold appraisal of
facts is more useful than a soft heart.
“ Ought to send her away,” he reflected.
“ Can’t be done, though. She’s all wrought
up. Nervous and full of dread.
“Better hand her over to Nan. She’ll
let her down lightly, and soothe her into a
calmer frame of mind, and maybe the
woman will talk more freely. Nan has the
\knack. Confound her, I wish she’d stop
crying. H-ml”
‘ In signal that he was about to speak and
therefore all sounds of distress should



n"
- p.., r
THE GREATER
At last Scott, in perfect silence, moved
to the pedestal and took the cover from
the machine. The apparatus stood quite
as before, except that the carriage now
rested at the extreme left. The paper was
still in place. Scott pulled it out.
He held it to the light. Next instant
his fingers twitched, and his hands shook
as with the palsy. And in a voice we
scarcelyv recognized he read haltingly,
, jerkily:
\ .
“ ‘ The greater miracle is, not that your
mind—can survive your body; but that
your body—ever existed at all!’ ”
The paper fluttered from his grasp. He
swayed, and caught the table f0? support.
His lips moved convulsively.
“ God,” he whispered, as though 'in
dreadful pain. I “ God.” '
He stood there, swaying a little and look-
ing around uncertainly. For a moment his
eyes rested on the typewriter, as if to make
sure of its presence; then they wandered
aimlessly to the door of Carter’s room.
He stared, vacantly, at each of us in
U U
MIRACLE. 351
turn. Finally, his gaze shifted slowly back
to space; and then, all of a sudden, a
wonderful change came to his face. In a
flash it became hopeful, assured~joyous!
And his eyes lit up marvelously as another
word escaped his lips:
“ Lydia! "
He gave a quivering sigh and moved
away from the table. The spell was break-
ing." Avery, who had kept his composure
through it all, leaned forward; and with the
utmost gentleness he murmured:
“ Is there anything we can do for you,
old man?” ‘
The words had an electric effect. Scott
straightened; on the instant he became
alert, determined, and once more sure of
himself. He whipped out his watch.
“ Yes!" biting the words off as with a
knife. “ You may come with me and help
me to pack!"
“' To pack! "
“ To pack!” He snapped the watch
shut. “ I leave in one hour for the South,
to help fight the plague!”
U U
YELLOW BUTTERFLIES
BY‘ LlLLlAN P. WILSON
F we were yellow butterflies,
Without a tint of care,
And only lived from hour to hour,
To dance upon the air— _
To flit with glee, from flower to flower,
Just drifting, with hearts-ease.
With nothing sterner on life‘s way,
Than wings upon the breeze»—
To tip and dart, with 'new delights,
Off with a sunbeam roam,
And then joy-tired, spread languid wings
Upon a soft wind home—
If we were yellow butterflies,
With no love tears to rue,
Would you as wholly dear, be mine,
Tell me, beloved—would you?


» fiyélfi
Author of " The Untamed.“ " Children of the Night.” “ Trailil‘,” etc.
PRECEDING CHAPTERS BRIEFLY RETOLD
HE whites of the Arizona town pronounced Clung “a no-good Chink,“ but they were willing
to allow his father, Li Clung, was a law-abiding laundryman.
and pistols to soiled linen.
Young Clung preferred ponies
At a public dance he killed Josiah Boyer, who attempted to eject him from the hall on the ~
score of his color, which, as a matter of fact, was as white as any man's.
By stealth he returned to his father's house before he took the long
Then Li Clung confessed Clung was not his son by blood. Li had taken him while yet a
done for four Meximns.
trail.
baby after his mother’s death from a man who had ‘grievously wronged him.
his heels, Clung rode into the desert.
Previously he had
With a pose at
Later he came to a big ranch-house, where he found Winifred Sampson, her father, and her
fiancé, William Kirk. The latter was a querulous invalid, whom Clung put to sleep and then
cured by the strength of suggestion and a harmless tea.
On his recovery Kirk sought to marry Winifred at once, but she, too, had come under the
influence of Clung, and refused to be hurried. Moreover, Kirk had his suspicions, and determined
to put Clung to the test.
Kirk called out: “ Hands up!”
Unexpectedly entering a room where Clung was occupied with a book,
In another moment Clung was on the floor behind his chair,
and in his hand was a revolver, leveled at Kirk.
To confirm his suspicions of Clung‘s outlawry, Kirk had sent to Mortimer.
The following
morning Marshal Clauson and his men surrounded Clung as he appeared in the dining-room
with Winifred. Clung lodged that night in Mortimer jail.
Li Clung went to Clauson to plead for his son’s life, and told him that Clung. was the son
of John Pemberton, of Cripple Creek, who had murdered Li‘s wife and his two children. Later,
Winifred also came to the marshal to intercede for Clung. ‘
Clauson told Clung of Winifred‘s visit and Kirk's departure for the nofth. He supplied
him with tools, and three hours later Clung had taken the south trail.
When Clauson suffered in popular esteem because of “the escape,“ Clung, disguised as Yo
Chai, and with a declaration that he chose to be “ all yellow," offered to surrender himself. When
the marshal refused to arrest him, Clung declared he was off for Kirby Creek, where a rich
streak was inaugurating a mining-camp in full force.
Winifred's father learned from the old laundryrnan the secret of. Clung's birth, and was
determined to keep his daughter free of the man’s enchantment. But Winifred announced to him
out of a clear sky that they were going to Kirby Creek to look for Clung.
CHAPTER XVII.
SAMPSON PLAYS FOR TIME.
and sat for a time with his hot face
buried in his hands, then he took pen
and paper and wrote to William Kirk, far
in the Northland. No pleasant task, for
his wet hand stuck to the surface of the
paper: and his thoughts came haltingly.
Thus he wrote:
DEAR BILLY:
Hell has broke loose at last.
I wrote you that we were still on the trail of
SAMPSON went to his room at once
the scoundrel Clung; and here in this miserable
little oven of Mortimer we have stayed all these
days, walking these infernal dusty streets; you
know this alkali dust that stings your nose and
throat like pepper. Here we've remained, but to-
day the devil. as if he were tired of my rest, rose
up and in the language of the streets, hit me
where I live. He hit me twice.
And both punches, Billy, are as hard on you as
they are on me.
First I went to see Li Clung, reputed father of
our outlaw. I found a withered mummy of an
Oriental, and began to pump him, but after the
first draw I wanted to seal the well. For I
learned right off the bat, Billy, that Clung is not
a half-breed at all; there is not a drop of the
yellow blood in his veins; he is pure white.
V This story began in the All-Story Weekly for April 10.
352


CLUNG.
355
might wriggle out of it in that way, but I
won’t. The plain, unpleasant truth is that
I was jealous of Clung.”
“ Jealous?”
“No, no! Of-course I don’t mean in
that way. But I was jealous of his in-
fluence over you, and jealous of the way
in which the fellow seemed able to make
me out a coarse and stupid fool whenever
the three of us were together. I always
felt, you see, that he was the silk and I
was _the rough-surfaced wool. Is that
clear?”
“ Perfectly.”
“What a little aristocrat you are, Wini-
fred! Well, now your eyes are scorning me
again and you’re commencing to be formal-
ly polite.”
“ Not a bit. But I want to think it over.
That’s all. You have to expect that, don’t
you, Billy?” \
“ I suppose so. Take this into considera-
tion, too, I was just back from a close call
with death and my nerves weren’t very
strong. I ask you to realize that I was
hardly myself when I made that very rot-
ten move, Winifred.”
“But I have to remember who brought
you back from that close call with death,
Billy.”
“Exactly! But ingratitude, now and
then, is a mighty human failing.”
“ A very black one, Billy.”
“ If it’s persisted in.”
“Well?”
“ I haven’t persisted in mine. I’m going
to try to undo in a way what I’ve already
done.”
“I’m perfectly ready I; believe you.”
“ When you see me do it, eh? That’s
a man-to-man, straight-from-the-shoulder
way to look at it. If I can manage to help
Clung, will that restore us to something of
the old footing?”
“ I hope so—_—in a way.” ‘ >
“This is straight stuff. Three things
brought me back to the Southwest. Now,
I know I might make a pretty speech and
say that I came only for your sake.”
“ Please don’t.”
“ My dear girl, I know you much too well
for that. Well, there are two things besides
you. The first after you, to be frank, is
that I haven‘t got the feel of this dry, keen
air out of my lungs. I've been hungry
for this country.” ~ '
“ Really?”
“ Sounds queer, I know; but it‘s the
desert fever. I’ve been dreaming about the
open stretches, the wide skies, and I’ve
smelled the sweat of hot horses in my
dreams. Tried the outdoor life up North,
but it wasn’t the same—it hasn’t the same
tang.”
“ You look wonderfully fit."
“ Don’t 1! Hard as a brick, too. That’s
from polo and golf. The SouthWest has left
its mark on me. Don’t like to stay inside
four walls any more. You’d laugh if you
knew how I’ve been spending half my time.
Rigged up a little target-range at my coun-
try»place and I’ve spent two and three hours
a day there practising with guns. Guns
have a new meaning after one has seen a
fellow like Clung make a draw. ' Gad!
D’you remember how he dropped from his
chair to the floor and how those guns of his
simply jumped into his hands?”
She laughed, excitedly.
“ I’ll never forget it, Billy.”
“ So the first reason I wanted to come
South was to live the life again. The last
reason is that I want to redeem myself
with Clung. In a word, Winifred, I want
to help you hunt for him and find him and
put him back on his feet.”
“ Billy! ”'
“ Does that please you?”
“ Billy, this is real man’s talk!”
“ If you can use me, tell me where."
“We start for a wild mining-camp toq
day. By stage.”
“ I’ll go.”
“It ’11 be a godsend to have you. Poor
dad is worn out with tagging about after
me.”
“ Where is he? I’ll pay my respects.”
“ Just knock at that door. He‘s dressing
now.”
And a moment later John Sampson found
himself staring into the eyes of William
Kirk.
He was singularly changed. He looked,
’ as he had said, perfectly fit and hard as
nails. The frame which had been wasted to
pitiful gauntness by disease was now filled


356 ‘
ALL - STORY WEEKLY.
and a mighty bulk of muscles swelled the
coat at each shoulder. The sagging mouth
had tightened at.the corners with purpose-
fulness and the jaw thrust out with mean-
ing.
These were but the physical changes—
these and a deep coat of tan which guaran-
teed health. More important still was a cer-
tain strong self-confidence in the man’s
hearing which went hand in hand with his
bulk; of still greater significance was the
brightness and steadiness of the eyes, mis-
chievous, alert, brave, such eyes as one
dislikes to have stare in enmity.
“ Gad! ” breathed John Sampson. “‘How
you’ve changed, lad! How you‘ve
changed!”
- He clapped a hand on either broad shoul-
der of the giant, reaching to the level of
his own head to do so; and he conjured
up, in contrast, the image of Clung, frail,
delicate-handed, nervous of gesture and gen-
tle of eye. This was such an ally as he
needed.
“ I have.”
“ Chiefiy—inside?”
“ Chiefiy inside.”
“ I’m glad."
“ So am I.”
“And Clung?" queried Sampson cauti-
ously.
“Well?”
“ I heard what you said to Winifred."
“ John Sampson, you old fort!”
“ And you, Billy?" .
“ I suppose,” said the other. and shrugged
his heavy shoulders, “ that I'll have to play_
the fox, too.”
“ For whose sake, Billy?”
“ Damned if I know.”
“Not your own?”
“ To tell you the truth—~” began Kirk.
“ You seem,” cut in the financier dryly.
“ to be bothered a good deal by the truth
these days, Will.”
“ H-m!” growled the big man, and then
lifted his eye sharply. ~ “And what if I
am? What if Iam, Sampson? Don’t you
think it‘s a fairly decent thing to be both-
ered by?” '
“ Excellent! “ sneered Sampson. “ Ex-
cellent! It will be of great benefit to you,
my boy—in the hereafter! "
“What an infernal old cynic you are!”
“ Not a cynic. Practical, my lad.”
“ That sort of practise—”
“ Sends men to hell. Come, come, Billy.
Between your gun-practise up North you’ve
been going to Sunday-school, eh?”
And he laughed softly.
A young man is_not apt to insist upon
morals when he finds them scoffed at by
his elders.
“I‘m not lying to you, Sampson,” he
protested, reddening.
“Not a bit,” said the other instantly.
“ You’re merely telling me what you think
you think. And I suppose that you’re go-
ing to do exactly what you said you’d do
when, you were talking with Winifred.
You’re going to help her to find Clung.”
“ I am,” said the other, and squared his
shoulders resolutely. “I owe Clung more
than that—~more than—”
“More than you can ever repay him,"
nodded the financier. “ And therefore the
wise thing is not to attempt to repay any
part of it. But you're going to help find
him?”
“ I am! "
“Not so loud! Well, after you bring
the two together you’ll send them a wed-
ding-present and then step gracefully out
of the picture—and back to your Sunday-
school?"
“ Sampson, you'd anger a saint.”
“ I hope so." -
“ D’you really think that W'inifred—”
“When she finds he’s white, lad, the
novelty of the thing will knock her off her
feet. Afterward she’ll have a good many
years for repentance, but that won‘t help
me—or you. Ydu’re still fond of her,
Billy?"
“ Hopelessly."
“Not entirely. Patience, Billy, accom-
plishes strange things with both stock-mar-
kets and women. Besides, do I have to
draw you a picture of what the girl’s life
would be with Clung? Will the world ever
accept him as anything other than a half-
breed? His blood may bev white, but his
mind is Oriental, Billy. You know that.”
“Listen,” said the tall man, and frown-
ing he shook off the hands of Sampson.
“If I listen to you any longer I may be


CLUNG.
35']
a
hypnotized. I won’t listen. I want to do
the right thing.”
“Of course. So you’re going to begin
by running to Winifred and telling her that
you know Clung is white.”
Kirk was silent.
“There‘s the door.
room.”
Still silence from Kirk.
“ She’ll be glad to hear it; very glad!”
Kirk seized the knob with sudden resolu-
tion, hesitated, and finally slumped into
a chair that creaked under the impact of
his great weight; he sat regarding Sampson
with an ominous and steady scowl.
“ I suppose,” he muttered at last, “ that
you win.”
“I knew,” nodded the other, “ that you
had not entirely lost your wits; they’ve
been merely fmstbitten in the North. Wait
until your blood circulates and you’ll be
reasonable. I’m in no hurry. In the mean
time, the thing of importance is to find
Clung—yes—and then call the law on him
before Winifred reaches him.”
“ A pretty little plan—very pleasant,”
sneered Kirk.
“ By which you are the winner. If Clung
is gone she’ll turn to you at last.”
“ What ’ll make her?”
“The habit of having you around.
Habit, my dear boy, is usually several points
stronger than the thing the poets call love.”
And he teetered complacently back and
forth, from heel to toe, and grinned upon
William Kirk. The big man sighed.
“ I came down here to havea good time,”
She’s in the other
he said, as if to himself. “ To enjoy a long '
vacation, and incidentally to set myself
right in the matter of Clung. I seem to be
on the way—”
“ To just the same sort of a vacation, my
lad,” broke in the older man, “ except that
instead of putting yourself right with Clung
you’ll put yourself right with Winifred. In
the mean time you can play as much as
you like—ride your sweating horse—swing
your guns—~drink this abominable bar-
whisky—and in general, be a happy young
fool.”
“ There’s acid on your tongue,” grumbled
Kirk. .
“And reason,” nodded Sampson.
“ After all,” murmured the other, and
he frowned into a corner of the room, “ why,
not?”
CHAPTER XIX.
GOLD.
S if by mutual consent of horses, driv-
er, and passengers, the stage, as it
topped the last ascent above the hol-
low of Kirby Creek, came to a halt on the
little plateau of the hill-crest. Below, clam-
bering in a rude swarm like soldiers to an
assault, up swept the huts of the town, an
astonishing aggregation for so new a place;
but they were built without more than
an excuse for a foundation—mere lean-
tos propped against the steep hillsides.
They were pitched like tents wherever the
will of the owner decided, and decided has-
tily. Indeed, there were four tents to every
cabin in that little host.
As if by casual mutual agreement, the
huts and tents were so arranged that here
and there a lane was kept open, every one
well-worn,even at this early date, for hun-
dreds of horses and buckboards and trucks
'rolled into and out of the little town every
day. It was new, indeed, but it had grown
like a weed; for was not this a very foun-
tain-head of the power that waters the
works of man? ‘
On the veritable verge of the town men
labored at holes in the ground, and down
the ravines on every side pick and shovel
winked in the keen sunshine as the laborers
burrowed at the soil.
From this distance the utter silence made
the stir the more impressive. Then the
wind, which had been blowing down the
main valley, swerved and blew directly in
the face of the stage. Slowly up the wind
came the sound of the labor. a clicking of
metal in it, and the rumble of men’s voices,
and now and then the sharper note of a
braying burro, or the whinny of a horse,
but all subdued and blended by that dis-
tance into a murmur no louder than the
hum of a bee—an angered bee, heavily
laden and struggling against the wind.
A dreamlike picture and a dreamlike
sound, ugly enough in its way in spite oi


358
ALL - STORY WEEKLY.
the softening perspective, but the men in
the stage sat forward in their seats, and
their hands gripped and relaxed automati-
cally as if they were already in spirit at-
tacking the earth and hunting for treasure.
Not an eye turned to right or left. They
were thinking, each man of himself visions
of the “strike,” the rejoicing, the glinting
of yellow metal, the sweaty, furious labor,
the triumph thereafter, the house in some
great city, the soft-footed servants, the eyes
of fellow men turned on them in awe. Burn-
ing it came on them, the dream, the dream
of gold. And they were silent and awed.
Gold! It banished the reality of burned,
brown hillsides and the muddy creek far
beneath. It raised visions of'columned en-
trances, stately ships, beautiful women with
jeweled hands and throats: All this of
beauty and grace, but the light that it kin-
dled in the eyes of the treasure-hunters was
a hard, keen fire.
Not one of the passengers-not John
Sampson in spite of his great wealth al-
ready accumulated, nor William Kirk, with
the desert fever upon him, nor Winifred,
with her mission of charity—bpt found
himself drawn at a single step to the edge
of hate and murder and battle for gold.
Down the slope and into the city of gold
the stage passed.' It rolled on unheeded,
for every man on the rude streets was like
the' men in the stage; he was looking
straight before him with keen, hard eyes,
thinking only of himself, the strike he had
made, or was to make. or had missed.
But already the receivers of gold were
mixed with the finders and the spenders.
Their presence was made known in a hun-
dred places. There hobbled a man in chaps,
spurs, high boots, below; above he wore
_ a long Prince Albert, a high silk hat, stiff
white shirt and carried tan gloves in his
hand. But he had made one concession to
comfort. He wore no collar. The tailor
was there on the heels of gold.
Here came a woman with vast, red, bare
arms—bare to the elbow. She carried a
flimsy parasol of blue silk, and twirled it
constantly. At every motion of her hand
a vow of great diamonds flashed in the
sun: and around her throat was a yellow,
glimmering chain supporting a glorious
ruby. The jewelér was there on the heels
of gold.
And another woman, sauntering, one
hand dropping from her hip and the other
raised at the moment to pull her hat a little
more jauntily to one side. A man, passing,
changed glances with her, stopped, and
turned to walk on at her side. She and
her kind who follow men over the world,
they were here also on the heels of gold.
Here came two men, arm-in-arm, reeling.
Alternately they cursed and laughed, then
broke into a song of reeking vulgarity. The
saloon was there on the heels of gold.
And now a large man in dapper clothes
with the heavy gold watch~chain across the
vast expanse of his stomach and a bright
necktie at his throat, walked leisurely, at
peace with himself, and his small, bright
eyes picked out face after face and lingered
on it a single moment like the hawk search-
ing the field below for mice. The confi—
dence man was there on the heels of gold.
Passing him, another type—pale, slender,
stoop-shouldered, with white hands exceed-
ing agile and forever busied with the lapel
of his coat, or in pulling out his handker-
chief. White hands and strangely agile
and swift and sure, the sign of his trade.
The gambler is here on the heels of gold.
The very air was changed in Kirby Creek.
To breathe it was to breathe hope, chance,
danger. It set the blood tingling. All
things were possible at once, and nothing
was to be too highly prized. The very
gold for which men dreamed and prayed
and murdered, had lost half its meaning.
Like alcohol, it make men drunk. A pair
leaned against a hitching-rack in front of
a saloon. They were tossing coins and
matching, and at every throw a twenty-
dollar gold piece changed hands. Short
time before and eachof these would have
given a month of hard labor for every one
of those pieces of money.
And as the stage rolled past, another man
came staggering through the doors of that
same saloon. By the steps a one-legged
man, stretched out his hand for aims.
A shower of silver mixed with gold an—
swcred, and the drunkard was gone while
the beggar's insatiable hand was stretching
out once more.


CLUNG.
359
William Kirk turned to Winifred.
“ Do we stay here?” he asked.
“ He is here,” she answered.
“ Can you trust yourself here among
these men?”
“ They’re Southwesterners, Will. I’m
safer among them than I would be walking
the streets at home with an escort. They
will treat me like a sister. Besides—”
“ Well?”
“ I like it!”
He looked at her in amazement. She
seemed to have awakened; her face flushed,
her eyes shining with excitement.
“ Like it?” he repeated, breathless with
his surprise.
“ All of it!” she answered, and made an
all-embracing gesture. “ The dirt, the vul-
garity, the cheating, the danger. They’re
men—ail men—and all in action, Will!”
‘i But such an impossible gang of
swine—” he began, and then he stopped
short and some of her own fire lighted his
eyes. ‘
His blood ran with a thrill, warm and
then cold. As she had said, here were men,
real men, and all in action. It was the old
lure of the desert, stronger, wilder, sharper,
but the same. The chances bigger than in
the North, the danger greater, and also the
reward. And somewhere among those men,
he felt, he should find a place for himself.
It was the New World, the undiscovered
country—hirnself and these. Three cen—
turies of culture surrounded William Kirk,
three generations of gentlemanly traditions.
At this moment the first century of these
traditions dropped away and he tossed it
aside as a man might toss off an encumber-
ing cloak when he is about to enter a fight
for his-life.
CHAPTER XX.
LIFE!
Y luck, they found a place to live in
within an hour after they reached the
town of Kirby Creek. It was on the
outskirts of the town and the most commo-
dious dwelling in the village. It had been
inhabited by'a prospector and his family.
But a few days before, his eldest son had
been killed by a blow with a pick-handle
in a drunken brawl, and the prospector, in
consequence, was leaving the camp. He sold
his rights at an outrageous price and the
three spent the rest of the day purchasing
household furniture at prices running up
to ten times that of the real value.
A crippled negro was retained for the
housework and by nightfall they were eat-
ing their first meal in their new residence.
It consisted of three rooms. The kitchen,
where the negro was to both work and
sleep; a room in front used for storage and
for the bunks of Sampson and Kirk; and
a third room devoted to Winifred.
The house had been thrown together
rather than built, and whenever the wind .
struck it fairly, it shook and trembled and
moaned like the haunted castle of some old
romance. Nevertheless, it was a. shelter
and gave them privacy. Furthermore, it
was on the extreme outskirts of the town, up
the ravine, and the noise of the brawling,
drunken miners would disturb them less in
this spot.
Hugh Williams, the negro, who had
served the master of a great plantation in
southeastern Texas, cooked amazingly well
considering the rickety tin stove with which
he had to work; and after supper, when it
was decided that they should venture forth
into the night life of the wild camp, they
asked Hugh Williams to direct them to the
best place. His answer was prompt and
decisive.
“They ain’t no place fit fo’ white gen’l-
mun,” said Hugh Williams. “ No, sir,
boss, they ain’t one except that there gam-
bling-house the yaller Chinaman runs.”
“Well,” said Winifred, “a gambling-
house is the real heart of a mining-camp,
isn’t it?” .
Then she murmured to her father: “ Be-
sides, Clung is a half-breed and he might
be found near a Chinese place.”
“ What’s the name of the Chinaman,
Hugh?” asked Kirk.
“Yo Chai. He ain’t here long, but I
reckon he done won~ mo’ money than any
man that’s dug it out’n the ground. He’s
a honest Chink, boss, an’ they ain’t nobody
ever called his games crooked, but such luck
I ain’t never seen. No, sir. I was there


CLUNG. 361


and the deep, booming laugh of a white
man.
These were only high points in the gen-
eral clamor, for the calls of the “ men-on-
the-sticks ” and of the dealers and of the
players kept up a continual monotone, brok-
en sharply here and there by a snarl of
fury, a shout of delight, or the deep groan
which announced that one of the players
was broke. A tawdy, dim, drunken con-
fusion, but here, as over the entire town,
there was the glamour of chance which shot
the smoky gloom full of rays of gold.
It was a colorful assembly, for at- least
seventy per cent of the inhabitants of Kirby
Creek were Mexicans and all of these were
flush, either through the high wages paid
to laborers or because they had made their
independent strikes. Their profits were
about equally divided among drink, gam-
bling, and clothes—clothes of every sort.
Brown'faced villains passed in the mantillas
of women, yellow, priceless lace. Silk shirts
of yellow, purple, red, and blue, glowed here
and there like so many vfires through the
great room; and in between was ever the
scintillating play of the hard brilliancy of
jewels. The man who makes money easily
invests it in diamonds just as his more civ-
ilized brother puts it in a bank. It draws
no interest, but interest does not attract
those who dig raw gold from the common
earth.
‘Winifred heard the voice of a stranger
beside her saying: “ Life! By God, here‘s
raw life! ”
And she turned to look up .into the face
of William Kirk. It was so changed by
the shadows and by the hardening of the
mouth and the brightening of the eyes that
for the moment she hardly recognized him
any more than she had known the sound
of his voice. But she laughed, and, throw-
ing up her arms, answered: “Life, Billy!”
The sound of her own voice startled her;
it was rougher and more strained than she
had ever heard it. And she knew, all at
once, that the same fierce light which trans-
figured the eyes of Kirk was also in her
own. She turned to her father, to see if
he also had caught the fierce fever of the
place, half awestricken,-and half amused,
and more than half delighted.
But her father was not beside her any
longer. It sobered her to coldness to miss
him, and she cried out to Kirk in her alarm.
“There he is,” answered the big man,
and then laughed deeply, a boom and roar
of sound, exultant. “ There he is; he's in
the fire, Winifred!"
The comfortably plump back of her
father, indeed, was at that moment settling
into a chair at the central table.

CHAPTER XXI.
THE GUN PLAY.
HIS central table stood apart from the
rest of the gambling-hall; no matter
how high the riot rang through the
'rest of the place. no matter what bright
hosts of gaudy Mexicans drifted like au-
tumn leaves through shadow and light, in
this central space, voices hushed, and it
was surrounded by an atmosphere of corn-
paratively quiet dignity.
Whereas the rest of the floor was thickly
strewn with sawdust, which served the
double purpose of cleanliness and of muf-
fiing the fall of heels, the central table was
supported by a dais, spread with Indian
blankets of price and rising a foot higher
than the common boards. On the dais was
a round table capable of accommodating
five people in comfort, and no more were
ever allowed to sit there. Moreover, a man
had to show at least a thousand dollars in
gold currency or in dust before he was al-
lowed to sit in on the game, which was al-
ways draw poker. 'One of these chairs had
been recently vacated by a disgruntled loser,
and into his place stepped John Sampson.
The glance of Winifred passed from her
father to the loser who had just left the
chair. He was a Mexican, and she saw his
face clearly, for the dais was brightly
illumined by half a dozen lanterns hanging
from the surrounding posts. She saw a com-
plexion, somewhere between brown and
black, with the wide, heavy lips, the blunt
nose, and the cruelly high cheek-bones
which told a plain story of predominate
Indian blood.
That face was further darkened now by
a malevolent scowl which shifted gleaming


362
ALL - STORY WEEKLY.
back toward the table and then returned
darkly to the front. The Mexican joined
a compatriot who leaned against one of the
posts. The lantern overhead cast a black
shadow which swallowed up the pair im-
mediately, but when they moved on toward
the bar she made out that the second Mexi-
can was wrapped to the ears in a gay
blanket. The loser made many geaures as
they walked, speaking with his lips close to
' the ear of his companion. Winifred turned
to William Kirk. ‘
“ See those two?” she asked.
“ The greasers?”
“Yes. They mean mischief. One of
them has lost a good deal of money, I take
it, and he means to try to get some of it
back.”
“Bah!”’smiled Kirk. “A Mexican is
always like a child. He sulks when he
loses, but he never strikes while his father’s
face is toward him.” _
“ Nevertheless,” she said, “ it looks dan-
gerous to me, and I want to get dad out of
here before any shooting starts.”
At that Kirk stiffened, his big shoulders
going back, and his face altered to a singu-
lar ugliness. At the best he wasmot a
handsome man, with his heavily defined fea-
tures, but now, at the mention of shooting,
his lips twisted back into a mirthless laugh,
like the silent grin of a wolfhound, and his
eyes lighted evilly. She remembered what
he had said of practising with his guns
every day when he had been at his home
in the North. She believed it now, for
he made her think of the boy who has
learned to box and goes' about among his
conipanions looking for trouble. His glance
swept around the room, lingering an instant
on the more marked faces, and then it re-
tumed to the two Mexicans, who by this
time were leaning against the bar, drinking,
and talking earnestly, their heads close to-
gether.
“ Leave this to me,” said William Kirk,
and his voice was dry with a peculiarly
harsh command. “'If there’s trouble there’s
no reason why I can’t take care of your
father. In the mean time, he’s robbing the
robbers. Look!”
It was the end of a hand, and John Sump--
son was methodically raking from the cen-
ter of the table a great heap of chips—a
big winning. Other fades at the table turned
enviously toward the new, successful play-
er, but the dealer remained unmoved.
She noticed first the yellow, slender fin-
gers flying over the cards as he shuffled
and then the small, round wrists twisting as
he dealt the next hand. She had never
seen greater suppleness and grace. Looking
up above the hands she encountered the
face of a middle-aged Chinaman wearing a
crimson skull-mp with a black tassel. For
the first moment she noted only the garb
of the man, a loose robe of a color some-
where between violet and purple, and heav-
ily brocaded with gold~the wide, trailing
sleeves made the slender grace of the wrists
more apparent.
Here, certainly, was Yo Chai, the owner,
and now she studied his face carefully.
The eyebrows were highly and plaintiver
arched, and a purple shadow on both the
upper and lower lids made his eyes seem
deeply sunken. The lines running from
the eyes, together with the arch of the
brows, gave a touch of weary wistfulness
to the man’s expression, so that she felt
that she could have stood for an hour and
lost herself in the study of the face. From
the upper lip straggled the sparse, black
hairs of a typical Chinaman’s mustache;
but the mouth itself was finelyand thought-
fully formed and the other features deli-
cately chiseled. His expression was so de-
void of life that he seemed rather a Budd-
hist rapt in mystic contemplation than a
Chinese gambler concentrating on a game.
It seemed that Kirk had followed the
steady direction of her glance, for he mut-
tered now: “ Rum old bird, isn’t he? Seem
to me I’ve seen him before. I suppose
it’s Yo Chai?”
As if to answer him, a miner dressed
like a cowboy, at that moment mounted
the dais and stood beside the dealer, shift-
ing his hat awkwardly on his head. The
Chinaman turned and the white man leaned
down to whisper in his ear. At that the
dealer nodded, pulled out a long purse of
wire net, embroidered with the figure of a
flashing dragon, and handed the other-sev-
eral ooins. The white man shook hands
enthusiastically and departed.


364
ALL- STORY WEEKLY.
/
was unchanged; he might have been rising
to bid them a calm good night. But Wini-
fred, watching him closely, started as
though some one had shouted at her car.
What she saw, indeed, was not so much
the middle-aged face, and the rather
shrunken, bowed shoulders, but the exceed-
ing grace of the narrow wrists of the China-
man and the transparent frailty of the
hands. Already the crowd was leaving the
scene of the firing and drifting back toward
their original tables; William Kirk, who had
run toward the spot, now returned, bringing
John Sampson with him. She ran a few
paces to 'meet them and caught her father
by the arm with both her. excited hands.
“ Do’you know who that was?” she cried.
“ Do you know who that was?”
Themshe stopped the full tide of speech
that was tumbling to her lips; a suspicion
froze up her utterance.
“ Who?” asked the two men at the same
time.
“ I don’t know.
answered.
“ Sounded to me," said William Kirk,
“as if you were about to tell us some-
I’m asking you,” she
thing. ~Whom do you want to know about?”
And she lied deliberately, for she knew
all at once that she must not tell either
of these men her suspieion about Yo Chai.
“ I think one of those Mexicans was a
fellow I’ve seen in Mortimer.”
“Really?” grunted her- father. “ Well,
he’s a dead one now.”
“Not a bit of it,” said Kirk. “That
was a nice bit of gun-play on the part of
the Chinaman. D’you know where he shot
those two fellows?”
“ Where?”
“ Drilled ’em squarely through the right
hip—each one. They’ll both live, and
they’ll both be cripples for life. Whefi you
come down to it, Sampson, that‘s etter
revenge than killing the beggars, eh?”
“ Maybe,” said the'older man, “ but let’s
- get out of here.”
“Why?” said Kirk, frowning. “ This
place just begins to look good to me."
And: “ Why?” asked Winifred. “ I agree
with Billy!” ~
“Because,” said her father, “if I stay
I’ve got to go back to that game, and this
is a good excuse for me to get away from
the cards. That Yo Chai has bewitched
’em, Billy!”
It was strange to see how the environ-
ment of the mining-camp had gained upon
these three. Each was the inheritor of
centuries of pacific culture, but half a day
had moved them back a thousand years
toward the primitive. In their nostrils was
still the scent of powder; in their minds
was still the picture of the falling men
through whOse flesh and bones the bullets
had driven: yet they had already closed
their senses to the neamess of death. A tale
which in the telling would have kept them
agape in their drawing-rooms, in the ac-
tuality was a chance to be seen and for-
gotten. Ten centuries of refinement, of
polish, were brushed away, and the brute
with slope forehead and fanglike teeth rose
in each of them.
In the older man it held the longest and
moved him to leave the place as soon as
possible. In the others it was merely a
stimulus; but though they heard and felt
the call of the wild, theylwere not yet of
the wilderness. They followed John Samp-
son slowly from the gambling-house of Y0
Chai. At the door, when they looked back,
they saw Yo Chai settling back into his
chair with the extra man already in the
chair of Sampson.
“By the Lord!” growled the financier.
“ I’ve left like the greaser before me, beaten
and sulky; and there’s my successor ready
for the bait! ”
And then he led the way, grinning, from
the house, for to be beaten was so great a
novelty to him that it was not altogether
displeasing. They took the course for their
shack and Hugh Williams; they walked
in such silence that finally John Sampson
asked: “ What you thinking of?”
“ Yo Chai,” they answered in one voice,
and then laughed at their unanimity. “ Y0
Chai," chimed in Sampson, “but it’s the
first time in a month, Winifred, that you’ve
got your thoughts away from the—half-
breed.” -
And he glanced at William Kirk.
“His blood,” said the girl calmly. “is
nothing against him. It’s not of his choos-
ing. Besides, he’s whiter than most.”


CLUN G.
365
"
A remark which left the other two
strangely silent, and in that silence they
reached their cabin, and went to their rooms
at once, for it had been a hard day. But
when the voices of her father and Kirk
died away in the next room and the bunks
creaked for the last time as they turned
and twisted about finding comfortable sleep-
ing positions, Winifred remained awake, sit-
ting on the edge of her bed: For her mind
was haunted by a picture of singular vivid-
ness—the face of Y0 Chai as he shoved
back his chair, slowly, his head tilted, his
eyes half closed like one who basks in the
sun, a smile of mysterious meaning touch-
ing his lips. It grew on her with astound-
ing vigor and made another name grow up
in her memory—Clung! She had been on
the verge of imparting her thought to Kirk
back-there in the gaming-house, but some-
thing had held her back with the force of
a single thread of caution.
Now the over-mastering curiosity was too
great for her. The impulse to go back to
the gaming-house, confront the impassive
face of Y0 Chai; and tax him with being
Clung disguised, swelled in freshening pulses
in her blood. As the precipitate hangs
cloudy in the acid, waiting only the presence
of some foreign substance before it dropsflto
the bottom of the glass, so,the impulse to go
back to Yo Chai hung in the mind of Wini-
fred. And the deciding force, oddly enough,
was a sudden creaking of a bunk in the
next room.
At once she knew that she must go,
alone, and at once. It would be a great ad—
venture; she felt that she could trust her-
self implicitly with the roughest of those
Southwesterners; if it was a cold trail she
would escape the ridicule of her father if
she dragged him back to the gaming-house:
if it was the true trail she would have all
the glory of the discovery in the morning.
Besides, while Clung might reveal himself
to her, it was very doubtful that he would
acknowledge his identity in front of her
father.
And so, at the creaking of ‘the bunk in
the next room, she rose straight from the
bed and went to the window. It was close
to the ground and already open. Through
it blew the night wind softly, inviting her
out; and beyond glowed the confiding stars
and the lower, redder lights of the town.
She slipped at once through the window,
went to the shack which served as a stable,
saddled her horse hastily, and rode down
the trail toward Kirby Creek.
The creaking 0f the bunk was caused by
one who, like Winifred, had not been able
to sleep because of something he had seen
that night in the house of Y0 Chai. It was
Kirk, and the vision which haunted him
had nothing to do with the yellow face of
Y0 Chai, but with the roulette~wheel, spin~
ning brightly, clicking with a rapid whir
to a stop, and then the droning voice
which called the number and the color:
“Eleven on the red~black five—eleven
red—black two——eleven on the red." It
suddenly recurred to him that eleven
had come many times on the red—four
times as often as any other figure. He
sat up sweating» with excited eagerness.
What a dolt he had been not to venture
a few dollars on the wheel! Not that he
needed money, but the excitement—the
great chance—~he might— \
But by this time he was sitting bolt
upright on the edge of his bunk, grinding
his teeth and cursing softly in the dark.
The heavy snore of John Sampson broke
in upon him and he felt a great impulse
to take the older man by the throat and
choke off the noise. He began dressing
hastily. The gaming-house ran all night
and ‘he might as well take a whirl at the
roulette—wheel as lie awake and think about
it until morning. His hands began to trem-
ble so that he found it difficult to tie his
shoes. .Then he tiptoed cautiously across
the floor. There was little need of such
silence, for John Sampson was a redoubtable
sleeper.
As Kirk opened the front door he heard
the clatter of a galloping horse speed away
over the soft sod, and looking quickly to
the side he saw what seemed the fantom
of Winifred speeding through the night. He
almost cried out to her, but an instant of
thought made him check the sound as a
foolish impulse. Yet the figure had seemed
so familiar that he could not help walking
to the side of the house and peering into
the room of the girl. It was faintly lighted
—very faintly, but he made out with per-
fect certainty that the covers of the narrow


.366
ALL - STORY WEEKLY.
bed were too straight to conceal any sleeper.
His breath went from him, and he turned
and stared down the valley toward Kirby
Creek. Then he ran to the stable, sad-
died, and bore at a full gallop for the
town.
’ CHAPTER XXIII.
THE HOUSE OF YO CHAI.
HE first thing the eyes of Winifred
sought when she reentered the gam~
ing-house was the high central table,
but at it the form of Y0 Chai no longer
appeared; a white dealer sat in his place.
The beating of her heart decreased by a
dozen strokes to the minute. She stopped
one of the Chinese waiters: “ Where
catchum Y0 Chai, John?”
“ Y0 Chai catchum home,” said the
waiter. “ Catchum sleep.”
“ How long?”
“ Maybe fi’ minute.”
. U
“ ’Loun’ corner. Lil square house. May-
be John show?"
His eyebrows raised in inquisition, and
the ,girl slipped a fifty-cent piece into his
hand.
if sure,”
quick.”
And he led her to a side door, from which
-he pointed to a low, square building at the
back of the large gaming-house. Even as
she looked lights appeared in two little win-
dows. It was as if the place had awakened
and were staring at her with ominous, red
eyes through the darkness. The waiter dis-
appeared and she felt a great need of reen-
forcement; to face Y0 Chai in the public
gaming-house was one thing; to heard the
lion in his secret, Oriental den was an affair
of quite another color. Into her mind boiled
a thousand ugly tales about Chinamen and
their haunts. She forced these fears back
with a use of simple reason. Through the
walls of any of these shacks her voice would
ring out for a hundred feet, and the first
murmur of a white woman’s voice would
bring a score of men to her help.
Before her courage cooled she went
straight to the door of the little house and
said the waiter. “Plenty
seized the knocker and rapped. While her
fingers still clung to it, she saw that it was
of brass, hanging from the mouth of a
brazen dragon that writhed down the face
of the door, his scales glinting here and
there as if with inherent light. Not a pleas-
ant sight. She regretted sharply that she
had touched the knocker, and had already
withdrawn a step when the door opened.
It swung a foot or so wide and no one ap-
peared at the opening. Then, as if the
opener decided that he might safely show
himself, a Chinaman, tall and of prodigious
bulk, evidently a Manchurian, stepped out
before her and stood with his hands shoved
into his capacious sleeves—sleeves that
might have contained a whole armory of
knives and revolvers.
He frowned upon her, so that her knees
shook. And because she knew her knees
were shaking nothing in the world could
have induced her now to draw back from
her purpose.
“ White girl lose plenty money,” boomed
the big Oriental. “ Yo Chai not help. Yo
Chai lose plenty money, too. Too bad.
Catch bad-luck devil.”
He stepped back through the door.
“ Wait," called Winifred eagerly, and she
stepped close to the guardian. “White
girl got plenty money. Want see Yo Chai.
Maybe pay Yo Chai much money.”
But the guard was not to be moved by
eyes that would have shaken the firmness of
any ruffian in Kirby Creek.
“ Yo Chai maybe sleep. _\'0 can see.”
And he began to close the door when
a singsong current of Chinese began from
the deeps of the house. Chinese, but it
made Winifred rise almost to tiptoes with
eagerness. She thought that she recognized
that voice. The doorkeeper turned his head
and answered over his shoulder the speaker
from within. He turned back, regarded the
girl with a keen scrutiny, and' then added
something more to the inquirer—evidently
a description.
There came a sharp voice of command
and the guard stepped surlily back from
the door, motioning her mutely to enter.
She slipped past him at once and found
herself in a little, boxlike hall. On the wall
opposite her hung a tapestry of shimmering


CLUN G. .
369
“ Call them,” he repeated, “ or else I will
go with you alone. Be quick before the
mind of Clung changes. Quick! There is
a reward on the head of Clung!”
“ Oh, Clung!” she said at last, and she
threw out her hands toward him. “ Do you
think I have come to betray you?”
“ Who will call it that?” he answered in
his soft, flawless English. “ Clung is a dog
of a Chinaman.”
“ I said it when I was afraid," she
pleaded. “I thought—the door closed be—
hind me—the big man acted as if he were
making a prisoner of me. Clung, forgive
me!”
“ Clung has forgotten,” he said quietly.
“But he will not forgive?” she asked
wistfully. “ No more than you would ever
forgive 'that day when Marshal Clauson
came to my father’s house and took you.
Clung, do you know that I had no part in
that?”
“ Clung has forgotten,” be repeated with
the same calm. '
She sighed. Then, eagerly: “But we
don’t ask you to forgive us so easily. Do
you know that Kirk has come from the
North to help me find you and make some
amends for what he did?”
“It is good,” said Clung.
And he smiled.
“And when I passed you in the room
that day,” she went on hurriedly, “ it wasn’t
because I was not sorry for you, but—1
I had been thinking of you in another way,
and—and—”
“ It is very clear,” he said. “ A child
could understand. You thought'Clung was
a man, and you found he was only a China-
man.”
“ I see,” she said sadly, “ you will neVer
forgive me, Clung.”
“ Clung has forgotten,” he repeated.
She bent her head.
“ After all,” she said, “ what can we offer
you? My father has wanted to send you
North and put you in some fine school. But
I see how foolish all that is. You could
never go to such a place.”
“ My father is Li Clung,” he said.
She winced, and seeing that, his head went
back in the old familiar way and the lazy,
smile touched his lips. -
“ My father is Li Clung, and he has
taught Clung what a Chinaman should
know: the prayers of heaven and earth
and the teachings of Confucius. It is well;
it is ended. Clung has learned a little. He
shall learn more hereafter.”
She began to speak, but finding his eyes
fixed once more on the infinity behind her
the words died at her lips.
“ There is nothing I can do,” she said.
“ I see that all my hunt has been foolish.
But if you should ever be taken again, I
want you to send for us and we will get
everything for you that money can buy—
the best of lawyers and the influence of
white men.”
He bowed until the pigtail once more
tapped on the floor, and it was the sight of
that shining, silken length of hair that con;
vinced her of the unsurpassable barrier be-
tween them.
“ When a white man wishes to show that
he bears no ill feelings for another man,”
she said, “ he shakes hands when he de-
parts. Will you shake hands with me,
Clung?”
“It is good,” said Clung, and held out
his hand. The fingers were cold and life-
less'to her touch; she withdrew her hand
hastily and turned to the door. But there
an overwhelming sadness stopped her. She
went back to him with quick steps.
“ I know now why I have hunted so
hard for you, Clung,” she said. “It isn’t
because I can give you anything, but be-
cause you can give me ,so much. To-night
we are parting. I shall never see you again.
Can’t we have one more talk like the ones
we used to have?”
He said: “ Many words have little mean~
ings.”
And she laughed: “ That is just like the
old times. If you don’t want to talk, let’s
have one of our old silences, Clung.”
He bowed, and pointed on the floor to a;
comfortable heap of cushions facing his
own. They took their places, and for a
time the silence went on like a river, and
Winifred began to grow almost breathless.
It seemed as if Clung were slipping away
from her_with every instant, and as if Yo
Chai were growing up more vividly and
really in his place. At length he picked up.
6 A-S


WE”? I
5/ Charles B. Stiison
a desperate race with an unseen fear,
pitched from the brink of a tremen-
dous precipice, gyrated end over end through
several hundred feet of breathless nothing-
ness, and fetched up with a sickening
plump.
Not relaxing for an instant his death grip
on the pillow which he had clutched against
his abdomen, Bill set his bare feet out on
the comforting and tangible coolness of
hardwood flooring, padded across it to his
bedroom window, and looked out at the
calm moonlight and the questioning stars.
Bill’s big chest—he wore a seventeen
shirt—was heaving and falling by hitches;
his hair was moist with the dew of terror,
and his light pajamas were as hot and damp
as though he had passed through a jet of
steam.
“ Wow!" he ejaculated, mopping his face
with the pillow-case. “ Wow! Twice!
That’s the first time a welsh rarebit ever
backfired at me! I haven’t dreamed of
falling like that since I used to roll mar-
bles!"
Aware of the pillow in his tight embrace,
he let it fall on the floor. and kicked at it
with his bare toes.
With a catch in his breath and consider-
able real distress in the region of his heart.
Prentice sat for a while in the Morris chair
beside the window. With a shrug and a
laugh, he eventually picked up his trusty
pillow and groped back to bed.
SMILIXG BILL PRENTICE, running






As a child, Bill often had dreamed of
falling. Every child does. Beyond a squall
of affright, or a bump on the floor if the
dream happens to be particularly convinc-
ing, the youngsters seem to be none the
worse for such nocturnal adventures.
But when grown persons begin to plunge
from dizzy heights in their slumbers, or
loop the loop without benefit of plane or
parachute, they are apt to become suddenly
solicitous concerning their cardiac action;
and usually the family physician reaps some
benefit.
Bill, having no family, and having been
all his life almost offensively healthful, had
no family physician. When his pillows be~
gan to be haunted by “ drop the dips " and
“ shoot the chutes " and other aerial maneu-
vers—for the first was the precursor of
many—he was not immediately troubled
thereby, kept the matter to himself, and
continued to tread the even tenor of late
suppers, matutinal fox~trots,et ceterapvhich
made up his bachelor existence outside of
the hours passed as the hustling assistant
sales-manager of Courser Motors, Inc.
Cobbert, Bill’s superior, a sallow, dyspep-
tic chap, saturated with symptoms and pes-
simism—when he wasn‘t talking car—had
been almost resentfully envious of his
young assistant’s perennial high spirits.
spring-apple cheeks, and 'seemingly bound-
less capacity for 'work. Cobbert had the
eye of a lynx for dark circles, the telltale
twitch of a finger, or any other of the hun-
372


(gee/Q)
Marx Brarxd
Author of " The Untamed,” " Children of the Night,” “ 'l'rlllhl'." etc.
PRECEDING CHAPTERS BRIEFLY RETOLD
HE whites of the Arizona town pronounced Clung “ a no-good Chink," but they were willing
to allow his father, Li Clung, was a law-abiding laundryman. Young Clung preferred ponies
and pistols to soiled linen.
At a. public dance he killed Josiah Boyer, who attempted to eject him from the hall on the
score of his color, which, as a matter of fact, was as white as any man‘s. Previously he had
done for four Mexicans. By stealth he returned to his father’s house before he took the long
trail. Then Li Clung confessed Clung was not his son by blood. Li had taken him while yet a
baby after his mother’s death from a man who had grievously wronged him. With a pose at
his heels, Clung rode into the desert.
Later he came to a big ranch-house, where he found Winifred Sampson, her father, and her
fiance, William Kirk. The latter was a querulous invalid, whom Clung put to sleep and then
cured by the strength of suggestion and a harmless tea.
On his recovery Kirk sought to marry Winifred at once, but she, too, had come under the
influence of Clung, and refused to be hurried. Moreover, Kirk had his suspicious, and determined
to put Clung to the test. Unexpectedly entering a room where Clung was occupied with a book,
Kirk called out: “Hands up!" In another moment Clung was on the floor behind his chair,
and in his hand was a revolver, leveled at Kirk.
To confirm his suspicions of Clung’s outlawry, Kirk had sent to Mortimer. The following
morning Marshal Clauson and his men surrounded Clung as he appeared in the dining-room
with Winifred. Clung lodged that night in Mortimer jail.
Li Clung went to Clauson to plead for his son’s life, and told him that Clung was the son
of John Pemberton, of Cripple Creek, who had murdered Li's wife and his two children. Later,
Winifred also came to the marshal to intercede for Clung.
Clauson told Clung of Winifred’s visit and Kirk’s departure for the north. He supplied
him with tools, and three hours later Clung had taken the south trail.
When Clauson suffered in popular esteem because of “the escape,” Clung, disguised as Yo
Chai, and with a declaration that he chose to be “all yellow," offered to surrender himself. When
the marshal refused to arrest him, Clung declared he was off for Kirby Creek, where a rich
streak was inaugurating a mining-camp in full force.
Winifred’s father teamed from the old laundryman the secret of Clung’s birth, and was
determined to keep his daughter free of the man’s enchantment. But Winifred announced to him
out of a clear sky that they were going to Kirby Creek to look for Clung.
Sampson wrote an urgent letter to Kirk and invited him south. Then he feigned sickness
and went to bed to keep Winifred in Mortimer. On the day slated for his recovery Kirk appared
at their house. He placed his services at the disposal of Winifred in her search for Clung.
Sampson upbraided him for his chivalry, and then Kirk agreed to help him turn over the
half-breed to the law.
They went together to Kirby Creek and settled in a house on the outskirts of the camp,
with Hugh Williams, a colored cripple, for cook. From him they learned of the gambling-house of
Y0 Chai, which they decided to expiore for themselves.
Sampson took the place of a Mexican at the big poker game in the center of the room,
and Winifred shortly after looked up to see two evil greasers, with drawn guns, directly behind
Yo Chai's chair. The thing happened quick as lightning. Yo Chai drilled the two Mexicans
through the hip, and then resumed his seat. As his wide sleeves fell back, Winifred remarked his
slender wrists and his lean arms, and her mind leaped to a conclusion.
That night, after the house retired, Winifred rose, dressed, and quietly slipped out and saddled
her horse. She was determined to learn something more about Yo Chai. Kirk also found he
wanted to try the roulette-wheel again, and as he came out of the house he saw the retreating
figure of a girl who reminded him of Winifred. He looked into her window, and then he knew.
This story began in the All-Story Weekly for April 10.
5x8


CLUNG.
519
Not finding Yo Chai at his gambling palace, she sought him_at his house. Here she found
the end of her quest and the beginning of love.
When she left Clung's house he saw her retreating figure swerve aside to avoid a large man
on a tall horse.
The man followed. Then Clung raced for his own horse, which was saddled
day and night, and began to make up the ground which separated him from the girl and the
big man.
CHAPTER XXV.
ROULETTE.
HEN Kirk left their shanty, a
little distance from the outskirts
of Kirby Creek, he had ridden
fiercely down the ravine toward the heart
of town. He had little hope of gaining
upon Winifred; he was not even sure of
her destination, but he felt reasonably cer-
tain that the same impulse which had taken
him out of his bed was that which sent the
girl on ahead of him.
He headed at a racing pace straight for
Yo Chai’s gambling house and pulled up
before it with clattering hoofs. From the
door he scanned the house swiftly but could
not catch a glimpse of Winifred. There
were other women in sight, plenty of them,
but most of them had the dark skin of the
Kirk made a rapid detour of
the house and paused at each table to sur-
vey the faces of the gamesters.
It seemed impossible that the girl could
have gone to any other place. But she was
not to be found. Wherever she had gone,
he had wasted too much time in the gaming
house of Y0 Chai to be able to trail her in
a night such as this. He decided, finally,
that she had followed some, nervous, wom-
anly impulse and ridden out into the night
to find quiet. He did not understand her
——he understood no woman, for that matter'
—and be readily dismissed the matter from
his mind. There was little danger that she
could come to any positive harm at the
hands of these chivalrous Southwesterners.
The Mexicans were a different matter, but
she would certainly have sense enough to
keep away from them.
Perhaps Kirk would have made a more
extensive search, but it happened that as
he completed his first round of the gaming
house his eye caught the whirling glitter of
the roulette wheel and he stopped, fasci-
nated. No one won: the man behind the
wheel raked in several piles of money which
lay stacked on the board before the wheel.
Between the vast sombrero of a Mexican
and the cap of a Portuguese laborer, he
pushed his way to the roulette wheel and
watched the next chance. The wheel stop-
ped, and as if it were a plea for him to
remain, the number was the red eleven.
This time at least half the gamblers were
playing the colors and a number of them
cashed in on the red. Kirk watched them
with keen interest.
The eyes of the little Portuguese bulged
with a permanent excitement and he was
continually moistening the palest lips Kirk
had ever seen—an ashen color as if they
had been burned with an acid; the bulging
eyes were conscious of nothing but the
wheel. As for the Mexican, he, also, kept
an unchanging gaze fixed on the bright
wheel, and his eyes glittered like a snake’s.
Yet he played with a sneer, as if he scorned
to either win or lose. He was staking
everything on one number, the black five,
and his stake was invariably a five-dollar
gold piece.
He never won. That accounted for the
steady sneer with which he played; it ac-
counted also for the terrible glitter in his
eyes. His money was nearly gone, yet he
had carried to the gaming house that night
all his own little fortune and the plunder
of a robbed and murdered comrade. Here
the price of the murder was slipping from
him. Even as Kirk stood there the Mexi—
can fumbled in vain through his pockets,
and at last produced a beautiful gold watch
for which the man behind the wheel al-
lowed him a hundred dollars. It was a
last, glorious stake. It went the way of
the rest. The Mexican turned and stalked
silently away; before morning another mur-
der would lie to his credit; before twenty-
four hours he would be swinging from a
a tree with a dozen men pulling on his
rope.
Some sense of all this flashed through'
the mind of Kirk. Also a touch of scorn.
He felt a supreme confidence that he would
beat this game. He pulled two twenty-


520 -
ALL- STORY WEEKLY.
dollar gold pieces from his pocket and
placed them on the red eleven. The wheel
spun, whirred to a stop. It was on his
number; and the man behind the wheel
made a little pause while he counted out
the win. A stake on a single number paid
thirty-six for one. Nearly fifteen hundred
dollars in gold was counted with lightning
speed and shoved across the board to him.
And Kirk, in his exultation, stared from
face to face in a grinning search for envy
or wonder. He found neither. One or
two blank eyes glanced up to him, but no
one acknowledged his luck; there was
merely a general discontent that the game
should have been delayed to pay this win-
ning.
Some one suggested in a growl that there
should be two players on the wheel. The
man who made the suggestion was a little
fellow without noticeable eyebrows, a re-
treating chin, and large, cowlike eyes. For
two days he had been playing the wheel
steadily, a dollar at a time, trying out a'
system. Already his system had cost him
a thousand dollars; but he cared not for
that; when he solved the problem all the
wealth of Y0 Chai would be his in a single
heart-breaking, glorious evening. Some-
times his lips twitched back, but he was
too intent on the wheel to actually laugh
aloud.
Kirk waited for four spins of the wheel.
Then he laid a hundred dollars on the red
eleven. Once more he won, and this time
the houseman glanced up sharply and con-
sidered the gambler with a moment’s care
before he paid. Slowly, this time—almost
painfully. He passed thirty-six hundred
dollars across the board to Kirk. And in
the meantime every eye was upon him and
there were no complaints for the waste of
time. To have won once, no matter what
amount, was nothing. Blind luck ac-
counted for that, no doubt. But to- win
big, twice in succession and on the same
number—it bore a suggestion that some-
thing more than luck was involved-a sys-
tem, the dream of the gambler’s heart.
The very possibility warmed every one’s
heart.
For every man’s hand is against the
house. The men nodded'to William Kirk;
1
they smiled; they bade him good evening
as if they saw him for the first time; they
let their eyes dwell on his face as if they
were anxious to remember it.
And a tall, blond man, fully as large as
Kirk, said: “A few more wins like that,
my friend, and you’ll have a little chat
with Dave Spenser before you get home
to-night.”
A chuckle answered this sally.
“ And who’s Dave Spenser?” asked Kirk,
carelessly.
“Why,” said the blond man, who stood
apart from the game rolling cigarette after
cigarette and looking on at the losses and
the winnings— “ why, they say he’s a chap
about your size, and he seems to know all
about who wins big money here at Yo
Chai’s. But haven’t you heard of Dave
Spenser?”
“ I think I have,” nodded Kirk, and as
he spoke, with careless ostentation he piled
a thousand dollars on the red to win.
“ Bandit sort of chap, isn’t he?”
“ I’ll tell a man,” said the big blond fel-
low with a sort of dry enthusiasm. “ I’ll
say he’s a bandit, eh?”
A snarl answered him from the players.
The snarl was cut short, for William Kirk
had won again; they looked at him now
with a wonder, half anxiety and half joy.
With one accord every one ceased laying
wagers. Kirk had won three straight ven-
tures. Even the chinless man stopped his
experiments and stood juggling his inevita-
ble silver dollar while his big eyes fixed
wistfully on the winner.
“ For that matter,” said Kirk, thrilling t0
the sensation he was causing, and allowing
his original stake and his late winnings to
lie still upon the red—“ for that matter,
sir, I’d rather like to meet this Dave
Spenser. I think they call him the Night
Hawk, also?”
“You’ll know him when you see him,”
said the blond man coldly. “He rides a
black horse—~and I hope you'll be able to
tell us what he looks like. Nobody’s ever
seen his face. I wouldn’t be surprised,”
he added for the wheel once more stopped
on the red—— “ I wouldn't be surprised if
you do meet the Night Hawk to-night.
Every man who goes out of here with more


CLUNG.
521


' than five thousand seems to be in danger.
But of course you’ll stay close about camp
to-night?”
“Do you think so?” said Kirk scorn-
fully, and without more than glancing down
he raked up the gold of his winnings in
handfuls. “ I ride out of camp and up the
ravine, and I do it to-night. What’s more,
my friend, I’ll be taking about ten thou-
sand with me.”
“ Well,” said the big blond stranger, and
he shrugged his shoulders carelessly, “ I’ve
warned you. The Night Hawk is fast with
his gun.”
“ Perhaps,” answered - Kirk.
beat my luck to-night.”
“ I wonder if he couldn’t?” said the
other. “I’ve a mind that Spenser would
try his hand.”
“ He can’t
Kirk, for answer, chuckled scornfullyt
and placed'his next wager, a veritable little
mountain of gold. It was on the black,
and the black won. By this time news of
the big gaming had spread about in a whis-
pering rumor and men stood in ranks six
deep to watch Kirk rake in his winnings.
The houseman was sweating with anxi-
ety and he stared at the newcomers in a
way half-baffled and half-defiant. Yet he
kept his voice cheerful.
“Once more,” he called, grinning at
Kirk. “ Let the coin lie, stranger, and try
your chances once more. The wheel’s with
you to-night and you’ve got an even
break.”
“ Not ,me," answered Kirk.
a night of it.”
He ’crammed the last of his winnings
into his money-belt.
“Besides,” he continued, as he turned
away, “‘I’ve got enough bait to make the
Night Hawk bite, partners, so I’m off.”
“ I’ve made

CHAPTER XXVI.
A STERN CHASE.
E shouldered his way through the
spectators, a murmur of applause
following him, for they love nothing
in the Southwest so much as a graceful
winner, or vice versa. When an old beg-
gar woman stretched out her hand to him
at the door of the house, he brimmed it!
with gold, and it was as if he placed a
crown on his own reputation. The aps
plause behind him was almost a cheer.
It set a tingling in the ears of William
Kirk to hear it; it made him square his
massive shoulders and walk with something
of a swagger; he would never have dreamed
that the applause of these rough men could
mean so much to him. But he was to
make three steps backward toward the
primitive and he had already taken the
first step. After all, the need for- careful
English and proper clothes is a shallow
necessity. He wm breaking from conven-
tion rapidly. Two great strides remained
before him.
The thought. of the Night Hawk was
before- him as he swung' into his saddle,
and he reined his mount and kept .him at
a standstill to enjoy the elastic prancing
of the steed. It was a fine animal, as fast
and as durable as any in Kirby Creek,
with a strength to support the bulk of
William Kirk and the agility of a polo
pony. He was about to touch his horse
with the spurs and set out for home when
the door of a house at the rear of the
gaming establishment opened and the figure
of a woman passed down the front step.
Into the lighted square stepped the figure
of Y0 Chai, bowing until his long pigtail
swept toward the floor; and now the wom-
an turned, the light struck her face in pro-
file, and Kirk recognized Winifred.
If his heart went cold its heat also quicke
ened amazingly. It was beyond compre-
hension: why had she gone to talk with the
squint-eyed Oriental? Then he knew. It
was because of Clung. And it meant,
moreover, that she wanted to see Yo Chai
in secret; that she did not trust either her
father or himself. At that William Kirk
swore with a sudden violence and bared his
teeth in the night. Winifred was in the
saddle, waving back to the Chinaman in
the doorway, and Kirk spurred his horse
alongside.
“ What’s the meaning of all this, Wini-
fred?” he called angrily.
She jerked her head toward him with a
cry of panic, then swerved her horse away
and went racing through the dimly-lighted


522
'ALL- STORY WEEKLY.
street. He spurred after her, stiil cursing;
a group of half-drunken men staggered out
Zfrom the pavement; he thundered through
them with loose rein, and they shrank from
the horse with shrill shrieks of terror. But
at the next corner a cart swung across the
street, so suddenly that he had to pull his
horse back on its haunches to avoid a ruin-
ous crash. He loosed a triple-jointed in-
,vective at the head of the cart-driver and
swerved around the wagon to follow his
pursuit.
But already Winifred was a dimly-bob-
bing shape in the distance of the night,
and as he followed her out of the town he
was still.growling. Perhaps she would be
out of the saddle and in her room before
he got to the house, and in that case she
might deny that she had been out that
night at all. He could not accuse her if
she wished to deny, and he felt, strangely
enough, as if he were surrendering some
sort of impalpable advantage over her.
It was because he rode so furiously, per-
haps, with lowered head, that a horseman
was able to ride out directly into his path.
He was past the outskirts of Kirby Creek
and already the shack was a black spot in
the darkness ahead when a voice shouted
‘at him. He looked up in time to catch the
gleam of steel by the starlight, and threw
his weight back against the reins. Yet in
his blind irritation he had no thought of
surrender. A black horse surmounted by
a white-masked rider faced him.
“ Hands up!" called the Night Hawk.
And Kirk whipped up his hands, but in
one of them came his revolver and it ex-
ploded in exact unison with the gun of the
bandit. A humming sprang into his face—
his hat was whisked from his head—and he
knew that the bullet had missed him by
an inch. With a yell like a hunting Indian
he spurred in at the Night Hawk, but the
latter, without attempting a second shot,
urged his horse to a gallop and passed di-
rectly by the side of Kirk. The maneuver
was so sudden, so unexpected, that the sec-
ond bullet of Kirk went wide. The snarl
of the bandit was at his very ear as he
whirled his horse and set out in pursuit.
A stern chase, on sea or land, is proverbi-
ally a long one. Yet Kirk might have
overhauled the Night Hawk in the first
half mile of the race if he had known the
ground over which they galloped. But it
was all new to him. The bandit seemed to
know it as if a sun shone to guide him.
He swirled here and there among the boul-
ders of the valley and again, again and
again, his course turned at sharp angles at
the very moments when Kirk fired. Every
shot must have gone wide by whole yards.
Now and again he used the spurs. but
in spite of the speed of his willing horse he
was losing ground, an inch at a time, and
the figure of the Night Hawk faded more
and more quickly into the darkness. There
was a fierce happiness in Kirk. The win-
nings at the gaming house of Y0 Chai were
nothing. Mere gold which weighted his
belt now and dulled his chances in the pur-
suit. How much greater thisl—kto have
conquered and put to flight the terror of
Kirby Creek! His pulses sang. He wished
that ten thousand people were watching
that pursuit while he drove the bandit like
'a whipped cur before him.
It was strange that the Night Hawk did
not attempt to fire back at him. He began
to guess that the bandit had been wounded
in that first exchange of shots. And the
thought was a new triumph. He had
beaten a great gun-fighter of the Southwest
with his own weapon, with the odds of a
surprise attack against him; now he felt
that there was not a single human being
in the world whom he would not face with
laughing confidence.
And strangely enough the picture that
rose before him of the most formidable
man he could conceive was not of a big-
shouldered fellow like himself, but of the
slender grace of Clung and the lightning
speed of his hands. T o be frank, in the
old days he had actually feared Clung ever
since the moment when he saw the strange
fellow whirl and drop from his seat with '
two guns in his hands as if they had been
conjured out of thin air. Now he wished
with all his soul that some test might come
of their courage and their strength and
their skill. lie laughed fiercely, between
his teeth, and buried the spurs in the flanks
of his snorting horse.
They had passed, now, from the big,


CLUNG.
523
5.5
boulder-strewn ravine of Kirby Creek and
entered the throat of a narrower valley.
Here the ground was more nearly level and
there was only a faint scattering of the big
rocks. The effect of this new ground told
almost at once. It was no longer necessary
for Kirk to spur his horse. The animal
seemed to lower toward the ground as it
lengthened its stride, and its beating hoofs
struck out sharp showers of sparks now and
again from the rocks underfoot.
The form of the Night Hawk, which had
dwindled to a formless, shifting shadow in
the night, now drew back rapidly to them,
‘ until Kirk could make out every detail of
the man as he bent forward over his saddle-
horn, apparently urging his flagging mount
to greater efforts. The big man yelled with
his triumph and poised his revolver for
another shot—when suddenly the form of
the Night Hawk, horse and man, vanished
from sight as completely as if the ground
had opened and sWallowed them.
.1

CHAPTER XXVII.
THE NIGHT HAWK.
ITH a chill of horror he pulled in
his horse and swung him about in
the opposite direction. There was
no Night Hawk in sight; but far down the
valley Kirk caught the clatter of- flying‘
hoofs. Not departing, but approaching.
Some one else had joined the pursuit, and
a hot wave of anger touched the big man
with the thought that some one else might
share in the glory of the capture which was
almost his.
The Night Hawk had vanished like a
puff of smoke, yet it was perfectly impos-
sible that he was gone. They had been
riding close beside the wall of the valley,
which at this point and for several hundred
yards on either side was a sheer cliff of
granite rising a full hundred feet from the
floor of the ravine. Had it been in any
other part of the wild ride it might have
been explained by the Night Hawk dodging
to the shelter of a shrub or a boulder. But
who could be absorbed into a block of solid
granite? There was one possibility, a crev-
ice in the face of the rock.‘
At the point where the Night Hawk had
disappeared the cliff jagged back at a per-
fect right angle. Along the face of the
rock, Kirk, dismounting, felt his way and
the horse followed at his heels like a dog,
puffing on his back. The wall of rock was
irregular, giving back here and there into
small crevices, but not sufficient to shelter,
even a dog. And so Kirk came to the
point where the cliff turned back in its
original direction. He faced about with a
sigh of despair.
And it was then that his foot struck a
stone and he toppled sidewise against the
cliff. His head struck heavily against the
stone; but his fall continuing he found him-
self lying fiat on the ground. Half dazed,
he started up, and once more struck his
head, more sharply this time. The mean-
ing of it dawned on him.
On the way down the face of the Cliff
he had passed this crevice in the rock, be-
cause he had been feeling on the level with
his own shoulder. It was, undoubtedly,
the entrance to the retreat of the Night
Hawk; this was how he had faded into the
face of the cliff. As he stood there, setting
his teeth for the adventure and gripping his
revolver butt, he heard the clatter of hoofs
sweep down the valley, past the mouth of
the crevice. He had a mind, at first, to
rush out and call after the stranger for
help, for certainly it was work for the best
two men who ever lived to heard the Night
Hawk in'his den; he would rather have in-
vaded the cave of a mountain lion armed
with a stick. For the spring of the moun-
tain lion might not be fatal; but the stroke
of the Night Hawk in that dark passage
would be death.
' Nevertheless it was this very greatness
of danger which fascinated Kirk and forced
him on in the adventure.
Courage of which he did not dream, be-
cause he had never tested it, existed in
him; and like all very brave men, danger
from which he might have shrunk had it
been less vital drew him on now by its
very terror. He began to feel his way
down the passage.
Almost at once it increased in height,
which, explained how the horse had dis-
appeared as well as the man; for it would


524
STORY WEEKLY.
be comparatively simple to teach a horse
to creep through the low opening of the
rock-tunnel. Once inside the mouth, the
animal could straighten to its feet.
He went on. The sand underfoot at
first seemed to mask the sound of his prog-
ress, but in a little time the senses of Kirk
began to grow attuned with the blanketing,
horrible dark. His eyes saw odd imagin-
ings in the darkness, glowing eyes winking
at him a yard away; his ears caught a grim
succession of sounds. The crunch of his
feet in the dry sand which had drifted into
the tunnel grew louder and louder until it
seemed great enough to alarm a sleeping
army. Other sounds besieged him: steps
approached him and stopped at a little dis-
tance, and he could hear the heavy, guarded
breath of the watcher.
The darkness has a palpable presence.
It pressed against the face of Kirk like
heavy moth wings, waming him back, stif-
ling his breath. A swift succession of
fancies rose in his brain. Perhaps, after
all, this was not the entrance to the cave
of the Night Hawk, but was the lair of
some mountain lion, :1 female with her
hungry brood. Perhaps that was the
heavy, guarded breath which he heard——
the monster crouching and ready to spring.
He stopped and listened. Not a sound ex-
cept the wild thundering of his heart.
Other thoughts tortured'him as he stole
on through that maddening dark which was
so thick that he continually stxtched out
his hand as if to brush a curtain aside.
He heard kindly voices of his friends. He
saw himself in some cheery club-room with
the deep laughter of men around him.
The drab matter-of-fact of business life
came ringing on his memory with the rush
of traffic and the clamor of the money—
seekers. What had he to do in this dark
tunnel in the desert? Well, there was
nothing to make him pursue the search.
He could turn and go back at any instant.
It was that very fact which spurred him on,
step after step.
Moreover, he thrilled with inconceivable
delight at the thought of how he had met
the redoubtable Night Hawk and worsted
him in single combat. That brief meeting
in the night was the second of the three
steps which William Kirk was to take to-
ward the primitive; and the third step was
directly before him. Now, like the wolf
which follows a wounded prey into the
most dangerous covert, so Kirk, with set
teeth and ti: illing nerves, went down the
passage, step by step.
A long trip in the telling, but a matter
of seconds only, until he saw before him
a winking of light which at first was grimly
like a glowing eye—so realistic that Kirk
dropped to his knees and poised his revol-
ver to fire. And it was then that he knew,
in a burst of joyous certainty, that he was
not afraid. He was excited, trembling with
nervousness. but not afraid; rather, the
prospect of the battle was to him a glad '
thing.
In an instant he was sure that the light
came from a point still farther down the
passage, and rising from his knees he ven-
tured forward again. Now the tunnel
widened constantly and finally made a
sharp turn to the right—so sharp a change
of direction that Kirk almost stumbled into
full view of the Night Hawk.
For it was be. He sat, apparently quite
at ease in the security of his retreat, beside
a small, open fire. The burning sticks lay
between three rocks of considerable size,
blackened by the soot of countless fires,
and forming a resting place for pots or
pans of the rough cookery of the outlaw.
Also, the rocks cast, on as many sides, vast,
shuddering shadows and one of them swept
now and again across the face of the Night
Hawk. As for him, he sat with his head
bowed so low that Kirk could not make out
his face, and he was busy wrapping a band-
age around his right hand. It was now
_ very plain what had happened in the en-
counter, earlier that night. The bullet
from Kirk’s gun had plowed a furrow
across the back of the Night Hawk’s hand;
and it was this which had prevented the
outlaw from opening fire on his pursuer.‘
Beyond the outlaw stood a black horse
of matchless size and beauty. Certainly
the mount of Kirk could never have
gained on such an animal as this had it
not been that the outlaw’s horse was weak-
ened by long and continuous riding. The
mark of the saddle was outlined by the


I:- i
.. ..‘
CLUNG.
gray salt of dried sweat along his sides
and back; and his ribs still rose and fell
from the exertion of the last burst of speed.
There was a continual rustling and crunch-
ing as the black stallion nosed among his
forage.
All these things Kirk noted with the first
glance, and still he delayed to make the
capture. He let that easy task wait and
rolled the taste of the pleasure of victory
_over his tongue. Still crouched in the
throat of the passage, he looked up by the
firelight to the rocks on all sides. It was
now perfectly plain how the refuge had been
formed.
A vast mass of rock—millions of {ODS—
had tilted to 'one side and settled against
its neighbor, crumbling close to it at the top,
but leaving this narrow crevice at the bot-
tom. A perfect retreat, for now Kirk heard
what seemed several musical voices in dis-
tant conversation; listening more intently,
he discovered the sound of running water.
Here were all things necessary to the Night
Hawk. The only inconvenience was the long
tunnel through which he must drag all his
supplies both for himself and his horse.
However, men and horses of the desert
are trained to subsist on rations of small
bulk. The safety of the place made up
amply for every disadvantage. Here at the
very doors of Kirby Creek the outlaw lived
in security and preyed when and where he
pleased.
"The bandaging of his hand was now com-
pleted and, after surveying the wounded
hand for a moment and nodding as if with
satisfaction the Night Hawk lifted his
head and William Kirk found himself
staring into the face of the big blond man
who had spoken with him in the gaming
house of Y0 Chai. A kindly face, now, as
then; though Kirk thought that he de-
tected in it a glint of wildness, but perhaps
that was the effect of imagination.
Still he delayed to jump out on the out-
law with his challenge and watched Dave
Spenser rise from the fire, pick up two sticks
of wood, ignite them over the flames, and
set them in turn in crevicesori the sides of
the rock-room. They had either been
soaked in oil or they were extremely resin-
ous, for they burned with a yellow and flar-
525
ing light. By that illumination Kirk saw
the strangest sight his eyes had ever dwelt
upon.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE SILVER VIRGIN.
OR the light of the first torch streamed
down upon the most costly altar that
had ever come to the dreams of Wil-
liam Kirk. A shelf of the natural rock was.
covered by a cloth of gold brocade, marvel-
ously thick, as the stiff-standing folds am-
ply proved; a treasure worth many thou-
sands for the price of the materials alone.
to say nothing of the art of the weavers.
On either side of this cloth stood two golden
candle-sticks, each a full foot and a half in
height and set with green and red points of
light—emeralds and rubies worth in them-
selves a king’s ransom.
Above these and crowning the altar was a
silver image of the Virgin with eyes of jew-
els, holding a golden Christ and crowned
with a halo of solid gold, all cunningly
worked. The robe of the Virgin was set
with a border of diamonds, glittering against
the dull 'silver of the image. It seemed to
Kirk that he had never seen so priceless a
relic.
Nor was this all, for the yellow light of
the second torch flared down the wall of the
cave and glimmered and lingered along a
whole row of jewels. Chains of gold, neck-
laces of pearl and diamonds, bracelets set
with emeralds and rubies—all these appar-
ently hanging on little pegs affixed to the
rock. The spoils of a thousand robberies
lay within a second’s sweep of the eye; and
the bandit now unrolled a small rug of
thick, soft weaving, and sitting upon it
cross-legged leaned his back against the
rock, filled and lighted a pipe, and between
puffs of blue smoke rolled his eyes content-
edly from treasure to treasure along his
walls. Turning at length, he dipped his
hand into a small box at his side and raised
it heaping with gold coins which he allowed
to rain back into the treasure-box—the
sweetest of chiming to the ear of William
Kirk.
Before that musical shower ceased Kirk


526
ALL- STORY WEEKLY.
leveled his revolver and called: “Hands
u ! .‘7
pThe bandaged hand of the outlaw raised
instantly above his head; from the fingers of
the other he allowed the last of the coins to
fall into the box. and then the second hand
went leisurely above his head.
"I was afraid.” said the Night Hawk,
“that you’d arrive before the place was
lighted up.”
And so saying he turned his face toward
the mouth of the tunnel from which Kirk
was now emerging with his leveled revolver.
It seemed to Kirk that the teeth of the
Night Hawk were set hard over his pipe
and that his eyes glinted with a light as hard
and brilliant as the sparkle of those jewels
which took the place of eyes in the forehead
of the silver Virgin. Yet if this expremion
were an actuality and not the effect of the
shifting, swinging lights of the torches, it
pased in an instant, and the face of Dave
Spenser was as good-natured and careless as
it had been when he warned Kirk in the
gaming house cf Yo Chai.
“ But you took so long coming down the
passage,” said the Night Hawk, “ that you
gave me just time enough to get ready to
receive you.”
So saying, he smiled upon his visitor and
Kirk looked curiously into the cold blue
eyes of the bandit. There were many pos-
sibilities in them, from stupid good nature
to wild, berserker rage. The calm of the
fellow alarmed him more that a gun.
“Do you mean to tell me,” he asked,
“that you knew I was coming down the
passage and yet you made no attempt to get
me there in the dark?”
“ In the meantime,” said the Night
Hawk, “ my arms are growing a bit tired.”
“ Lower ’em,” said Kirk, “ but keep your
hands quiet. I don’t trust you, Spenser,
and I’ll blaze away at the first crooked
move. Understand?”
“ Perfectly,” nodded the other. “ Be-
sides, I’ve lived too long to be a fool.”
And lowering his arms, he folded his
his hands on his knee.
“ I won’t tell you that you’re a cool
devil," said Kirk, “ because you know that
better than I; but why have you given up
the game, my friend?”
The outlaw yawnei leisurely and an
swered: " Because in my profession "—-
here he smiled—“ at man can only afford to
lose once. After that he’s done.” '
“ I don't follow that.”
“ When a man’s life is wanted by other
men,” explained Dave Spenser patiently,
“ and when he stakes his hand against the
rest of the world, he loses a good many
things—friends, companions, comforts. and
a long list of other things. He gets very
few in return, but there i." a compensation.
For instance, before I turned the corner I
was a poor gambler and a bad shot with any
sort of a gun. But after I killed my first
man all that was changed. To-day it takes
a pretty good man—somebody like Yo
C hai, for instance—to beat me at the cards;
and 1 never failed with my gun. I never
failed, because a single miss or a single slow
draw meant death, nine chances out of ten.
I killed the other man because I had to kill
him and the possibility of missing him never
entered my head.”
Kirk had heard' of this fatalism of the
outlaw world; it interested him sharply to
stand face to face with an exponent of the
doctrine.
“ Yet all the time,” went on the bandit,
“ I knew that there was some man in the
world who would finally beat me to the
draw; and once beaten I knew I’d be no
good. To tell you the truth, I’ve been
looking for that man for several years.“
“ Trying them out?" queried Kirk.
“ Not a bit, but simply wandering about,
watching the faces of men. When you’ve
gone wrong yourself it’s pretty easy to read
the faces of other men and tell a dangerous
fellow when you sight him. That was why
I talked with you in the house of Y0 Chai.
I knew you were a hard man—that you
would give me a run for my money if I ever
crossed you. And I wanted to keep away
from you, but somehow or other I couldn’t
do it. It was like the temptation to jump
when you’re high in the air—the imp of the
perverse.
“ So I spoke to you, and what you said
met all my expectations; you'd say that
that should have been enough to keep me off
your path, but it was the very thing which
made me wait for you on the uptrail. I


CLUNG.
527
couldn’t resist the temptation of trying to
learn whether or not you could beat me to
the draw and wing rne with your bullet.
The rest of it’s simple. You did beat me,
and once beaten I knew I’d be good. for
nothing hereafter. My confidence would
be gone; I’d pull my gun with shaking hand,
and some drunken Mexican would down me,
at last, in a saloon fight. Rather than that
I decided to end the game to-night and lose
all my cards to you. So I sat here and
waited for you to come.”
He puffed at his pipe with philosophic
calm and let his eyes wander down the row
of jewels on the wall—a brilliant train.
“ Of course,” mused Kirk, “ this is nine-
tenths a. lie, but I suppose there’s a germ of
truth somewhere in it.”
“ Naturally you’re bound to use your rea-
son and call it a lie, but in your heart, Kirk,
you know it’s the truth—all of it.”
“ What staggers me,” said Kirk, “ is that
you can so calmly prepare to go back to
town with me and be lynched—probably—
by the crowd. For you know how badly
they want your blood, Spenser.”
“ Go back to town?” queried the bandit,
in some surprise. “ I haven’t the least
notion of doing that.” '
“Want me to shoot you down here?”
asked Kirk grimly.
“Eh?” said the other, as if he could not
understand.
“Dead or alive, you go back to Kirby
Creek with me, my friend.”
“ Well, well!” said the Night Hawk,
“that’s a fine little speech, Kirk, but it
doesn’t ring true.”
fl why?"
“ Too Sunday-school. N 0, you won’t take
me back to Kirby Creek. Listen: why
should we dodge the issue like a pair of
four-flushers? Be frank with me, Kirk,
and I’ll be frank with you.”
“ I don’t quite follow you; but it’s get-
ting late and there’s a stiff ride before us.
Stand up, Spenser, and turn your back to
me. I’ll have to tie your hands.”
“ By Jove!” said the other with a sort of
wondering admiration, “I almost believe
you’d do it!” .
And he nodded, smiling, showing not the
slightest intention of obeying the order.
“Stand up!” commanded Kirk sharply.
“ Come, come! ” said Spenser, with much
the same tone of weary patience one might
use with a child. “ Sit down and lay your
cards on the table as I’ve done. There’s
no one here within earshot to repeat what
you say.”
“ You’rea devilish curious case, Spenser,”
said Kirk, smiling broadly. “ Just what
you have up your sleeve I can’t tell, but I’m
willing to listen. Why are you so sure that
I won’t take you back to Kirby Creek?”
“ Because,” said the Night Hawk, “ you
aren’t the sort of crook who plays short on
a pal even when he’s in your line of busi—
ness; you don’t use the law for a friend.”

CHAPTER XXIX.
TEMPTATION.
NDERSTANDING came to Kirk,
and he laughed, softly and low. He
sat down, still keeping the revolver
vigilantly turned on the bandit.
“As they say in the Southwest, you’ve
followed a cold trail, my friend. I’m not
in your line of business, Spenser.”
He chuckled again at the thought.
“ In fact, I’m only down here on a little
vacation. My business lies up North—and
it’s a good-sized business at that, Spenser,
and brings me in even more than your night-
riding has brought you. Why, Spenser, do
I look like a night-rider? Do I talk like
one?”
And he smiled with whimsical good na-
ture on the outlaw.
“ Well,” responded the Night Hawk, “ do
I look like a night-rider? Do I talk like
one?”
It silenced Kirk as effectually as a gag;
he could only stare.
“ My dear fellow,” said the Night Hawk,
“ I don’t mean that you are actually in my
line of business now; but before long you
will be.”
“ But why in the name of Heaven,” said
Kirk sharply, his amusement passing and
irritation taking its place, “should I pass
into outlawry? Do I need money? Have
I injured any man illegally? Do I fear the
law?”


528
ALL ~ STORY WEEKLY.
" For none of those reasons,” answered
the Night Hawk, “ but for the same reasons
that I started and stay in the game."
He waved his hand t0ward his treasures.
“Don‘t you suppose that I could sell a
tithe of these things and retire? Why, sir, I
have enough gold cash to settle down with a
gentleman‘s competence, and these odds and
ends of trinkets could be all velvet, Mr.
Kirk. For that matter, I wasn‘t poor when
I started this game.”
“ You mean to say it was deliberate
choice—this trade of robbery and murder?”
“ Is it deliberate choice,” came back the
Night Hawk with his first show of irrita-
tion, “ that makes the drunkard drink—
that makes him keep on drinking until he is
a moral leper, until he has lost the wife he
loves, and his children, and his friends, until
he has exchanged a place of respect and ad-
miration for universal contempt? Don’t
talk to me of choice! But the hunger for
adventure—the love of chance-the game
of life and death—the ridings in the night—
the glory of fighting against the hand of
every man—the thrill 0f the secrecy. These
are my treasures. I sit and gloat over them
at night like a miser. Not because they
are valuable, but because I’ve risked my life
and taken lives for almost every one of
them.”
He leaned forward and stretched his ban-
daged hand toward Kirk.
“ What! Kirk, haven’t you felt the
same thing? Nonsense! Of course, you
have! I read it in your face when I saw
you in the house of Y0 Chai. The same
wildness that’s in mine, no matter how we
mask it. I saw it and understood, perhaps,
even more clearly than you understand
yourself. The jaw and the eye of the man-
killer, Kirk, I saw it in you!”
And Kirk, staring at the outlaw, felt like
a child who hears a strange prophecy from
a mysterious soothsayer.
“ Yes,” nodded the Night Hawk, “ you’re
afraid. Of what? Of yourself, Mr. Kirk.
No, you won’t take me back to Kirby
Creek!”
“ By God!” exclaimed Kirk, “ I don‘t be-
lieve I can, Spenser; I feel as if I were being
hypnotized! ”
“ When a man sees the inside of himself,”
answered the other, “it often makes him
feel that way. But the strangeness of it
will pass; take a moment and think.”
In fact, Kirk needed time for thought.
The world spun before his eyes. He re-
membered the strange urge which had been
in him ever since he started on the trail of
Clung, freshening when he entered wild
Kirby Creek, and when he beat the roulette
wheel in Y0 Chai’s gaming house, and com-
ing like thunder on his ears when he beat
the Night Hawk in single encounter. And
now this seemed the logical end of the trail
-—outlawry. battle against other men, the
tricky balance of chance wavering this way
and that. He felt as if he were being
tempted and was about to fall. Something
like hate for the Night Hawk rose in him.
Common sense, in a cold wave, brought him
back to reason; but at the same time it
took a fierce and happy thrill from his
blood. He shrugged his shoulders and
scowled at the Night Hawk.
" You think you’ve got back to reason,”
nodded the outlaw, “ but you haven’t, Kirk.
You‘ll probably leave the cave to-night and
go back to Kirby Creek, but when you’re
safe in your house you’ll remember the se-
crecy of this place and the ease with which
you could play a double part and live two
lives, one by day and one by night. You’ll
remember that I’m out here waiting for you
to come back—and you’ll come, eventu-
ally.”
“' Are you sure?" asked Kirk, with an at-
tempt at a mocking smile.
“ Listen!” said the Night Hawk sharply,
like one _who wished to brush away a veil of
deceit with a single phrase. “Have you
never done wrong to another man? Think!”
The suddenness of the question wrenched
at Kirk’s inner self, and the answer burst
forth involuntarily: “ Clung!”
It was the turn of the Night Hawk to
start, and he stirred so violently that Kirk
wondered. ‘
“What of Clung?” he asked.
“I wronged him,” muttered Kirk, ‘5 but
he drew it on himself.”
The Night Hawk drew a long breath.
“ I’d rather see the devil than hear the
name of Clung,” he said. “Queer thing,
Kirk, but the only two men I’ve ever


CLUNG.
529.
dodged have been two Chinks: Clung and
that dark-eyed fiend Yo Chai. I’ve never
seen Clung, but I’ve heard of his work; I
have seen Yo Chai and I’d rather throw my
money away than play against him.”
“ I beat his wheel,” said Kirk, with a
rather boyish triumph.
“ But not Yo Chai,” said the other, un-
moved. -
“ However, I’ll try him later on.”
The outlaw shrugged his shoulders.
“You’re too rare a fellow to turn over to
the law, Spenser,” went on Kirk, “ and I
suppose I will leave you here. But I’ll
never come bac .”
it Why?"
“ Because if I can’t face temptation I
can at least run away from it.” _
> The Night Hawk smiled sourly.
“Try it and see. No, Kirk, you’ll be
back. This is the beginning of a partner-
ship.”
“ Perhaps,” grinned Kirk, “ and if it is,
here’s my hand on it.”
The outlaw held out his left hand and
they shook, clumsily.
“ I wonder if there’s a meaning in that
left-handed shake?” said Kirk, half in sus-
picion, half whimsically.
“ You see the other’s wounded?”
“ Let it go, but to continue our charming
frankness, Spenser, I’ve an idea that if I
turned my back you’d as soon knife me as
light your pipe.”
“ Before you’re through,” said the bandit,
“ you’ll understand me better than this.”
“ Perhaps. In the meantime let’s hear
some of the stories of your night-riding.”
“ Is this turning your back on tempta-
tion?”
“ The devil take temptation!
Virgin, Spenser?”
The eye of the Night Hawk passed like a
carms over the bright image. -
“ That,” he said, “ was the beginning.”
He unbuckled his gun belt and tossed it
across to Kirk.
“The first four notches are charged to
the silver Virgin, Mr. Kirk.”
Kirk drew out the long, shining revolver
and balanced it easily in his hand. The
weight was perfect; it seemed impossible
that a man could miss his shot with such a
That silver
weapon. He spun the cylinder; the action
was perfect.
“ I thought the same thing,” said the
Night Hawk, “ when I first put my hand on
that gun.”
And Kirk, glancing up sharply, frowned.
It was not the first time that'his mind had
been read that afternoon. Yet he said noth-
ing and examined the butt of the revolver.
There were no notches there.“
“ Under the barrel,” suggested the Night
Hawk.
Kirk obediently ran his forefinger under
the barrel of the weapon and found a row of
little notches filed slightly into the steel.
They came in swift succession and he num-
bered them with a growing feeling which
was neither horror nor awe. Once more he
glanced up at the outlaw, but those cold,
blue eyes were raised to the roof of the cave
in pleasant meditation.

A
CHAPTER XXX.
THE PONIARD OF PIOMBOTTI.
“ HEN the Aztecs were in their
W prime,” began the narrator, “ you
know that they used to make
their gods out of precious metals, and when
the Spaniards gave them a new creed they
retained their old habit wherever the con-
querors left them enough riches for the pur-
pose. The priests favored the habit of the
natives, because, in the long run, they were
the gainers. There was one of these native
metal workers who possessed such rare tal-
ents that his Spanish master sent him to
Spainwhen he was still aboy to study his
craft there. He came back with a high
reputation and was almost immediately en-
gaged by an Indian prince of enormous
wealth and a new convert to the faith. ‘
His work was the silver Virgin you see
there. Yet the wealth of his master was
not sufficient for the completion of the ln-
dian’s design. It' furnished the precious
metals, but not all the jewels for the border
of the robe and left the eyes of the Virgin
blank hollows. Each of them, you see, is
filled with an enormous black diamond.
“For half a dozen generations va'rious
pious men and women of wealth gave great
7 A-S


CLUNG. "
531 ,
enormous ruby; four great diamonds, each
worthy of being pendant at the throat of
a queen, faced the four sides where the
hilt joined the top of the blade, and the
grip was roughened with priceless emer-
aids. ,
“ A dainty little weapon, eh?” smiled the
Night Hawk, and he balanced the poniard
deftly, resting the point on the nail of his
thumb. That point was drawn to a needle
fineness, and Kirk'guessed that the slightest
jar would send the deadly little blade
' through the thumb-nail and through the
flesh of the finger below.
“ A toy for a king,” continued the Night
Hawk, and he narrowed his eyes like a
connoisseur to regard the poniard, “with
a story, moreover, attached to it. Among
the followers of Cortez was a one—armed
Italian. He had been in his time a great
warrior and had distinguished himself in a
'dozen pitched battles until in the last of
these he was literally cut to pieces and left
for dead on the field of battle. Afterward,
however, he recovered. His right arm had
to be cut off at the shoulder and the left
arm was badly torn with wounds—so badly
that it was only possible for him to use
one violent motion, an overhand motion like
a pitcher throwing a baseball in your coun-
try, Mr. Kirk.
“ Now, Piombotti, for that was his name,
having accumulated much money during
his days of fighting, retired to a country
villa and spent his days trying to develop
his left arm, for he hoped to swing a sword
with it, since his right arm was now hope-
less and since he could not wean himself
from the thought of further battles.
“He found, however, that he could use
his left arm in only this limited manner.
It was useless for anything except to throw
a knife. So Piombotti labored for hours
every day taking a knife by the point and
throwing it. He used a round-bladed
poniard so that he could hold it without
danger of cutting his fingers when he threw.
Finally he became so expert that he never
failed of his mark, and at length—this was
in the course of years of patient labor—he
could throw the poniard at a great distance
and with a perfectly miraculous accuracy.
“ Finally he .was insulted by a neighbor,
q
challenged the man to a duel in the lists,
and went to meet him clad in thin silks and
bearing his round-bladed poniard. The
other knight entered the lists in complete
armor—and armor in the sixteenth century
weighed close to a hundred pounds. He
was impregnable. Those near by thought
the one-armed man mad, but he insisted
on fighting the battle and finally urged the
armored knight with such terrific insults
that the knight charged him with lance at
rest. At this, Piombotti drew his poniard,
caught it by the point, and threw it. The
needlelike point pierced the open vizor of
the knight and drove through his eye to the
brain. He fell from the saddle dead.
“However, he had great connections,
and these persecuted Piombotti until he
had to flee secretly from the country, leav-
ing all his possessions behind him. He
took ship to Spain, won the sympathy of
Cortez for his singular accomplishment, and
for his strange history, and sailed with the
conqueror to Mexico. There he fought
through the wild battles which ended with
the destruction of Montezuma and his em-
pire. In every conflict Piombotti exposed
himself recklessly, and every time he threw
his poniard it brought down a man. A hun-
dred times, I suppose, blood has spurted
over the length of this poniard, sir.
“ And Piombotti came to have an almost
superstitious regard for the weapon. Cor-
tez rewarded his followers for their deeds,
and Piombotti came in for a large share
of these rewards. For every fresh exploit,
lands and treasures were showered upon
him, and each time he added something to
the adornment of his poniard. Every one
of these emeralds—seel—means at least
one death; a score of lives, perhaps, went
to the purchase of this big ruby—red, you
see, as blood—until half the wealth of
Piombotti—and he grew rich as a Jew—-
was lodged in his poniard.
“When I got the poniard I was more
interested in the story of Piombotti, I think,
than I was in the jewels. I used to prac-
tise as he must have practised with it,
throwing it at a slab of soft wood; and
though I never attained a tithe of his ex-
pertness, still the poniard became in my
hands a pretty sure weapon. Yes, many


CLUNG.
533
the cave and show them what he had done
and turn over to them all the treasure. All
except the priceless poniard. That he had
certainly earned as a memento of his work.
He would turn it all over to the law except
this one thing. But why turn it over im-
mediately? There was no hurry. The law
had waited a long while for its victim.
It could wait a little longer. In the mean
time for a few days he could ride out here
often at night and take care of the black
charger. He could sit in the evening against
the rock where the deadt Night Hawk now
lay and survey the jewels of the silver
Virgin and the poniard of Piombotti. He
could retell the stories of Dave Spenser;
he could imagine other tales to fit each of
the possessions. Yes, decidedly, the law
must wait.
In the mean time, the body of the ban-
dit must 'be disposed of. He heaved the
inert 'bulk over his shoulder and strode
with his burden farther down the passage.
The glimmer of the torches faintly il-
lumined his way. In passing he raised one
from its crevice and went on, bearing the
light high above his head. Almost at once
he passed a pool of water, looking as black
as ink by the torch-light. On the other
side of it the pamage descended, dropping
more and more swiftly, until the water from
the spring, which ebbed over the edges of
the pool, trickled with increasing sound
from ledge to ledge of the tunnel.
At a considerable distance his foot rolled
on a pebble and flung him to his knees;
he dropped the torch in' his fall and'
stretched out his left hand to break the
descent, but the hand plunged into a
vacuum and he crashed down on his breast,
his head overhanging nothingness.
The torch was now spluttering out, but
he raised and twirled it until it flamed
brightly agein; then he extended it over the
ledge. Below him stretched a narrow pit,
walled by jagged rock. He could not see
to the bottom of the pit, but he heard the
far-off tinkling of water as the little stream
splashed in the pool at the bottom.
The stumble had saved him. Another
step would have precipitated him into the
abyss.
The thought made his knees buckle be-
neath him and he sat down until the blood
once more circulated freely. At least, this
was a ready-made grave for the Night
Hawk. He rose again, dragged the body of ‘
Spenser to the edge, and sent it toppling
down into the blackness. There was an
appallineg long pause; then the loud, dis-
tant splash of the heavy form into the
waters of the pool below.
With a certain giddiness making his head
spin, he stumbled back up the tunnel to
the wider space which the outlaw had used
as 'his cave. Compared with the rough
passage and the pit which ended it, every-
thing -in the cave was like a welcoming,
familiar face to Kirk. It was a home-
coming.
By this time the greater part of the night
was gone, and heaprepared to start back to
Kirby Creek. It was not easy to leave the
riches of the cave. He decided to take
what he could conveniently dispose about
him, and he selected the rich poniard of
Piombotti, the revolver of the Night Hawk
with its telltale notches and its matchless
balance and action, and a handful of broad
gold pieces from the box beneath the figure
of the silver Virgin. He came within an
ace of prying from' their setting some of
the larger jewels with which the Virgin
was bedecked, but he shrank'from this at
the last'moment as from a sacrilege.
Laden with his spoil, he started down
the passage. Theblack stallion whinnied
after him and he called back in a low-voiced
adieu.
At the mouth of the tunnel he found
his horse standing with head high facing the
east, for the dawn had made its first faint
beginning, and the mountains rose impres-
sively tall and rough and black, every
indentation distinctly outlined. Once in the
saddle he set a brisk pace back through the
crisp, cool air of the morning. Not that he
was hurried; he would reach the cabin long
before Sampson and Winifred were awake,
but his present mood brooked no slowness
of action. '
Certainly he was happier than he had
ever been in his life. He felt like a man
who has spent many days climbing a range
of mountains until at last he stands on the
summit and looking down on all sides he


CLUNG.
535
V"
Y. He faced Clauson, saying: “He is the
greatest of the great.”
“Well,” said the marshal, grinning, “ I
'dunno who you’re laughin’ at, “Clung, me
or the damn idol; but either way it’s bad
medicine.” >
He broke off and looked leisurely around
the apartment. His eyes gleamed with ap-
probation.
“ When a Chink puts on style,” he said,
" he don’t spare the coin. There ain’t no
way of doubting that. Why,“ Clung, if you
had a decent chair to sit on, and a table
to eat off of that a man could put his
legs under, and a calendar or two hangin’
on the wall, I wouldn’t mind stablin’ here
myself.”
“ I shall bring you everything you .wis ,”
said Clung, and with that he tapped a num-
ber of times on his gong, in a sort of tele-
graphic code.
The sound scarcely died away before a
withered little Chinaman entered at a sort
of dog-trot and arranged on an ebony table
at the side of Marshal Clauson a tall bottle
of rye whisky, flanked with seltzer, water,
and glasses.
“If I drink some of this,” grinned the
marshal, “ I won’t be thinkin’ of your fur-
niture, Clung?”
“It is red magic,” said Clung, pouring
a drink and holding it for the marshal.
The latter tasted it, sighed deeply, and
then swallowed the glasful.
“And how,” he 'queried, wiping his lips,
“how in the name of sixteen saints did
liquor like that come to Kirby Creek?”
Clung filled his visitor’s second glass.
“Clung brought it,” he said, “for he
hoped that Marshal Clauson would visit
him.”
“ Clung,” grinned the marshal, “I like
to hear you talk even when I know you’re
lyin’. Here’s kind regards!”
And he downed the formidable drink at
a gulp.
“ How’s business?
Clung?”
“At first,” said Clung, “ I made much
money, but now for four days—five days—
Ihave lost steadily and much. There is
'one man who wins it all at roulette. Hi5
lime is William Kirk.”
Robbing the miners,
“' Him!” grunted Clauson. “ That swine
still around?”
“ He always wins,” said Clung unemo-
tionally. “The gods must love him.”
“ Then,” said the marshal, “ they love a
skunk. I tell you what, Clung, a man
that ’d do what he done to you is a coyote
in a man’s skin.” -
“ It was only one thing,” said Clung dep-
recatingly.
The marshal raised an argumentative
forefinger. I
“ It don’t take more ’n one thing to show
the color of a feller’s insides. You can
lay to that. And now this swine is up here
breakin’ your game, Clung?”
“ Clung has very little left, but he
waits?”
“ For what?”
The head of Clung tilted back and he
smiled.
“ Clung waits until William Kirk leaves
the roulette wheel and comes to play at
Clung’s table.”
- The marshal grunted his admiration.
“ And then?” he asked.
Clung waved his almost transparently
frail hand.
“ It will be very pleasant,” he said, and
smiled again. '
“Pleasant?” bellowed the marshal with
great enthusiasm. “It ’ll be a slaughter,
lad, and I’d give an eye to see you trim
him.”
He grew more sober.
“But I got to get down to business,
Clung. First, have you got .time to help
me out on a deal?”
“ The time of Clung is the time of his
father.”
“ That sounds good to me. Now, Clung,
you’ve heard a pile about the Night Hawk,
which some think is a gent named Dave
Spenser, without anybody having seen his
face?”
“ Clung has heard.”
“ Kirby Creek is in my district, and I’ve
' got to stop the Night Hawk or I‘m through.
That’s straight. I lost a pile of rep when
you got away from me. I’m losing more
every day this Night Hawk keeps on op-
erating. Clung, you’re handy to this spot.
All I ask is for you to keep them eyes of,


636
ALL~ STORY WEEKLY
yours open, and when you get any dope
slip it on to me. I’ll come up from Morti-
mer and try my hand with the Night Hawk.
When the shooting party comes maybe
you’d trot along with me. I’d rather have
you than any man that ever packed a six-
gun.”
“ Clung will be all eyes. A little time
ago he followed a man he thinks was the
Night Hawk, and the man disappeared in
a ravine. Clung will follow him again.”
“ That,’z sighed the marshal, “is simple
and to the point, and I wouldn’t be in the
Night Hawk’s boots for all the gold in
Kirby Creek. One more little talk with
your red magic, Clung ”——here he poured
and swallowed a prodigious drink—“ and
I’m on my way.” .,
He puffed out his whiskers like a panting
walrus.
- “I’ll be thinkin’ of you often, Clung,
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK.
and I’ll be dreaming of your liquor, too.
S’long.”
“ Good~by,” said Clung, and he attended
his guest to the door.
“ Ch’u men chien hsi,” he said.
“Whatever that means,” grinned the
marshal from the door-step, “ the same to
you, and a million dollars in luck, my lad.”
“And is there any trail of the Night
Hawk'to follow?” asked Clung. '
“ Only two things we know. One is that
he packs a gun with notches filed on the
under side of the barrel. The other is that
he lifted about a thousand dollars in twen-
ties from Buck Lawson, and old Buck had
marked every one of the coins with a little
knife cut on the tail side of the coin. If
one of them marked coins comes across
your table, Clung, you can know that it
comes straight from the Night Hawk.”
And he vanished into the night.
Don’t forget this magazine is issued weekly, and
that you will get the continuation of this story without waiting a month.


abashed, supremely out of place, ir-
ritany warm. He hadn’t been inside
of a church for seven years. Accordingly,
his was the sensation of a boy caught rifiing
the family cookie jar.
Because of this religious delinquency, the
Southern department store operator was ab-
solutely sure that the eyes of every church
member in the congregation were focussed
accusingly on the back of his neck, just
above the collar rim. There a spot burned
feverishly red, shooting facets of color into
his face.
GAYLORD MOORE felt generally
With one hand he grasped gingerly the
corner of a hymn book, which be was shar-
ing with the consistently proper sister of
Bill Breen, house salesman for Ivetson and
Sundheim, remnant wholesalers.
The Breens were directly responsible for
his front pew position. As their guest he
had submitted tamely. When Mrs. Breen
had suggested evening service there was a
high note of finality-in her voice. And
among other things Moore had noticed that
when Mrs. Breen suggested there was im-
mediate concurrence.
Bobby Breen, four, also warm. but more


BLACKMAIL. 83
spite of him, why didn’t he come back
here to report?”
“ Perhaps he’s still on his trail.”
“ But he was told not to let him get out
of the building. There‘s nothing for me to
do, I suppose, but wait here.”
Evan waited in the librarian’s office until
after lunch, but Charley neither came back
nor sent any word. By the end of that time
Evan, divided between anger and anxiety,
was in a fever. He decided to make a trip
home. \
By the time he reached Washington
Square anxiety had the upper hand. The
gang must have got the better of Charley,
- he told himself, or he would have had some
word.
Evan had had experience of the desperate
lengths to which they were prepared to go.
Would they now put their final threat into
execution upon“ his hapless friend? Evan
blamed himself bitterly for having sent
Charley into danger.
“If I do not hear from him during the
afternoon, I’ll send out a general alarm at
police headquarters,” he thought.
When Evan opened the door of 45A, Miss'
Sisson, according to her custom, stuck her
head out into the hall.
“I suppose you haven’t seen Mr. Straik-
er," said Evan. ‘
“ Yes I have,” she answered. “ He came
in about lunch time."
“ What! ” ' said Evan staring.
“He came in and packed his trunk and
took it away in a taxicab. Said he was
going away for a few days. Wouldn’t tell
me where he was going.
“Seemed funny to me he wanted his
trunk if it was only a few days, but of
course I couldn’t object, for his rent is paid
up and he left his furniture anyway, though
that wouldn’t bring much.
“ I will say he acted funny, though, to an
old friend like me. Wouldn’t give me any
information.”
Evan stared at the woman as if he
thought she had suddenly lost her mind.
Then without a word he ran up the three
flights of stairs.
A glance in Charley’s rdom confirmed
what she had told him. Things were
thrown about in the wildest confusion. But
all Charley’s clothes were gone, as well as
all the personal belongings that he treasured.
Evan never gave a thought to the five
thousand dollars; what cut him to the quick
was the suggestion that his friend had be-
trayed him. There is nothing bitterer.
“ I needn’t have been so anxious about
him,” he thought grimly. “This is more
like treachery!” \
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK. Don’t forget this magazine is issued weekly, and
that you will get the continuation of this story without waiting a month.
\ o i U
U
LOVD'E’S ETERNITY
BY H. THOMPSON RICH
AST night a bird flew through the hall,
' Hung like a shadow on the wall
One moment—and was gone.
Swift 5 a bird is love to pass,
Swift as the turning of the grass.
As summer comes, so summer goes,
Nor heeds the petals of the rose-—
All crimson on the lawn.
‘ Then come, why think of days to be?
To-day is our eternity.


' .Ma'x Brand
Allin.“ of "The Ulla-d.“ " Min! of the Night.” " Trailin'." etc.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
DRUNK.
“ ISTEN,” said John Sampson, and held
up a warning forefinger. .
Then from the next room there
came a thrilling voice:
“ What made the ball so fine?
Robin Adair;
What made the assembly shine?
Robin Adair!"
“ She’s up at las ,” commented Kirk.
“Well, isn’t it time? Near noon, Samp-
son." ‘
“Time!” grunted the financier in dis-
gust. “ Kirk, there isn’t an eye left to
you, no, nor an ear! D’you ever hear of a
girl waking up at noon and starting to
sing?”
“Why,” said Kirk, “Winifred always
had a'cheerful disposition."
“ Until she started on the trail of Clung,”
corrected her father.
“That’s right again."
“Well?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“ Kirk, you’re a total loss.”
H SOrry."
“The devil you are! Sorry for nothing
these days. You go about with your head
in the air and fire in your eyes like a man
about to make a million dollars. What do
you do with yourself? Still spending your
time in Y0 Chai's house?”
“ Part of it,” said Kirk, non-committally.
“ In fact,” said the gloomy millionaire,
“ you act so much like Winifred that some-
times I think there's a secret between you.
Out with it, Kirk! What’s the secret?”
The big man started and eyed the other
carefully for a moment. .Then, convinced
that there was no covert suggestion in the
remark, he answered: “'No secret. None
between us, at least. You’ve grown suspi-
cious, Sampson. This Clung business is
getting on your nerves.”
“I’ve lost twenty pounds,” groaned
Sampson, “ because of that damned man-
killer. You came down here to help me.
Why the devil don’t you do it?”
“ Tell me where to start," suggested
Kirk.
“If I knew where to start for him,” re-
sponded the other, “ I’d send a posse and
not one man."
His manner changed; the father came
into his voice as he laid a hand on the
shoulder of Kirk and went on: “As a
matter of fact, I’m seriously worried, Kirk.
and I need your help.”
“ You can count on me to the limit."
“ I know I can, I know I can, my lad.
and there’s a lot of comfort in the thought.
I always prized you, Kirk, in a good many
ways—but since you’ve come South this
time you seem much more of a prize than
before. You seem more alert—stronger~
keener—more of a man: you seem. in a
word, to have come into your own!"
“ I think,” said Kirk softly, and his eyes
smiled rather grimly into the distance.
v “ that you’re right.”
“Enough of that.” went on Sampson.
“My trouble just now is less with Clung
than with Winifred herself. Listen! You’d
think the girl were in love! That phrase.
there! Gad! she could bring down a New
York audience with singing like that!"
This story began in the All-Story Weekly for April 10.
oi
84


CLUN G.
85
“ She could,” nodded Kirk. “ She’s dev--v
ilish rare in more ways than one, sir.”
“ Just what do you mean by that?”
“ Why, nothing.” I
. “Here’s my point, Kirk. You know
how little she’s said about Clung the last
few days—ever since we reached Kirby
Creek, in fact?”
“Yes. But she’s found something else
to think about.”
“ You don’t know her, lad. She’s a veri-
table bulldog for hanging on to an idea.
Nothing but death will part her from
Something she wants. Haven’t I raised her,
confound it? Well, Kirk, I’ve wondered at
the way she allowed Clung to lapse, and
I’ve watched her closely for the last few
days, and last night after she’d gone to bed
I sat up for a time thinking. Finally I de-
cided to confront her pointblank with a
question. I went to her door and knocked.
Gad, man, what do you think happened?”
“'There was no answer,” nodded Kirk.
Sampson started violently. _
“By the Lord,” he cried, “ you and she
are playing some sort of a midnight game
together! You’re right, there was no an-
swer, and when I opened her door and went
in I found the room empty and there was
no sign- of Winifred. The bed had not been
touched. Kirk, what’s the meaning of
this?”
“I think I can tell you-in a way.”
“ What do you mean, ‘in a way’?”
“ Just this. The first night we came here
you remember we came back pretty late
after going down to Yo Chai’s gaming
house and seeing the shooting scrape?”
“Exactly. The same night you went
back and played the wheel. That’s what
started you on this gambling, Kirk.”
“I wasn’t the only one who went back
to Kirby Creek that night.”
“Winifred!” gasped Sampson.
“ Exactly. She left the house just before
I did. I saw her horse disappear; before
I could get mine out and follow her she
had disappeared toward the town. I rode
hard for Yo Chai’s place, but she wasn’t
there. I stayed a while to play the wheel,
you know, and on my way back I saw Wini-
fred come out of a house and climb on her
horse.”
“Come out of a house?” repeated
Sampson, white of face.
“ Exactly! I rode up to her. But she
turned her horse and galloped like mad up
the valley. She beat me home.”
“ And you said nothing about it to me?”
asked Sampson hoarsely.
“If she had wished you to know it,
she would have told you,” said Kirk coldly,
“I waited for her to speak.”
“ God!” breathed the elder man, and
straightened to his feet.
He sat down again with a thump, and his
eyes remained mutely fixed upon Kirk.
“ You think—” he whispered.
“I think nothing,” said Kirk” and
shruged his shoulders “But the house
she came out of that night was Y0 Chai’s.
Perhaps Clung was inside it.”
“Damn him!”
“ It’s only a guess.”
“ It must be right,” groaned Sampson,
“ and now she knows everything about
Clung—~knows he’s white—knows—”
He stopped and blinked his eyes.
“ Kirk, I’m in hell!”
“ Nonsense,” said the younger man, and
he frowned. “I’d trust Winifred to the
end of the earth. If I thought—”
“ If you thought Clung was in Y0 Chai’s
house,” suggested ,Sampson dryly, “ you’d
go there with a gun to find him, and be
shot from behind a door, eh? I suppose you
would, Kirk. That’s your way. But I
know that Winifred has been at Yo Chai’s
house every night for this week or more and
she’s been seeing some one there who—”
He looked to Kirk for help, but the
other was blank.
“ Don’t you see?” suggested Kirk. “ She
likes to do strange things. She’s gone se-
cretly to see Clung because he’s an out of
the way sort? That’s all there is to it; and
she doesn’t dream that he’s white. If she
did, don’t you suppose that she’d run to
you to tell it? What keeps her from
speaking to you now is because she knows
you’re only interested on the surface in a
half-breed outlaw.” ,
“I’ll follow her to-night,” said Samp-
son, hurriedly. “ I’ll follow her to-night,
if she goes out, and if she goes into the
house of Y0 Chai—” '


ALL- STORY WEEKLY.
“ Well?”
“ Then God help me!”
“Bah!” snorted Kirk. and he rose as if
this conversation wearied him. “ In the
mean time I’m going to find out all about
Clung—if Yo Chai really has him in shel-
m."
‘“ How?”
“ Well, you know that I've been playing
the machines in Y0 Chai‘s place?"
“ Yes, and beating them with fool, blind
luck]!
“And to-night I’m going down with a
mule load of gold and play old Yo Chai
himself. I‘m going to break him, and after
he’s broke, I’ll offer him all his money back
if he’ll tell me what he knows of Clung."
“And if he tells you?”
“ I’ll take Clung and serve him a hand-
some horsewhipping and send him out of the
country. The puppy needs a lesson for
playing about with Winifred in this man-
ner.”
The elder man searched the face of Kirk
with the beginning of a sarcwtic smile
which gradually died away.
" By gad, Kirk,” he muttered at length,
"'I almost believe that you’re man enough
to do it. And then Winifred? You’re my
last hope with her, Billy!”
“ When the time comes,” said Kirk calm-
1y, “ I’ll go to her and take her.”
“ Take -Winifred?" gasped the financier,
his emphasis rising.
“ Once," said Kirk harshly, “she prom-
ised to marry me. It’s a bond on her still.
She’s my woman!"
“ Are you drunk, Billy?" asked the other
anxiously.
“ Drunk?" thundered Kirk suddenly.
“Yes, I am drunk!"
He threw his great arms above his head
in a gesture of exultation.
“Drunk with life, Sampson, and drunk
with living. I‘ve crept out of the little rat-
hole I used to call the world, and now I’m
seeing things as they really are. Drunk?
If this is drunkennem I hope to God I’m
never sober. Winifred? Bah! What is she
but a woman—a pretty girl. When I want
her, Sampson, I’ll come and take her!”
“There will be a fine little war over
this," answered Sampson. “I suppose I
ought to be irritated to hear you talk of
my daughter like this, but I’m not. It
rather pleases me in a way to think of the
little tyrant finding a master. But, gad,
Kirk, what a war there’ll be when you
come to her like this! "
He chuckled at the thought.
“ D’you think so?" asked Kirk carelessly.
“ Not a bit, sir, not a bit. We‘ve handled
our women too gently. What they need is
a mmter who’ll show ’em their right place
-—and that place is at the foot of the table.
S-long.”
“ Wait! ” called Sampson, and he trotted
up to the side of the big man. “ I’ve got a
dozen things to ask you." I
“ Mariana ! " snarled Kirk. “ To-day I’m
busy. I’m going down now to break Yo
Chai! "‘
CHAPTER XXXIV.
rm: LOAD or corn.
IS broad shoulders bulked in the
H door, blocking it from side to side,
and then he swung down the path
to the stable. In a few moments he was
trotting down the road to Kirby Creek
leading a pack mule behind him. It was
a small pack, but a weighty one, for it
contained in gold all the tens of thousands
of dollars which Kirk had won from the
gaming house of Y0 Chai.
In the street of the mining town many
men knew him, for he had grown the most
conspicuous figure in the gaming house of
Y0 Chai. They shouted their salutations
and he waved a hand back at them. A
tipsy miner stopped him and proffered a
drink from a flask. Kirk accepted and half
drained the flask at a single swallow.
“Where you bound?" asked the miner,
who was too drunk to recognize the lucky
gambler. '
“ Bound for Yo Chai’s,” said Kirk, “ with
a mule~load of gold. I’m going to break
him.”
It was too spectacular an announcement
to be overlooked. Rumor took up the tale
with her thousand tongues, and the tongues
of rumor in Kirby Creek did not whisper.
They shouted aloud and men heard the an-


' CLUN G.
87.
nouncement with a joyous chee'r. This was
better than gold-digging. Some_of them
had seen Yo Chai break Skinny Wallace.
All of them had heard the tale. Now they
flocked to see the 'Chinaman “get his.”
They swarmed across the street in front of
William Kirk like the vanguard of an ad-
vancing army. And Kirk, his flannel shirt
open -at the throat, his face darkened with
the unshaven growth of two days, cheered
them on, and they cheered him to the echo
in return.
Into the doors of Y0 Chai’s place the
host poured. Kirk dismounted at the en-
trance, tethered his horse, and strode on
through the doors, leading the pack-mule
straight to the center of the gaming house.
The place was in riotous tumult. From
every table the players stood up, staring
at the strange host of invaders, and finally
joining their voices to the clamor. The
drunken miner who had stopped Kirk in the
street now went forward like a herald. In-
_ stead of a baton he carried his nearly empty
whisky flask. Climbing onto the dais at
which Y 0 Chai sat, he flourished the flask
around his head and brought it down on the
table; it crashed in a million splinters _of
shivering glass, and the gamblers at this
centrakplace shrank back from the deadly
shower.
“Get up!” yelled the drunkard. “Get
up and let a gen’lmun with a mule-load of
gold play ag’in’ the damn’ Chink!”
They rose willingly enough and turned to
gape at Kirk, who stood with his mule
behind him Wagging its long ears. Clung
rose also, and 'smiled on the drunkard;
under that cold smile the fumes of whisky
receded suddenly from the fellow’s mind.
“ Get off the platform,” said Clung
gently.
“ D’you think,” yelled the miner, “that
any damn’ Chinaman this side of hell can
make me take water?” -
The smile persisted on the face of Clung
and his head was tilting back.
“Quick!” he said.
The miner staggered backward, keepingv
his eyes, as if fucinated, on the face of the
proprietor. He tripped on the edge of the
platform and tumbled headlong to the floor,
raising a shout of joy from the crowd.
“Take him,” said Clung.
Two servants grasped him by either arm
and dragged him from the place. The hub-
bub rose to an inferno. Through it the
voice of Clung cut like a knife, not loudly,
but with a sharp, metallic sound distinct
from the hoarse roaring of many throats.
“ Silence!” he calls. '
He repeated it once more, and the con-
fusion died away, falling to a hum in the
farther corners.
“ Yo Chai,” said Clung, turning his smile
upon Kirk, 5f has been waiting for you.-
Name your game.”
Kirk stepped onto the dais, laughing.
“ For a game chap,” hesaid to Yo Chai,
“ you rank with the best, and I hate to do it.
But a gambler takes his chances. And be-
cause of that I’m going to break you, Y0.”
“This,” said Clung, “ is pleasant talk to
Yo Chai. What is the game?”
“ Something quick,” answered Kirk.
“ Stud-poker, eh?” -
“ You can pick your dealer,” said Clung,
and waved toward the crowd.
Kirk chose at random from the faces
nearest him, and he selected a small man
with white hair and beard and wrinkling
eyes that shone with honesty. They settled
at once around the table. So the game be-
gan.
As for the rest of the house, there was not
a single table in action. Every one stood
up and waited. A self-elected talesman
mounted the dais where he could command
a view of the game and proceeded to en- ‘
lighten the listening crowd in a voice of
thunder: “ Ace to Yo Chai, seven of spades
to Kirk; jack of hearts to Y0, king of clubs
to Kirk, etc.” I _.
And people cheered when Kirk won and
groaned when he lost.
Which was not often. He won the first
three hands in a row and the table in front
of him was piled high with chips, for the
betting ran a hundred dollars‘at a clip. It
was worthy of Monte Carlo at its reckless
best. The fourth hand Yo Chai won. The
fifth hand Kirk wagered a thousand on a
pair of sevens, was called b Yo Chai, and
won over a pair of fours. be whole house
went wild.
Manifestly there was little of skill in


88
ALL- STORY WEEKLY.
1
this. It seemed the point of honor for each
man to take the bet of the other, no matter
how high the bet might be placed. It was
gambling raised to the nth power; it satis-
fied even the hardened heart of the South-
west.
The spectators began to pool their money
and gamble recklessly on the side, for the
high stakes of the central table set the pace.
Gold gleamed and rang on all sides, and
changed hands as the voice of the stentorian
announcer boomed out the results. The
gold on the back of Kirk’s mule had not
been touched, and the chips before him
were stacked high.
Already the spectators were beginning to
imagine what the place would be in the
hands of the new owner. He would be hard
to beat, they all agreed. And they waited
breathlessly for the time when Yo Chai
should rise with his head tilting back and
his lazy smile announce: “ Gentlemen, the
bank is broke! ” Y
A red-letter day even among the sensa-
tions of Kirby Creek. Something to be
remembered. A dozen men lined the bar
drinking the luck and health of Kirk.
Every man’s voice and hand was against
the “ damn’ Chink.”
But the certainty with which he
had entered the house wa rapidly
leaving the heart of Kirk. It was the
unshakable calm of Y0 Chai which
daunted him. It was the very size
of his own winnings which unnerved him.
First it began to seem to him that Yo Chai
had resources which even his greatest win-
ning could never drain. Then. again, he
felt that the half smile on the lips of the
seeming Oriental was a continual mockery.
Perhaps Yo Chai had a reason for consent-
ing to this game. He wondered if all his
successes had been purposely planned so
that he would be led on and on until he
began to lose, and then he would give
doubly all that he had taken.
Surely there must be some trickery in the
thiIICSS, hidden from sight. How else
could any mortal man, Occidental or Orien-
tal, sit there so calmly and see good dollars
depart by the thousands. He began to hate
Yo Chai; he began to wait for the tum-
ing of the game.
Then he wished that he had not chosen
this day for the game. Then that he had
not brought so much money to wager.
Then that he had not brought more. He
decided to cash in the chips that were be-
fore him, and was on the very point of doing
it and turning away, when he remembered
the breathless crowd which waited for his
victory. He could not leave. He turned
in his chair and saw on every side scores of
burning eyes fatened upon him, waiting,
waiting. They burned their way into his
brain. He called for a drink.
“ It is waiting beside you,” said Yo Chain
“ You knew I’d drink?” thundered Kirk,
suddenly and unreasonably angered. “ You
Chink devil, d'you think you can beat me.
drunk or sober? T'hell with you and your
crooked plans!”
He raised the glass from the tray which
the patient Chinese servant held, tossed off
his drink and turned to wager a thousand
on the hand. He lost.
The chill of that loss counterbalanced the ,
flushing heat of the whisky. He decided to
play cautiously. With care he could so
husband his chips that when the house
closed that night he would still save a com-
fortable margin. From now on he would
not wager high on anything lower than three
of a kind.
But once more he remembered the hun-
gry, waiting eyes of the crowd. He dared
not start a conservative game after that
wild, spectacular opening. From the tray
beside him he raised another glass.
After that there came a time when he
played automatically, scarcely knowing
what he did, until he finally caught his voice
saying: “ Call a hundred, raise a hundred."
And the soft rejoinder of Y0 Chai:
“ With what. sir?"
He looked up with a start from his trance.
The chips had disappeared in front of him.
They were piled now before Yo Chai.
“Lead up the mule!” he shouted to the
crowd.
And when the mule was led up he
wrenched open one of the hampers and
dragged out a ponderous canvas sack, chim-
ing as he jounced it down on the table.
The whole house rang with the cheer of the
crowd. -


' CLUN G.
89
And as if that cheer had brought him
luck, he began to “in again until half the
pile of chips had drifted back to his side
of the table. He drank again, and ordered
drinks for every one in the house. And
there were hundreds. Another cheer for
Kirk, but this time he lost.
Lost three heavy wagers in a row.
A heavy, sullen anger possessed him, and
with it a certainty that he would lose. He
felt, also, that if he could break away from
the table only for a moment he would
change the luck of the game. Now he knew
that it was the eye of Y0 Chai, steady, in-
flexible, which was breaking his spirit and
making him play stupidly.
“ I'm cramped from sitting down so
long,” he said. “Besides, I'm hungry. I’m
going over: to the bar. to eat.”
“ It is good," nodded Y0 Chai, and smiled
encouragement.
He wanted to take that yellow throat
and crush it. It would not be hard to do;
hardly the work of a moment.

CHAPTER XXXV.
A PLEASANT EVENING.
HEN he turned from the dais and
glanced over the heads of the
crowd toward the doors he was
astonished to see that it was already dark;
yet the crowd still hung about the place,
waiting. Assuredly they wished him well,
but it seemed as if his mind was breaking
under the burden of their anxiety. There
was a dull ache above his eyes as he turned
toward the bar.
They accepted the recess in the game with
approbation and fresh rounds of drinks.
They literally fought their way to get close
to the gambler as he walked toward the
bar, and he had to lean forward and shoul-
der his way through them in a manner that
reminded him of his football days. A thou-
sand good wishes rang at his ear, but he
said: “ Give me room, boys, and a chance
at a sandwich. l’m starved."
A dozen hands reached to supply his
wants and there were clamors to learn how
much he had lost. He did not know that
himself, and he shrugged the questions away
with carefully assumed indifference and set
himself to eating. Seeing that he would not
talk they turned to other topics; moreover,
the game had proceeded so long that some
of its interest was now worn away. Finally
he heard a voice near him, at the bar.
lowered in the way that proclaims some-
thing of vital interest. - ‘
And another man said in surprise: “ That
little old chap?" And he pointed.
Kirk turned his head in the direction of
the pointed arm and made out a withered
fellow of about fifty, evidently as hard as
tanned leather. He made his way unob-
trusively through the crowd, which gave
way before him.
“'Yep,” said the first speaker beside ,
Kirk, “ that’s Charlie Morgan himself.”
“ Speakin' personal,” mused the other
of the two, “ he don’t look much to me.”
“He don’t,” agreed the first man, “but
I’ve seen him fan his gun and knock over a
rabbit at twenty yards. That's straight.
They’s a lot of talk about these fast gun-
fighters that fan a gun, but outside of Char-
lie Morgan I ain’t never seen it done.”
“ And him you’ve seen do it once?” sug-
gested the other, scornfully.
“A dozen times, I tell you. I was out
with him trappin’. Maybe there’s some
that's faster on the draw than old Charlie,
but there ain’t none surer, and I bet twice
on‘ the sure shooter for once on the feller
that makes a snappy draw and can’t hit
the side of a barn when he gets his iron
out.” '
“ So he’s going out after the Night
Hawk?" queried the other.
“You don’t have to talk low. Charlie
wants the. whole of Kirby Creek to know
it. He's going right down the ravine to-
night with his pack~mule and he’s going
to have a bit of dust in the pack. He
wants the Night Hawk to know he’s com-
ing, and he swears he’ll get Dave Spenser‘s
hide to-night. You see, ‘Happy ’ Lynch
was Charlie’s partner, and when Charlie
heard that Happy ‘d been bumped off by
Spenser, it made him so riled he couldn’t
sleep of nights. So he come up here to bag
the Night Hawk."
“ Here’s wishin‘ him luck,“ said the
other, “but I got my doubts.”


CLUNG.
91
past the outskirts of the town when a grow-
ing light to the East drew his head to the
side. It was the rising moon.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHARLIE MORGAN.
ND though the valley in the daytime
swarmed with a thousand laborers, in
the moonlight it showed only a blank
and sandy waste. The little huts scattered
everywhere showed not at all, or only as
blacker spots against the gray background;
the hum and faint clangor of iron against
rock had died away, the silence of night was
complete. And by that light all things
were magnified. The mountains grew
taller, rougher, blacker. '50 black that by
contrast with them the dull sky overhead
took on a shade of mysterious blue.
This in turn changed, for as the moon
rose the stars went out by myriads, like
camp fires of a great army, extinguished at
a signal. The dull sky was now a metallic
gray and from the mountains thick shadows
swung out and across the ,ravines.
Even at night there was no peace among
those mountains. The eye of William Kirk
swept up their jagged summits or plunged
down dizzy heights to the floor of the
valley in swift change. Those crests
lunged against the sky like spear-points;
they seemed possessed of motion, restless-
ness, sullen change. They were a revolt
against eternal order; they nodded their
heads against the sky like a menace, and
they roused a fellow feeling in the heart of
Kirk. ,
He, also, needed action, sudden and
strong and terrible, to pacify the sullen
fire within him. He wanted to destroy,
overthrow. For he stood at the end of
his third stride in the primitive. That
night he had been baffled and beaten in the
gaming house of Y0 Chai, and since he could
not wreak his hate on the gambler he cast
about for another object which he could
seize and crumble. It was the rising of the
yellow moon as it rolled like a wheel up
the steep side of an eastern mountain, that
gave the hint to him, for he remembered
then Charlie Morgan, who by this time
must be riding with his pack-mule up the
valley. A challenge to the Night Hawk!
And in a sudden outburst of exultation
and rage, Kirk threw back his head and
shouted. The sound was muffled behind
his clenched teeth and came like the roar of
a beast; It would have frightened Kirk
in any other humor to feel this madness
rising in him. Now it stimulated him to a
sort of hysteria of joy. He whirled his
horse, plunged the spurs deep and galloped
at full speed down the valley. He took
off his sombrero and with it beat against
the neck and flanks of the frantic horse.
which snorted and grunted in its wild ex-
citement, but could not run faster. He
waved his hat to the broken heads of the
mountains, he brandished it against the
stars and yelled drunkenly; and the thun-
der of his heart kept pace with the clangor
of the hoofs of his racing horse against the
rocks of the ravine. '
Out of. the upper ravine he turned into
the lower, with no more boulders to dodge,
and a straight path for the cave of the
Night Hawk. In a moment he was there,
swung from the saddle and stumbled down
the passage.
It was strange how easily he entered it
now. He knew by instinct every turning of
the rough, rock walls. In the apartment
within he found at once the matchesv
kindled his tinder, and flung the saddle upon
the neck of the black stallion. And the
horse turned his head to watch the process,
and as the light shone full in his fine face,
his eyes seemed to glow yellow in fierce an-
ticipation of the coming battle. He whin_
nied; he caught the shirt of Kirk at the
shoulder with his teeth and pulled at it
softly as if to urge his flying hands to a
still greater speed.
There was no need to lead the charger
out of the tunnel. He had been many days
standing without exercise, and now he fol-
lowed at the heels of Kirk like a trained
dog. His fore hoofs rapped many times
against the hurrying heels of Kirk; his hot
breath whistled dovm the back of the man
in front.
At the entrance the stallion crouched and
crawled through the low hole with uncanny
agility. Once outside Kirk vaulted into the


CLUNG. 93
hood when he had lain awake at night
listening—all ears~to the creaks of the
stairs—approaching sounds so distinct that
he could even visualize the form of the
night-walker, could see the size of his bony
hand on the banister, the mask acros his
eyes. But now he was himself the walker
of the night, and the terror which he had
felt in those old days had fallen upon other
men, upon Charlie Morgan, hunter and
trapper and familiar of. the wilds.
Out from a dense growth of mesquite
came the trapper; his quirt cracked loudly
on the side of the horse, which broke into
a canter and passed Kirk in his hiding-
place so close that he could have reached
out his hand and touched the flank of the
animal, or seized Charlie Morgan by the
leg and dragged him from the saddle. A
maddening temptation came to do the
thing; and then another temptation to
yell aloud in exultation for the danger which
was coming.
That temptation also he restrained and
stepped boldly out into the narrow path
which Morgan was following.
“Charlie Morgan!” he called.
here!” .
And he waited with his revolver poised.
All at once he knew that he could not fire
on the fellow first. He would wait until
Morgan had drawn and blazed away. And
a perfect certainty came to him that Mor-
gan would miss. Then he would shoot-—
and he could not fail.
At his shout Morgan whirled in the sad—
dle; his steel gleamed very brightly in the
moon, and by the same light Kirk
glimpsed the teeth of the man. His, lips
were twitched back into a hideous grimace
of terror.
“Who?” shouted the trapper, and his
voice was a scream of harsh uncertainty
and the will to kill.
“ The Night Hawk! ” answered Kirk, and
still he stood motionless with his revolver
poised. -
It seemed that there were minutes be-
tween everything that happened—the course
of Morgan—the levelling of the revolver—-
the spurt of flame from the mouth of the
gun—the hum of a bullet beside his arm—-
giving the cloth a little tug.
“I’m
There were other minutes of pause while
his own gun descended, while his finger
pressed on the trigger, and then the bark of
the bullet, kicking up the muzzle of the gun.
Charlie Morgan threw up his arms. His
revolver dropped through the moonlight like
a bit of fire from the hand of the trapper.
Then Morgan leaned forward, struck the
pommel of the saddle with a grunt of sud-
denly expired wind, and flopped heavily
on the ground.
Kirk twirled the gun. His first emotion
was merely joy in the easy action of the
weapon. No wonder that the Night Hawk
had killed many with such a gun. He
shoved it leisurely back into the holster,
and went humming to examine his work
of the night. The horse sidled uneasily
away and stood snorting and sniffing at
the figure fallen in the path. There was
gold in the pack of the mule, but Kirk
had no desire for it. His purpose in com—
ing out there to-night had merely been
to uphold the honor, in a way, of dead
Dave Spenser. H'e kicked the saddle horse
brutally in the stomach“ and the poor brute
. lashed out once more with its heels and
then started off at a broken gallop, tug-
ging the pack-mule after _it. All at once a
panic seemed to seize on the two animals.
They burst into a racing pace and fled
crashing through the shrubbery. Kirk
watched them with a, grin and then leaned
down over the fallen body.
It lay on its face. He turned it. There,
exactly where he had intended, was the red .
mark of the bullet. It had passed through
the chest, directly in the center, or a little
to the left. If he had located the spot
with a line and compass he could not have
planted the shot more carefully.
“A bull’s-eye,” grinned Kirk, and with
his toe caught under the shoulder of Mor-
gan he flopped the body back upon its face.
“And so,” finished Kirk, “exit Charlie
Morgan.”
A soft whinny came to him through the
night. I
“And so," he muttered to himself
thoughtfully, “reenter the Night Hawk?"
He shrugged his broad shoulders and
the burden of the murder before him slipped
off his conscience.


94
ALL- STORY WEEKLY.
“ After all)” he said, “ perhaps the Eng-
lishman was right.”
And he went back to the black stallion.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
rm: SMILE or YO crmr.
LI. that afternoon there had hung be;
fore the mind’s eye of John Samp~
son a problem like a problem in
geometry, one of those perplexing things in
which the lines and circles are simple
enough, but in which the axioms of ex-
planation refuse to come to mind. The
problem was a certain relationship between
Clung and Y0 Chai. It had dwelt in his
memory since the evening when Y0 Chai
shot down the two Mexicans and thereby
gained a proud name in Kirby Creek, that
there was some connection between the
gambler and the outlawed man-killer.
Ever since that time he had turned and
twisted the thing back and forth in his
mind, but it had never become an object
of vital interest until to-day, when he
learned that Winifred had been going regu-
larly at night to the house of the gambler.
Now he sat for hours with his head dropped
between his hands and tried to work out the
puzzle. ‘It was like the man who sat in the
robber’s'cave and strove to think of the
magic name which would open the door,
_but all that he remembered was that the
name was that of some grain, so he sat call-
'ing: “ Open, barley; open, wheat; open,
oats,” but he could not think of the right
one, the “open, sesame.” So he remained
perforce in the cave until the robbers re-
turned and cut him to pieces with their
sabers.
In such _a quandary was John Sampson.
He cudgeled his brain; be ground his teeth;
he took to walking up and down the floor,
but still he could not find the little watch-
word which would admit him to the secret.
All that he knew was that the relation be-
tween Clung and Y0 Chai, if he could call
it to mind, would prove the undoing of
Y0; and with a lever to work on the China-
man, he could gain the reason of Winifred’s
comings and goings to the house of Y0 Chai
in the night.
Evening came, but still the key' to the
locked room was not his. He and Winifred
ate supper in silence, gloomy on his part
and gay on the part of the girl. Now and
again her eyes went through the window to
dwell on the rapidly fading outlines of the
hills. There was complacency in her gaze,
and a certain expectation which stopped
the heart of John Sampson in mid-beat.
He looked so worn and tired that she
asked after his health. He cursed the hot
nights, but made no other reply. And all
the while his stern old heart was breaking
in him. for he felt that his girl was being
stolen away from him. And by a damned
Chinaman!
It was some time after supper before his
sharpened ear heard a stir in the room of
Winifred, to which she had retired under
the pretext of a headache. A headache!
She who had never known a sick day!
A stir and then a sound suspiciously
like the creak of a slowly raised window.
Still he waited. Far off he caught the
snort and stamp of a horse from the barn.
A little later, listening, with the front door
a little ajar, he caught the hoofs of a horse
crunching faintly upon soft sand. That was
all.
The weight of fear turned to a burden
of despair in the heart of John Sampson.
He felt helpless, disarmed; and this in con-
junction with a wild hatred of all the
world, and particularly of the patient, half
smile of Y0 Chai. He remembered the
whimsically wrinkled forehead, the highly
arched brows, the sparse mustache of the
Chinaman, with an urgent desire to murder.
Finally he could stand it no longer, and
went out of doors. Before him, farther
down the hill and the side of the ravine,
glimmered the thousand evil lights of Kirby
Creek. For a time he walked up and
down in front of the house. Then he
started down the ravine. Not with any pur-
pose, but because he could not bear to be
too close to the lonely little shack from
which Winifred had stolen away.
His hands were clasped behind him and
his head bent sadly as he entered the first
street of the village. It led, like all the
streets of the town, to the gaming house of
Y0 Chai, and down that street John Samp-


CLUNG.
95
son strolled. He was quite heedless of all
around him, yet every picture that'he saw
this night was imprinted forever, indelibly,
in his subconscious brain. In the door
of one hut stood a'very tall woman, her
figure swaying out in front, her arms
akimbo. One lock of hair straggled down
her cheek, plastered against it with sweat.
She chuckled at the sight of a little boy
rolling and wrestling with a big, shaggy dog
in the center of the street, and her laughter
was like a succession of grunts, a struggle
between weariness and mirth. Farther on a
group of youngsters, having found a streak
of clayey ground which would hold the peg,
were playingv mumble-the-peg, and their
faces were besmeared with mud. The heart
of John Sampson ached in envy of the
parents who had these thoughtless young-
sters for their own. At least they were too
mindless to lock secrets inside their hearts.
Still farther down the street he passed
an. old Indian, blind, with his shapeless
squaw squatted beside him. The Indian
thrummed on a guitar from which several
strings were lacking, and he sang in a
whining guttural snatches of popular airs
—almost unrecognizable because the words
appeared only here and there, and the blank
spaces between were filled with humming.
Yet there was a smile on the face of the
Indian, and contentment on the face of the
greasy squaw with her hand held forever
straight before her, asking aims. And an
envy even of these two came to John
Sampson. They were near to the soil; they
had not even the capacity for great pain-
A crowd had gathered before the jewel-
er’s window. In imitation of the shops in
great cities, he kept his window lighted all
night, and he displayed his full assortment
of gleaming wares, guarded by two armed
men, one on either side of the window. It
was the only piece of plate-glass in Kirby
Creek. Three large lanterns supplied the
illumination. And in front of the window
was a large group. They were all talking
at the same time; they were picking out the
stones they would buy on the morrow, or
when they made their big strike. They
were all happy, and Sampson hurried past.
Happiness in others was painful to him
this night.
\
Now the distant roar of the gaming
house reached him plainly, like the sound of
distant surf. Straight to the door of the
house he went, and looked in toward the
central table with a malevolent eye. But
Yo Chai was not there. ,That was the
meaning, then, of the early hour at which
Winifred had left the house.
He had a man point out Yo Chai’s pri-
vate dwelling behind the gaming house, and
in front of it, across the street, he stood
for a long ‘ time, purposeless, helpless,
meaningless. And still the problem surged
through his brain, maddening him. The
relation between Yo Chai and Clung“
what could it be? What was the one word
_the open sesame?
Yet he could not be absolutely sure that
Winifred was in this house. Certainly Kirk
said that he had seen her come out of the
house on one night, but that was not a suffi-
cient proof to his aching heart. There was
nothing better for him to do. It would
be at least a sort of semioccupation. He
decided to sit down on a rickety 'box near-
by and wait for a time to see if Winifred
would come out of the house. Yes, and if
be confronted her suddenly was there not a
possibility that she would tell him every-
thing—all the reasons which made her come
to the house of Y0 Chai—whether or not
Clung were actually concealed there?
The thought made John Sampson ahnost
happy. He sat down on the box and com-
posed himself for a long wait, for hours, if
necessary.
Yet to his mind, busied as it was every
moment by the problem, it was not a very
long time before the door of the house
opened. At the entrance stood a tall,
bulky Chinaman with his hands stuffed
in the alternate sleeve. He looked slowly
up and down the street, and then, as if
satisfied that there was no one in plain
sight, he stepped back through the door.
Almost at once a woman slipped out
upon the steps, and turned back toward
the door. Her face was away from him.
and the light which fell upon her was very
dim, but he knew with strange certainty
that this was Winifred, just as a child
knows the step of its father on the pave-
ment and runs to the door prepared. So


96
ALL - STORY WEEKLY.
Sampson stared through the gloom and
knew that it was Winifred who stood there,
poised on the steps of the Chinaman‘s
house. He started up from the box and
made a step across the street when another
form appeared in the door and he stopped
his progress.
It was Y o Chai. The light at the en-
trance fell plainly across his face, showing
with distinctness even the sparse black
mustache of the Oriental. And he stood
with his head tilting back, smiling down
upon the girl. She waved her hand. A
hand, thin to frailty, appeared from the
loose sleeve of Y0 Chai and waved adieu in
response. Winifred turned and passed
down the street; the door closed upon Yo
Chai.
Yet Sampson made no effort to turn
down the street and intercept his daughter.
His mind was filled with an image which.
had started out suddenly upon it, of Y0
Chai, pushing back his chair in the gam-
ing house on that now distant night, and
smiling.
The clue to the problem was upon him
with a rush. It was in the smile of Y0
Chai and the smile of Clung.
One smile and one man. Clung and Y0
Chai—they were one and the same. And
Sampson shook his clenched fist above his
head and then started almost at a run fo
the door of Y0 Chai. '
V
CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE GAMBLER’S SPIRIT.
HE door was opened to him by the
bulky Chinaman he had first seen
there, and in his excitement he would
have pushed past the fellow had not a vast
arm shot out and blocked the way as effec-
tively as a stanchion of wood.
“ Go tell Cl—go tell Yo Chai that John
Sampson will speak with him—at once,”
commanded the financier.
The big Oriental turned his head leisurely
and spoke in a tremendous guttural, chang-
ing to a whine of question, ridiculously thin
and high at the end. F mm the interior of
the house a soft voice which Sampson
could barely hear, made answer, and then
the bulky arm was withdrawn and he
stepped into the little, boxlike hall of Y0
Chai. The servant pointed to a screened
doorway at one side of the hall, and step-
ping past this, Sampson found himself in
front of Y0 Chai, who sat among a heap
of cushions reading from a large book of
Chinese characters Sampson found him-
self at once perfectly at ease. It was rare,
indeed, that he was embarrassed in an inter-
view. It was his stock in trade. He
measured the lean face of the other with a
critical eye. ‘
“ I suppose,” he said with a half—smile,
“that you won’t pretend that you don’t
know me?”
“ No,” said the other, rising. “ Yo Chai
remembers when you sat at his table and
played a little game. There were two Mexi-
cans who came behind us. It is true.”
And he bowed very low to John Sampson.
“Just now,” said the businessman, “I
don’t give a damn what Yo Chai remembers.
I‘m more interested in what Clung has to
sav.” -
The bow of Clung was still under way,
and he remained a moment with partially'
bent head. When he raised his face it was
expressionless. I
“When I look into your face,” said
Sampson with some admiration, “ I'm al-
mOst puzzled again to know you, but I’ve
seen through the riddle, my friend, and
it can never puzzle me again.”
Clung silently pointed to the low divan.
“Thanks,” said Sampson, and he seated
himself with a sigh of comfort.
Manifestly he was complete master of the
situation.
“I was perfectly certain,” he went on,
smiling upon Clung, “that the age of dis-
guises was past. But I see that you’ve
resurrected it again. And very well done,
Clung. Very well done, indeed.”
Clung bowed as profoundly as before,
his eyes going past Sampson and apparently
focusing on the screen behind him, as if
at that moment another person were enter-
ing the room.
“ To put you entirelytat your ease,” went
on Sampson, “ I’ll tell you that it’s unneces-
sary to be quite so Oriental before me.
I know you’re a white man, Clung.”


98
ALL- STORY WEEKLY.
“Well,” said Sampson slowly, drawing
out every word, “damn my eternal eyes!"
“That would be a great sorrow," said
Clung.”
“Are you mocking me?" barked the
financier.
Clung waved a slim, deprecatory hand.
“Don’t put me aside with any asinine
trivialities like this. I haven’t come to lis-
ten to poetry. I want some hard facts.
Clung, why does the girl coine here?”
And like the hard facts which Sampson
demanded, the face of Clung grew stern
and expressionless.
“ Listen to me,” said the older man with
a sudden change of tactics. “I am her
father, Clung. Haven’t I the right to
know?”
It was like the melting of ice in spring——
so swift was the change of Clung’s eyes.
He bowed once more, and then stood erect,
his eyes at the feet of Sampson.
“ Clung had forgotten,” he said softly,
“ but now he will make himself open. You
can read in me."
CHAPTER XXXIX.
SAMPSON HUNTS coor. AIR.
“ AD," answered Sampson more gently,
L “ I see you are white—in more ways
than one. Now tell me frankly.
Why does my girl come to you?"
“ To talk to Clung." ~
“ Come, come! What do you mean by
that one word?”
“ T o talk to Clung,” said the other, with
a certain contemptuous emphasis—“ Clung,
a dog of a Chinaman! ”
The eyes of Sampson widened marvel-
ously.
“ You mean to say that you haven‘t told
her that you are white?"
“ If she knew that Clung is white,” he
answered, with a touch of sadness, “she
would come no longer.”
The mind of Sampson whirled; and there
was an infinite relief which struck him
like a cool breeze on a very hot day.
“ I think I understand, but make it clear-
er. I must know exactly what you mean
1'9 her.”
“to give the child up?
Clung waited, searching for the clue.
“A horse you know,” he said at last,
“ you have no pleasure in riding. He is
yours. He will run straight. He will not
buck or shy or balk. There is no pleasure
in riding him. Is it not true?”
“Ah! I begin to see. Go on!”
“A man you know, he may be your
friend, but you will not go a great distance
to see him or to hear him talk. But a
man you do not know, you may not like
him, you may hate him, you may be afraid
of him, but you will go a great ways to see
him and to hear him talk. Is it not true?”
“ Exactly!”
“Your daughter—Winifred—she finds
me a strange book—because I am written in
Chinese!”
He stopped and laughed. a little scornful-
ly, a little bitterly.
“ It is true,” said Clung again. “ my
words are strange to her. She looks at me
as if she saw me at a great distance and
wished to see me closer. It is because—
Clung is a dog of a Chinaman. But if she
knew Clung to be a white man she would
shrug her shoulders—soE—and never come
again.”
“ I wonder,” said the other thoughtfully,
and then he shook his head. “ Clung, I'm
afraid that you’re not altogether right.”
He smiled with a sharp interest at the
younger man.
“ I wish I could believe it, but I can’t—
altogether. I’m afraid there may be—
something else.”
“What?” asked Clung, with a ring in
his voice.
But Sampson shrugged his shoulders.
“ I am going to ask you to stop her from
coming here, Clung.”
The other straightened, his lips drawing
to a thin line.
“ Give her up?” he asked in a dull voice
that alarmed Sampson. “ Suppose a wo-
man has one child—would you ask her
Suppose a painter
has one great picture—would you ask him
to give it up? Could you borrow or beg or
buy the picture from him?"
“ If it was for the betterment of the
child,” said the other anxiously, “the wo-
man would give up the child.”


CLUNG.
99
t
The pause came again.
“ It is true,” said Clung in a faint voice.
Then his eyes rose and met the gaze
of Sampson with such intensity that it was
like the shock of a physical force.
“Why must Clung give up seeing her?”
“ Because it is bad for her.”,
“ Is there poison in this air? Is Clung
a dog who bites? Answer!” and the ring
in his voice, though it was not loud, shook
Sampson tremendously. '
“ For the oldest reason in the world,”
he answered, “ and for one which you have
already named yourself. Her way of life
is not your way of life. How would people
speak of her if they knew she stole out
by night to visit—a Chinaman?”
He brought out the word with a brutal
force.
“ Then I shall no longer be a Chinaman.
I_ shall be Clung, a. white man!”
“ Clung, a hunted outlaw, reputed a half-
breed. Her friends would turn her from
their doors.” '
There was that solemn pause again, and
then the bitter Voice of Clung: “ It is true,
and the opinions of other people are very
_ loud in the ears of women. My father,
Li Clung, has said it.”
“ Then—~” queried Sampson with some-
thing of pity softening his voice.
“ I shall tell her to-night that I am
white,” said Clung simply.
“No, no, no!” cried Sampson. “Not
that, Clung, in the name of Heaven!”
“ And why?”
“ For many reasons.”
He stopped, stammering. It was hard
and shameful for him to speak the fear
which was in him.
_“ Speak quickly,” said Clung, “and tell
Clung what. he must do.
like a whip on a raw place; Clung is very
tired!”
“ I’will be as brief as I may,” said the
other, “ and I expect you to keep on meets
ing me half-way, as you’ve done so far. In
the first place, she has been very often
to see you, has she not?”
“It is true.”
“ And she is glad to be with you?”
The head of Clung tilted—the familiar
musing smile touched his lips.
“ She seems very glad,” he murmured.
“ Gad!” said Sampson to himself.
“What a rotten mess it all is—for all of
us!”
He said aloud, gruffiy: “ I’m going to ask
you to have a woman in here with you the
next time Winifred comes. And when
Winifred sees you with a woman I’ll guar- '
antee that she’ll never come back.”
“A woman?” said Clung blankly, and
then he started. “ A concubine?”
“ Not a bit, not a bit!” said the other,
reddening furiously. “But only a girl—a
Chinese girl—there are plenty of them
around the town—who will seem to be—er
-—familiar with you. You get my‘point,
Clung?”
“ It would certainly be a lie,” said Clung
hoarsely.
“ Sometimes a lie is excusable. Besides,
my dear boy, you’ve certainly told little lies
before.” a
“ I have never told a lie,” said Clungr
quietly, “ except to say once that my name
was John Ring, and once again that my
name was Yo Chai.”
It was so naive that Sampson had to bite
his lip to keep from smiling.
“ Is it the only way to drive her away?”
said Clung.
“It is the only sure way,” answered
Sampson.
Clung stiffened, and his hands straight-
ened at his sides; he stood like a soldier
at attention.
“If it drives her away,” he said, " it
will mean that she thinks of me now as—
a white woman might think of a white
man!”
“Eh?” grunted Sampson.
“ For why,” said Clung rapidly, “ should
Every minute isvshe care if a dog of a Chinaman has a
concubine? Is it not true?”
“ I don’t mean that she thinks of you in
that way,” answered Sampson with a hur-
ried anxiety. “ God forbid! I’m merely
telling you the sure way of sending her back
to me and away from you. And you admit
that {.that is a good thing.”
“ It is true,” said Clung, panting, after
another of those deadly pauses.
And he added: “ But it will prove—if she
gues when she sees the Chinese girl—that


CLUN G.
101'
But Clung was not there, and she had
been on the divan for several moments be-
fore he appeared, hastily, and bowed before
her.
He relaxed on his usual pile of cush-
ions and sat with folded arms staring
straight before him; and he made her, think
of a pleased child which waits to be ques-
tioned about the meaning of a surprise.
Everywhere about the room were the
flowers, the green things which seemed so
priceless in the middle of the desert; they
must have been conjured into existence;
they could not have grovm. And the very
dress of Clung showed that it was an ex—
traordinary occasion. His robe was a rich
brocade rustling so stiffly that it was almost
a crackle when he moved. The pigtail was
of enormous length and braided with perfect
symmetry; the skull-cap was embroidered
with golden thread. At length she could
keep in her questions no longer.
“ What is it, Clung?” she asked impetu-
ously. "‘ Is all this in honor of my com-
ing? Tell me?”
“ When one ofvrny fathers took a' woman
into his house,” said Clung, and for the
first time his eyes rose from the floor and
rested gravely upon her, “ he always made
the place pleasant for her coming. Clung,
also, has done this.”
“ Take a woman in your house?” she
queried, with sudden alarm and, rising, she
noted again that the doors behind her, as
usual, were locked. “ What do you mean,
Clung?”
“ Only what Clung says, that to-night he
takes a woman in his house.”
The eyes were very blank as they rested
, upon her, but the old tales of the treachery
of the Oriental swarmed back upon her
mind and made her blood cold.
“ Clung, have you dared—” she began,
until her voice grew weak and she stopped
perforce.
Every door was locked behind her. What
could she do?
“ Have you dared to think of keeping me
.here?” she asked at length, with as much
grief as fear in her voice.
“ You?” queried Clung in gentle surprise,
and be tapped softly, once, on the gong
beside him.
The answer was a little Chinese girl who
came slowly through the doorway—slowly,-
for her feet were painfully small. Hen
trousers and all her dress were of the whit-
est of white silk, and they, like the robes
of Clung, were everywhere broidered with
rich thread of gold. A necklace of jade,
earrings of pearl, bracelets of woven gold
with little emeralds in the design of a tiny
dragon—she had never seen so rich a cos-
tume. The face was round and the features
diminutive, but not unpleasant, and there
was about her that air of infinite refinement,
vmilleniums of culture, which the Chinese
sometimes bear about them.
And still Winifred could not or would
not quite understand.
“ Who,” Winifred asked sharply, “ is this
person?”
And Clung made answer carelessly, mak-
ing the girl sit down beside him in obedi-
ence t0_his gesture:
“ This is a woman of the house of
Clung.”
“ A woman?” repeated Winifred slowly,
“ A woman?”
And then, after a breathing space: “I
never dreamed that you were married,-
Clung!”
“Married?” he repeated, and his eye-
brows arched a little. “No, no! Why
should Clung take a wife, a burden upon
his shoulders? This is only a woman, a
handmaid for Clung; he has often been
lonely.” ’
“ A woman!” whispered Winifred, and
her eyes dwelt on the face of the girl, pale
for one of her race, with a ‘tint like peach!
bloom in her cheeks, slant, dark eyes, and
little, white teeth.
“But let us talk,” said Clung. “You
may talk very freely 'before the girl. She
will understand no more than the image of
the Greatest!”
He rose and bowed to the hideous, grin-
ning idol and sat down again.
“Or if you wish,” went on Clung ami-
ably, “ Clung will send the girl away. She
is here to come and go at the will of Clung.l
Is it not true?”
He turned to the girl and spoke sharply,
to her in Chinese, and she nodded slowly—-
and very low, and all the while her eyes


102
ALL-STORY WEEKLY.
were fixed in mute submission upon the race,
of the master.
Winifred rose, and she had to remain
standing a moment, gripping the back of
the divan and squinting her eyes tight while
her senses cleared.
The voice of Clung, concerned, eagerly
inquiring, brdke in upon her.
“ There is a sickness upon you?” he
asked. “ You are faint? It is true? The
sight of the girl sickens you? Clung will
send her away!”
She forced her eyes open, at that, and
it seemed to her that the face of Clung
had changed, grown grim, and all the fea-
tures were more sharply defined, as though
a pain were etching them more and more
deeply.
“No,” she managed to say at length,
“ keep the girl, keep her by you always,
in case you should grow lonely again.”
“But,” said Clung, stepping beside her
as she went feebly toward the door, feeling
her way, “ but you do not go so soon from
Clung? He has many things to say!”
Her strength returned with a sudden out-
burst; she whirled on him.
“I’ve heard the last of your talk,” she
said fiercely. “It is tiresome to a white
girl. Stay here and herd with your yellow
cattle. I shall never see you again.”
And she walked quickly to the door and
out of the house, but as the door slammed it
seemed to Clung that he heard something
like a sob. Or was it only a natural sound
of the night, for the wind was rising?
He remained where he had been stand-
ing, his hand stretched out after the girl,
but his arm fell almost at once to his side,
and his head lifted. He saw the little
Chinese girl staring at him with wide eyes
and blanched lips—blanched in spite of
their rouge.
“What shall I do?” she asked faintly
in Chinese.
He heard the words, but not the mean-
in .
gShe rose and came to him with her small,
painful steps. *
“ The white woman,” she said, “ is pos-
sessed of a devil. She has cast a spell upon
my master. But I will burn incense and
drive the devil away!”
“ Could you do that?” he asked dully.
“ Ah!” she said with a little smile. “ The
heart of Wu is very great to serve her mas-
ter.”
“Then go away from me,” said Clung,
“I have no more need of you. I need
nothing but silence.”
“ This is the voice of the devil the white
woman has thrown upon you, and not the
voice of Y0 Chai,” she said wistfully.
He drew his purse from the loose sleeve,
the purse of wire net worked with the figure
of the dragon, and from it he took gold
pieces and placed them in the small palm
of the girl. '
“ You are paid,” said Clung. “ Go!”
Still she hesitated, her eyes large, and
fixed steadily upon him; her lips moved,
but no words came. Then she bowed to
the floor and, turning, went with her small,
painful steps from the room. She stopped
at a table of ebony and on it she laid the
gold which Clung had given her. When
she went on, her head was bowed, and
Clung, standing with his head back, and
that half-smile upon his lips, heard the be-
ginning of a sob as the door whisked to
behind her. He laughed softly.
“ Clung also,” he said, “ Clung also; the
sound of it is growing big in his throat.
But why should be he a woman?"
He gathered himself and pulled the robe
tightly about his breast. He rose almost
to tiptoe and cast out his hand, palm up,
to the mocking face of the idol.
“ I am Clung,” he said defiantly——
“I am Clung, the son of ,Li Clung. It is
true!”
And he sat down in the divan and pro-
duced his long-stemmed pipe, placed a pinch
of tobacco in the bowl, lighted it, puffed
twice or thrice deeply; knocked out the
ashes, and refilled the miniature bowl, and
so on and on, smoking until the blue haze
formed in front of him and rose like heavy
incense and drifted across the face of the
idol until it observed the grin and left only
the bright, beady eyes staring down through
the smoke.
TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT WEEK. Don’t forget this magazine is issued weekly, and
that you will get the conclusion of this story without waiting a month.


INFORM MR. SWEENEY.
But Jim didn’t appear to be troubled
that way at all. Did I say that Jim had
probably dropped in for a bite or two be-
fore going home? I take it back. After a
while it began to look as if he had dropped
in for a meal or two, and probably two.
But everything comes to an'end, and
finally, when Louise looked as if she was
going to keel over in a faint or something
the very next minute, and there have been
times when I’ve felt a lot better myself in
some ways, because if Jim ever did tumble
to us, believe me, there would certainly be
some scandalous doings. Finally the waiter
brought Jim’s check, and it paid it. And
then he got up and started to leave—and
stopped.
I looked for the reason—~and saw six of
’em. One in every exit. Cops! The place
was pinched! It was a raid.
It was nothing else; but I want to say
right here that that doesn’t mean that the
place wasn’t a decent enough place. It
was. But it was like this: somebody had
been riding the mayor, or the _police com-
missioner, or somebody, and they had start-
ed in to clean things up, and they were do-
ing it—regardless.
But of course, right then, all this was be-'
side the question. The real question
seemed to ibe~what next?
Well, of course there were all sorts of
possibilities, mostly unpleasant; but I
didn’t have the time then, and I won’t take
it now, to go into ’em. Here’s what hap-
pened: as a general thing these raids are
pulled off without a whole lot of fuss. The
cops separate the sheep from the goats, and
the sheep are turned loose, and the goats
take a ride on the city; and that’s all there
is to it. [But this one turned out different.
Somebody started something right off the
bat, and in an instant the place was in an
uproar. In the next instant it was a riot.
Men were fighting, women screaming, and
crockery being smashed all over the place.
All in all, if you ask me, there is no bet-
ter place to stage a riot than in a restau-
rant. A restaurant sort of lends itself to
the occasion, so to say. Anyway, this one
did. As riots go, it was a larb!
And maybe it would give us the chance
we were looking for. I grabbed Louise,
259
started to make a break for an exit, and—
ran spang into a bluecoatl He gripped me
by the shoulder and said: .
“ Hello, Bud, what‘s your hurry?"
It was Dick Byrnes, an old pal of mine;
a fellow I knew well; a rabid baseball fan.
And if a feller ever needed a friend, this
was one of the times. So I was going to
put it up to Dick to get us out of there,
when-—
“ Bud! Look out!" sang Louise.
I don’t know what made me do it—may-
be it was instinct—~but I ducked down and
away, and—zowie! Jim Riordan connect-
ed with Byrnes in the same place and in
the very same manner that I landed on
Jim that day after the ball game!
Now anybody will tell you that any time
you hit a. cop in the eye you have done
something. Anyhow, it brought Jim to
reason, and before Byrnes could start in
using the wood on him, Jim began coming
across with his alibi. Byrnes, hanging on
to his eye with one hand and his club with
the other, listened for a moment, and then
he cut in: _
“ Ah, tell it to Sweeney! Say, what cl’ye
thing I am, a sucker? You didn’t go to hit
me at all! Aiming to hit somebody else!
“ And believe me, I’m wise to you!
You‘re Riordan, the ump—and many‘s the
time I’ve ached for a chance to lay my
mitts on you! Come along with me!”
“Listen, Dick,” I said. “Just a' min-
ute." And I came through with the whole
story, in a hurry. “And so you see.” I
wound up, “ it was me he was looking for.
Can’t you get us out of this?”
It came hard; but it came. “ All right,”
growled Byrnes, “ I'll get you out of it.”
And he did.
After we had gone a little ways~~Jim
was pretty subdued, and didn’t seem to no-
tice that I was there—Louise asked, very
innocent: “ Dad, what under the sun pos-
sessed you—~to hit a cop?”
Jim started in—trying to explain.
“Tell it to Sweeney!” I kidded him.
“I did!” said Jim. -
“How many times?” I asked him.
“Would you admit that a thing like that
could \happen, say, twice?”
“Say,” said Jim, “shall I apologize?”


<6.
Marx Brand
Author »| r m um." " uni-$- a in Night.” " 'I‘rllin',” tic.
CHAPTER XLI.
THE BALLAD OF THOMPSOle MULE.
HE voice of William Kirk went 'be-
I fore him through the night, a great
and ringing voice which the Steep
sides of the ravine caught and flung down
again in sharp echoes, so that it was hard
to tell from what direction the singing
came; it seemed to be showering out of the
sky.
Kirk galloped his horses straight on
through the door of the stable and brought
him to a 'long, sliding halt on the boards
within, a thunderous proceeding; and when
he had torn off the saddle 'he rwent on into
the house, singing again.
He found John Sampson, in a state of
great agitation, walking up and down the
room. There was a cigar in his mouth,
unlighted, but chewed to the edge of the
wrapper.
“Shut up!” commanded Sampson. “ 1
can't think with this infernal minstrel show
of yours going on!"
“And why think?” asked Kirk in his
big voice. “Why think, Sampson? Do
something better.”
.“ Such as what?" said the smaller man,
and he halted with his arms aggressively
akimbo.
“Why,” answered Kirk carelessly, “ eat.
and'sleep, and eat again. They’re both
'better things than thinking. Thinking.
Sampson, has wom the hair off your head.
And look at my shock?"
He ran his fingers through it so that it
This story began in the Al
stood up on erid, and burst into a thunder-
ous laugh. Then he began again:
“Old Thompson, he had an old gray mule,
And he drove him around in a cart.
He loved that mule and the mule loved him
With all his mulish heart !“
“ Kirk!” shouted Sampson. “ In the
name of God, stop that damned racket!"
But the big man now sat in a chair that
creaked and groaned under his weight, tilt-
ed back, 'his face turned up to the ceiling.
His paruse was only to take breath, and he
roared again:
“When the rooster crowed old Thompson knowed
That the day was a-goin’ to break;
He rubbed him down with the leg of a stool
And he curried him off with a rake;
And that mule—3’
“ Kirk!” yelled Sampson.
“ Well?" queried the musician.
“ If you won‘t stop I’ll 'leave the house!”
“ What’s the matter, man?"
“ Thth infernal racket will drive me
mad.”
“Stop your walking, sit down, and for-
get your worries. What is it? Winifred
still?”
“Winifred always,” moaned Sampson.
And he literally collapsed into a. chair
and mapped his forehead. Kirk grinned
broadly upon 'him. Sampson sat up with
a jerk that threw the purple blood into his
forehead and shook his fist at the younger
man.
“ When “ —~ he thundered ~ “ when are
l-Story Weekly for April 10.
260


CLUNG.
261
you going to do what you promised—take
the girl in hand?“
“When I get tired of Kirby Creek,” an-
swered the other coolly. “At present I
find it interesting—very! ”
“ W‘here’ve you been for the last footy-
eight hours?” asked Sampson, wearily,
shrugging away the thought of his last
question, and then his eyes sharpened to a
rather malicious light.
“ I suppose,” he said, “ you’ve been off
by yourself trying to forget what happened
in the house of Y0 Chai the other day?
Ha, ha, ha, ha! Well, lad, those who won’t
take advice have to learn -by experience.
I knew what would happen when you sat
down opposite Yo Chai, the 01d Oriental
magician. A mule-load of gold lost—-
thrown away—ha, ha, ha! I’ll tell this
when we get North!”
“ Don’t hurry with your story," said
Kink with twisting lip and a pale face.
“ Wait till you see what happens with the
second load of gold.”
"‘ Gad!” breathed Sampson, sitting bolt
upright and grasping either arm of his
chair. “Lad, you aren’t fool enough to go
back and try =nhe same route? Kirk, I
know you have plenty of money, but a
Croesus himself could go broke at the table
of Y0 Chai—~playing the way you play!
The first money you lost was what you’d
already won. This next bunch will be your
own coin! ”
“Perhaps,” said Kirk, and smiled mys-
teriously, for he was thinking again of the
boxes of gold and dust rwhioh he had taken
from the cave of the Night Hawk and
poured into his saddle-bags that night. All
the readily convertible coin of the bandit
was in his load, and it made a less bulky
but a richer cargo than that which he had
borne into the house of Y0 Chai on the
back of mule the day before.
vHe changed the subject.
“'And where is Winifred now?”
“She started from the house an hour
ago,” said Sampson. I
“Then we might as well go to bed, now.
It ’11 be near midnight before she returns.”
“Other nights, yes,” answered Sampson,
“ but to-night, I think—God knows how I
hope it-will be her last trip to Yo Ohai!”
He rose and resumed his hurried pacing
of the floor.
“Talk of something else,” he command-
ed. “I’ll go mad if I let my mind dwell
on that girl of mine!”
“What shall we‘ chatter about?” said
Kirk, and he yawned.
“ Anything—what the whole town is
talking about.”
“ What’s that?”
“ "Dhe murder of Charlie Morgan.”
“Eh?” queried Kirk sharply, for some-
how that brief and brutal word shocked
'him. “ Murder?” be repeated.
“ Murder!” nodded Sampson. “ Damn-
able, cold-blooded murder! The Night
Hawk again. Strange how long they let
that follow roam around!”
“ Strange, indeed,” said Kirk, and
smiled carelessly.
“ Haven’t you heard about the murder?”
“ Not a wor ."
“ Where’ve you been? This Morgan
seems to have been a harmless old trapper
~a good shot, they say, in his younger
“days. The other day he made some drunk-
en boast about leaving the town with a
pack of gold dust and going straight
through the Night Hawk’s territory. Well,
he started, and that devil met him and
shot him down in cold blood. Didn’t even
take the _poor devil’s money. They found
it all in the mule-pack-shortly after they
located the body to-day. Think of it,
Kirk; think of the cold-souled fiend who
[would shoot down an old man like that!”
“ Rotten,” said Kirk with dry throat.
“ The town is wild about it,” said Samp-
son. “Even the Chinaman—your friend
Yo Chai—is up in arms and has offered a
reward for the apprehension of the Nigit
Haw-k. Seems that Yo Chai had befriend-
ed old Morgan and staked him with grub
and supplies when he started on his trip
the time before'last. Now he wants the
blood of the Night Hawk, but I suppose
even the Chinaman‘s money can’t get that.”
“ Neither his money nor his luck,” said
Kirk. ‘
Sampson turned swiftly on him.
“ You say that in an odd way,” he mur-
mured thoughtfully.
Kirk frowned.



262
ALL - STORY WEEKLY.
“ Don‘t look at me like that, Sampson,”
he said coldly.
“ In what way?”
“By God, I won’t stand for it!" thun-
dered Kirk, with a sudden, mad rage.
“Sampson, I swear there‘s an accusation
in your eye!”
“ Good God, Kirk! ”' gasped the old man,
starting 'back from the other. “ Are you
mad, boy? What do you mean? Accusa-
tion of what?"
Kirk set this fists in tight knots and
forced the fire out of his eye.
“ Nothing,” he said in a strangled voice.
“The fact is, Sampson, my nerves haven’t
been of the best ever since that demon Yo
Ghai got the money from me yesterday."
“ Let it go at that," muttered Sampson.
and then he started at the memory of what
he had seen, and looked partly with awe
and partly with curiosity at Kirk. “ Why,
man,” he said softly, “ there was murder
in your eye a minute ago. M urderl"
“Nonsense,” said Kirk, and he waved
the thought away with a flourish of this
ponderous hand. “ Utter nonsense, Samp-
son. But what's that?"
The front door opened, and Winifred
stood in the opening. Her face was very
white; her eyes filmed as if with weariness
or some kindred emotion. Her expresion
was so strange that Sampson jumped to his
feet and fairly ran to her.
“ Why, Winifred,” he called.
the matter, girl?”
“ Nothing— everything!” she answered
in a. dull voice—and crossed the room to
her door. She paused there with her hand
on the knob and turned toward them.
“ Dad, we leave here to-morrow. I can’t
stay another day. I’m .tired of the place.
Sick of it! ”
And she vanished into the room. Samp-
son caught Kirk by the shoulders and
shook him joyously.
“Did you hear, lad?” he cried softly.
“ Did you hear?”
“ What the devil has happened?"
“ To-morrow we start."
“ To-morrow evening! Then I take my
last whirl at Yo Chai to-morrow afternoon.
But what has happened?"
“ Y0 Chai-J’
“ What’s
“Damn him! I‘ve stood enough from
him. I'll—1’ ‘
“Hush, lad! Neither of us is worthy
of kiming the show of that—Chinaman!"

CHAPTER XLII.
rm: couwrenrmr gum.
HERE are some places where two
make a crowd, in spite of the old say-
ing, and certainly in no place could
it have been truer than in those early days
in Kirby Creek.
On the day when William Kirk rode into
town with a mule-tload of gold to gamble
away in an effort to break the bank of Y0
Chad’s gambling-house, the whole town
turned out and stayed hour by hour watch-
ing the historic game. Yet, only Itwo days
later, when he went under identical cir~
oumstances with a far larger sum to wager,
men hardly turned their heads to watch
him pass. It rwas an old, old story. Had
it not been seen before? And were they
the men to care for a twice-told tale?
To be sure, there were a few who had
not seen the proceedings of the day before,
and though they had been told of them, ‘
they would hardly 'believe. Now they
formed a comparatively large crowd watch-
ing around the central table at which W-il-
liam Kirk played against Yo Chai. But
there was no stentorian announcement fol-
lowing t-he dealing of every card, and in a
deadly silence they played. It was stud
poker again, but this time, as though luck
itself had wearied of the persistence of Wil-
liam Kirk, it held steadily against him.
His gold coin passed acros the table, and
after that the gold dust was weighed and
followed the coin duly. and then the nug-
gets, and last a considerable stock of jew-
els, and still the river of misfortune caught
up the chips of William Kirk and carried
them away to the side of Y0 Chai.
There was no mental SUU'POI‘ to .which
Kirk could attribute his defeat this day.
He touched no liquor, and there was no
spell cast over him by the steady eye of
the gambler, and still he lost. His wits
were sharper than they had ever been be-
fore in his life, and in spite of himself there


CLUN G.
~265
all that is his, even his name, and therefore
his children must leave him. Y0 Chai will
sit here and wait. His children will hasten
and prepare the things that are theirs.
Also, if they see other things about the
house which they can carry, and Which
they cherish, they are welcome to those
also.”
They bowed again, and were gone like
leaves before the wind. Thereafter, for the
next few minutes, figures scurried soft-
footed into the room and went out again
more slowly, and things disappeared as
sand melts under a heavy rain. They were
taking the word of their “father” at its
most extreme value. Finally, when he
struck his gong at the end of an hour, they
came with their bundles.
“ Yo Chai will pay you."
-“ We have 'been paid,” they protested,
“ ten times the value of our wretched lives.
We have been paid many times."
--“ Nevertheless,” said Yo Chai, still smil-
ing, “you shall he paid again.”
And he putled from one of those capa-
cious sleeves his purse of wire-net engraved
with the form of the dragon. From this he
shook out a little handful of gold for each
of them, emptying the purse. They bowed;
they almost beat their foreheads on the
floor at his feet. They called the blessings
of a thousand gods upon him, and Clung
sat all the time with his head tilting back
and that musing smile touching at the cor-
ners of his lips. Then they were gone.
But before he 'had a chance to rise the
door opened again and the big Mongol
stood once more before him. He prostrated
himself almost at full length, and Clung
knew with a sudden thrill that this was the
prostration of a man who knew the ways
of the Imperial court of China.
“ Rise, my son,” said Clung.
The big Chinaman stood erect.
“YThese,” he said, and his contemptuous
thumb indicated the other servants who had
already passed through the door, “ are not
worthy, but Gee Wing has seen many times
and great masters. There is danger coming
to his master. Gee Wing will come also.”
“Would you follow Yo Chai, Gee Wing?”
“Around the edge of the world." said
the big Mongol.
“But 1 go north into a cold country,”
said Clung.
“Gee Wing laughs at the cold.”7
“ It cannot be,” said Clung. “ Yo Chai
is going where no other Chinaman that ever
lived could follow.”
And he smiled strangely.
Gee Wing prostrated himself again. Then
he rose.
“There is only one door at which Gee
Wing cannot stand guard for Yo Chai,” he
said sadly. “ Farewell.”
And he also was gone, and the door
banged heavily behind his hurrying feet, and
the long echo went mourning through the
house.
CHAPTER XLIII.
PURIFICATION.
UT there was no mourning in the man-
ner of Clung as soon as Gee Wing
disappeared. Rather there was some-
thing approaching a quiet happiness, and a
phrase came over and over again on his
soundless lips.
He went directly to his wash-room, filled
a tub with steaming water, threw off his
Chinese robes, and stepped in. The change
was almost instantaneous, and when he
stepped out his lean, muscular body was a
pure white. For the long wearing of the
yellow stain and the life indoors day and
night had removed the last vestige of the
tan from the skin of Clung. He removed
the long pigtail; his black hair was cropped
short.
Then from the closet of his own room
he brought out hidden clothes, the common
wear of a cow-puncher. About his waist
he buckled a belt of cartridges with a heavy
forty-five swinging low in its holster. He
drew the gun and spun the cylinder, and
as he did so his head went back once more
and the familiar musing smile was again on
his lips.
The moment the gun was back in its
holster the attitude of Clung changed
sharply. He stood with his feet close
together, and his eyes glancing restlesst
about, so that he gave the impression of
one who had stolen into a house where he
I


CLUNG.
267
But plainly it was a hopeless struggle to‘
beat down the fires. They were too care-
fully started, and the frame buildings went
up with a puff and a roar like so many piles
of tinder. Still the bucket-lines persisted
in their labors for an obvious reason.
Yo Chai’s chief clerk was among them.
running here and there, wringing his long-
nailed fingers and shrieking out directions,
pleas, offers of reward to the rescuers.
Twenty dollars for every man who helped
quench the flames; fifty dollars for every
man who put in an hour’s work; a hundred
dollars for every man on the spot when the
flames were quenched. That offer called in
the other bucket-lines which were pouring
streams of water steadily over the roofs and
walls of the near-by houses. Moreover, it
was plainly seen that on that windless night
there was no danger that the fires would
jump from the big gaming-hall to the neigh-
boring dwellings.
So peaceful was the air that the four
yellow and red-stained columns of flame
over the gaming-house and the dwelling of
Y0 Chai rose in steady towers, leaping
higher now and again as if they were trying
to kindle the stars above them, but never
shaken from side to side by any gust of
wind. The smoke soared straight up above
the columns of the flames, but then it
shelved away as if it were heavier than the
air, and settled in a broadening roof down
to the streets of the town, thick, choking.
Inside the gaming-house, in spite of the
steady streams of water from the buckets,
the flames had swept across the floors in
red tides of fearful heat. The faces of, the
foremost fire-fighters were blistered and
seared raw. They staggered back in groups,
blind, reeling, and collapsed on the street.
Yet others rushed up against the flames to
take the places of the men who were
exhausted.
Hysteria had seized the workers. Some
of them shook their fists at the flames and
cursed horribly; others were laughing,
drunk with excitement. And an intoxi-
cated man with a half-empty flask in his
hand reeled down the sidewalk opposite
the gaming-house singing at the top of his
voice, so loudly that the sound penetrated
through the hubbub of the crowd.
Suddenly Clung saw his five servants.
They stood in a line, one behind the other,
each with his hands thrust into alternate
sleeves, and they looked upon the conflag-
ration with calm, unmoved faces. One of
the deputy sheriffs rushed _up to them and
required them with curses to aid in the
rescue work, but they shrugged their shoul-
ders and remained impassive witnesses.
Clung worked his horse a little closer to
them, curiously. The flames belched more
wildly above the buildings and cast a bright
light over the group of Chinese. Something
was wet and gleaming on the face of the
big Mongol who had kept the door of Y0
Chai. And as if inspired by the coming
of Clung, the others lifted their heads to-
gether and gave voice to a wild, discordant
wail, repeated monotonously over and over
again, a lament for the dead. This, then.
was their understanding of how Yo Chai,
their father, had purified himself for an-
other life into which no Chinaman that
had ever lived could follow him.
There was a roar of descending timbers,
ending in a boom and crash, and a vast
shower of sparks darted up into the night
and went out. That flare of light picked
the whole town out of the heart of the
night and gave it back to the day for an
instant.
Women screamed and began shouting
encouragement to the ‘workers; but oh-
viously the end was near. The house of
Y0 Chai was now a roaring bonfire, and the
flames swept up the outside of the walls,
vomiting through the windows in steady
columns. The two deputy sheriffs ran to
the chief clerk of Y0 Chai. He spoke to
them, shaking his head, and when they
turned away he flung the edge of his mantle
over his face and turned away into the
crowd. Then the deputies went among the
crowd and ordered that the useless fight be
given over. The majority obeyed willingly
enough, but a few, either too strongly
tempted by the offers of reward, or else
carried away by the hysteria of excitement,
had to be torn from their places and carried
forcibly back beyond reach of the flames.
Then a horror caught the minds of men
away from the actual fire for a moment.
A horseman who had recently ridden into


268
'ALL- STORY WEEKLY.
the crowd was observed to be fighting with
his horse. The brute was pitching madly
in an effort to shake the rider off and get
closer to the flames. At first the men of
the crowd laughed and cheered on the horse,
for it seemed like a game. But then the
rider was heard screaming for help. Half
a dozen leaped forward to catch the reins
of the frantic animal, but at the same in-
stant it worked the bit into its teeth,
straightened its head with a jerk that tore
the reins from thehands of the master, and
galloped straight for the inferno of fire.
The rider tossed up his arms with a yell
of despair. The yellow flare of fire framed
him, his hat off, his hair blown back, and
his cry was drowned by the roar of the
men of the crowd and the shriek of the
women. At the very edge of the wall of
flame the rider flung himself from the saddle
and struck the ground; the horse sprang on‘ -'
into the flames.
Striking the wall, everywhere undermined
by the fury of the flames, a whole section
of it gave way and crashed down before
the wild horse. Its neigh of agony rang
back; it echoed shrill over the sudden
silence of the crowd, and then the poor!
beast was seen, through the gap which it
had broken down in the wall, galloping still
further into the heart of the wilderness of
flames. Yellow hands of fire reached from
every side against the animal, and it
swerved here and there like a dodging polo
pony through the mass of red and yellow
flames. Straight on it held toward one of
those three piles of steadier fire from which
the conflagration had started, and into this
with a great leap the horse flung itself.
Apparently it struck with its whole weight
the central pillar of the hall, already mostly
eaten through by the fire, and now the pillar
of wood buckled before this blow, and the
roof directly above came lunging down with
a gigantic flurry and outward puff of flames.
There was a yell, human in its piercing
pain, superhuman in its terrible volume;
and then only the roar of the fire, and
Clung saw men who had witnessed, perhaps,
a score of gunfights, now cover their eyes
with their hands.
He turned his gray horse, which was
trembling with excitement, and wove his
way through the dense crowd and out onto
an open lane. He rode with his face toward
the purity of the stars. He stretched up
his empty hands.
“ Out of fire," said Clung, “and into a
new life!” .
He urged the gray to a gallop and went
swiftly up the ravine.

CHAPTER XLIV. _
rm: NIGHT HAWK’s HORSE.
WO things drew \Kirk back to the
cave of the Night Hawk when he left
the house of Y0 Chai that night. The
first was a desire for a final sight of the
silver Virgin; but this was not so strong an
impulse m the wish to look once more on
the strength and wild beauty of the black
stallion.
His reason convinced him that he must
never go near the place again, but the
emotion was greater than the reason.
He had no wish to take the silver Virgin
away with him. The image wa in itself a
great treasure, no doubt, but it seemed to
Kirk that it was the baleful influence of
those diamond eyes which had induced him
to step out of the lawful path just as it had
once tempted Spenser years before. That
whole grim altar and all the jewels of the
cave should stay where they were.
But he could not bear the thought of
leaving the black stallion to die of starva-
tion in the cave. Already the fine animal-
had gone twenty-four hours without water.
It would be a short and simple act of
charity to send a bullet through the brain
of the horse.
So he urged his horse to a steady canter
and arrived quickly at the mouth of the
tunnel. While he was still in the passage,
and while the sound of his footsteps in the
sand surely could not have reached into
the main part of the cave, he heard the
snort and then the shrill whinny of the
stallion; and the sudden sound stopped his
heart with a strange misgiving. It seemed
to Kirk that' there was a note of anger as
'well as triumph in the neigh. For be it
remembered that he was at the end of his
third step back into the primitive, and his


4
CLUNG.
269
mind was open to more elemental influences.
and moved in almost childlike veins of
superstition.
So it was that when he had lighted the
torch in the cave he held it high above his
head and approached the stallion with
rather cautious steps. The large brute
lifted its fine head and turned toward him
with distended nostrils. In his very ear it
trumpeted a greeting, a challenge, perhaps.
For there was little of welcome in its aspect.
The small ears were flat back on the neck,
and the big eyes gave back the light of the
torch with a greenish-yellow gleam. Per-
haps it was the lack of water which had
maddened the horse.
But when Kirk came closer the stallion
bared its teeth and lunged at him like a
biting dog. He shouted and jumped back.
The dlsplay of temper did not irritate him;
rather, it roused in him a fierce desire to
master the brute and a feeling of joy in the
combat. He drew his revolver and poised
it for the shot, aiming squarely between the
eyes of the horse.
Yet his hand lowered. For a picture
came to him of how he had ridden on the
black down the cafion on that night when
he had met and slain Charlie Morgan, and
how the stallion had galloped like a swift
and noiseless shadow. Also, the anger of
the dumb brute was like the anger of a
man who knows that he is. about to be shot
down for no crime. It became more diffi-
cult for Kirk to. press the trigger than it
would have been for him to murder a
defenseless human being.
He cursed, and raised the revolver again,
but once more his hand faltered and fell.
He thought now of riding the stallion down
one of the riding-paths in the park, and
how all eyes would go Over to him. There
was not a mount in the riding academy to
compare with this one. To be sure, there
was some danger of appearing near Kirby
Creek with a black stallion, for the Night
Hawk was known to have ridden a mount
such as this. But he could prove with a
thousand alibis that he was not the Night
Hawk. He had been still in the far North
in the very height of the outlaw‘s career.
He made a sudden resolution to take the
black away' with him. The silver Virgin
and all the jewels of plunder could remain
here in the eternal night of the cave, but
he would carry away the gun, the horse, and
the poniard of Spenser.
Having made up his mind to the thing,
he set about leading the horse to water. It
was no easy task, for the horse still acted
as if in a frenzy. He had to take a half-
hitch with a rope around the nose of the
brute, and when the horse reared and struck
at him with its forefeet, he bore down
heavily on the rope, shutting off the stal—
lion’s wind and nearly choking it. He
kept up the pressure until the stallion stag-
gered with glazing eyes. Then he released
the grip of the rope a little and led the
horse to the pool of water. . _ .
Yet all the way he had to keep half
turned toward the animal, for the minute
his back wa turned he felt that the ears
of the stallion would lower and the fire
come back in its eyes. At the pool the
black plunged its nose whole inches into the
water and drank, but before it had finished
the draft Kirk pulled up its head again.
There was another furious display of tem-
per, but Kirk knew too much about horses
to let the half-famished brute take its fill
of water. He pulled the stallion back into
the cave, tied its head short to the stall,
and taking off his saddle from his horse at
the mouth of the tunnel he carried it back
and placed it on the black.
Then he placed the torch in a crevice of
the rock near the silver Virgin and looked
his last upon the image, and as he led the
horse into the mouth of the passage it
seemed to Kirk that the black diamond
eyes of the Virgin turned and followed his
leaving.
It was no easy task to lead the big horse
down the tunnel. and again and again the
stallion lunged forward against the rope in
its desire to reach the man. He choked
the black down, and kept him at a safe
distance until they reached the mouth.
There, as before, the stallion crouched like
a dog and wriggled its way out to the open.
Kirk put his other horse on a rope and
started back up the ravine.
It was a difficult progress. When his
own horse approached too close, the black
lashed out with vicious heels, and even


CLUNG.
271
the peaks on the other side, and all of
Kirby Creek was bathed in yellow light.
“Shall we ride down?” suggested Kirk.
“What about it, Winifred?"
“The fire’s already dying down," she
said, “ and it will be almost out by the time
we arrive. Besides, it’s not spreading.”
“What’s the matter, Winifred?” asked
Kirk maliciously. “ You’re not keen for
anything these days.”
“ For nothing except to leave this drop-
ping-off point of the world,” she answered
wearily.
And as she was turning back into the
house her father said in a low voice: “ Gad,
I think it’s the place of Cl--of Yo Chai!”
Winifred stopped short at the door.
“The place of Y0 Chai?" she echoed
sharply.
“ Look!” answered John Sampson.
Their place on the side of the ravine was
at a considerable elevation above the town
of Kirby Creek, and as the fire lighted the
roofs of the town they were able to .see
the entire sweep of the place. Now, as
they grew accustomed to the flare, they
could see with perfect distinctness that it
was from the broad roof of the gambling-
house that the fire was belching.
“Poor devil! " muttered Sampson. “Poor
Yo Chai!” .
“What difference does it make?" said
the girl coldly. “ Perhaps he’s in the flames
—he probably is, to save his gold. But
what difference does it make—one dog of
a Chinaman more or less in the world?”
“But burned to death!" said Sampson.
“ Gad! how horrible.”
“ Bah!” snorted Kirk. “Let him go.
After all, a gambler takes his chances, even
with fire. Let him go."
“Burned to death!” repeated the girl,
and she tumed with a muffled cry and ran
into the house.
“ What's up with her?" asked Kirk
suspiciously.
“ Some day I’ll tell you, lad,” said Samp-
son, deeply moved. “But now let’s go in
to her.”
They found her huddled on 'her bed,
weeping hysterically. And when her father
tried to comfort her she fought him away.
“Keep your head high, Winifred," be
pleaded. “There’s not one chance in
twenty that he’s caught in the fire.”
“You don’t know,” she said, and sud~
denly she was clinging to her father, still
weeping. “ You don’t know, but I do. I
can almost see him start that fire with his
own hand. Oh, dad! Oh, dad!"
“ Hush!” he said, patting her back with
clumsy tenderness. “ Hush, my dear, for
it will all turn out all right in the end.”
‘-‘ How can it for him?” she said, almost
fiercely. “I tell you it’s the end of—of
Yo Chai.”
“ One dog of a Chinaman more or less—~-
I quote your own words, my dear.” '
“ I saw the shadow of it in his eyes,”
she said. “I saw the coming of it when I
left him. Dad, yellow or white, there’s
not his like left in the world. And I’m
alone. Oh, God! how utterly alone, dad.”
“Hush!” he said again with a shaking
voice, “or Kirk will hear."
‘-‘ Yes, Kirk! " She sat upright, the tears
gone. “ If it had not been for Kirk "
“ Well?”
“ I hate the ground he walks on."
“ Do you still hold that old slip against '
him?”
“ Dad,” she said suddenly, “ what a fool,
what a weak and cruel and selfish fool a
woman can be.”
She broke away from Sampson and stood
erect.
“We leave in the morning.” she said,
“and we have to get our things together.” >
He said, alarmed: “ But wait till you’ve
quieted down, Winifred. You’re half-hys-
terical now.”
And she laughed in such a way as he had
never heard before.
“Do you think that anything matters
now? I was never calmer in my life.”
She proved it, it seemed, by the absolute
quiet in which she set about packing their
few belongings which they had taken into
the mining camp, and Kirk and Sampson
sat in utter silence watching her with a sort
of awe. Through the window they saw the
fire had passed its height, and now the
flames fell, and there was only a red glow
over the town and a faint red spot in the
sky of the night above Kirby Creek, like a
grim sign.


276
ALL - STORY WEEKLY.
silence in the shanty, heard the clatter of a
galloping horse stop before the house, heard
steps mount the front steps. saw the door
swing open, and in the lighted rectangle
stood a slender man with a very_ white
face, doubly white because of the red smear
across the forehead. His eyes were steadv
ily upon the girl. _
And she mse, her lips parted and her
eyes staring with a wide and bright fasci-
nation.
“Winifred!” called John Sampson.
The steady eyes of Clung turned upon
him for a single instant and he Could not
speak again; the words were frozen in his
throat. And the girl crossed the floor, and
passed through the door, and the door closed
behind her. Instantly the gallop of a horse
began, and rattled away over the rocks.
Then life returned to John Sampson.
He rushed to the door, threw it wide, and
running out into the moonlight he cried
at the top of his voice:
“ Winifred! “
There was nothing in sight but the shad—
ows of the rocky walls; and all he heard
was the far, departing rattle of boots upon
rocks.
“Winifred!” he called again.
And the side of the ravine gave back the
word like a mocking whisper close to his
ear.
(The end.)






LAYTON began replacing his curios
C in their cabinet, then paused: with
unsteady fingers he picked up a
small object.
“Here’s something that ought to inter-
est you, Tom,” he jested, yet with an un-
der current of seriousness. " I bought it in
Bagdad~for an unmerciful price. The old
robber who sold it swore that it had been
engraved by Solomon himself, and had all
sorts of magical powers."
Macdonald examined the little stone curi-
ously. It was'a fiat, oblong bit of onyx:
graVen on one side was the parallelogram
with crossed diagonals anciently called the
“Seal of Solomon.” In each of the four
tiny triangles thus made was carved one
character of some unknown tongue. He
Ernest: M. Poate
touched them half reverently, some old
strain of Celtic mysticism stirring in his
canny Scotch blood.
“ They are supposed to be Chaldean," ex-
plained his host. “ That‘s the ‘Word of
Power’ you read about in the ‘Arabian
Nights.’ If you hold the talisman up and
pronounce that word, it will break all evil
spells—so old Ali Baba said. We called
him that because he was more than equal
to forty ordinary thieves. Let’s sit down."
Macdonald handed back the stone, and
followed Clayton into the other room. “I
get tired pretty easy," apologized the older
man, pouring himself a drink. The de-
canter clinked against the glass edge so that
a. few drops of brandy spattered on the
table. He was still shaken by some ob-