The Shooting of Dan McGrew, A Novel. Based on the Famous Poem of Robert Service. Marvin Dana

love. Deep within it was a whisper of spiritual things, of things sacred. But, too, the weaving notes made a mesh of sensuous splendor. There was a voluptuous spell in the throbbing cadences.

      It was the sensual witchery of the music that probed the emotions of Dan McGrew, and beat them to swirling revolt against the calmness he had striven to maintain. The finer, nobler meaning of the love-lyric touched him not at all. But the sorcery of that exquisite voluptuousness thrilled in his blood. He sat watching the woman, and his eyes were aflame. The enchantment of the melody was upon her as well. Body and soul, she responded in her mood to the mood of the player, whom she loved, even as he loved her. The oval of her cheeks bore a deepened rose. The red curves of the lips bent to a tremulous smile. The dark glory of her eyes shone more radiantly, as she stared, unseeing, into the distance. The lithe, gracious form was become tense in this moment of absorbed feeling. Never had Dan McGrew seen her so wonderfully alive, so vibrant of emotion, so beautiful, so desirable, so altogether adorable. With the beat of the music lashing on desire, the spectacle of the woman's loveliness fed the flames of longing, until the fires of his passion consumed utterly the will that would have held them in control. The music softened at last to a mere breath of beautiful sound. Then, a clangor of triumphant harmonies—and silence.

      Lou rose quickly, and went into the living-room.

      In his fevered imagination, Dan McGrew could see the caress between husband and wife, and, though he continued to sit immobile, staring dazedly at the spot where a moment before the woman had been, wrath surged in him against that other man. By so much as his love for the woman welled in him, by so much the tide of his hate mounted. For a long time, he sat there, through ages of torture, as it seemed to him. He heard Jim go out of the house by the back way. Soon afterward, there came to his ears the clatter of a horse's hoofs on the gravel of the drive, and he knew that the ranch-owner was off again to the fields, though he did not look up to see. With mad eagerness, he was awaiting the woman's return. Reason no longer had any hold on his mood. He was helpless in the clutch of passion. The music had softened the fibers of resolve. The allurement of the love-light that had shone from Lou's face while she sat listening, had drawn his desire of her into a vortex that held him powerless against its rush. He had no plan of action, no thought as to what his course should be. He was conscious only of an intolerable need of this woman. As the minutes passed, and still she did not return, the longing mastered him completely. He got to his feet, with unaccustomed awkwardness, and went into the living-room with shambling steps wholly unlike his usual elastic tread. He moved falteringly, as might one in the dark in a strange place. For, in truth, the mists of passion had settled on his spirit, shrouding and blinding him.

      Lou was reclining in a low easy chair, within a nest of cushions. In the abandonment of her posture, the suave grace of her body's lines, still maidenly, rather than matronly, despite her full womanhood, were clearly revealed to the man's avid eyes. On her face was still the expression of rapturous tenderness that was not for him, which, nevertheless, had enthralled him. Dan McGrew, in this hour of folly, was bereft of judgment utterly. The woman there in the chair, who did not even turn her head toward him as he entered, was a loadstone that drew toward her irresistibly every atom of the blood racing in his veins. He went toward her—without any hesitation or faltering now. All the life in him seemed in this instant to be at its best, potent as never before, and not to be denied. So, he moved forward lightly and swiftly. Before the woman had so much as guessed his presence there beside her, he had stooped and taken her in his arms.

      Lou cried out sharply under the shock of fear in the first second, when the man's arms closed about her. But, in the next instant, as she felt herself lifted bodily from her place, and crushed against Dan's breast, a horrible fear beset her that sapped her strength, and left her limp within the fierce embrace. Her face was suddenly become pallid. She was half-swooning under the dreadfulness of the thing that had befallen. Dan rained kisses on the golden masses of her hair, from which the delicate perfume penetrated his senses, and inflamed him to new madness. He loosened his clasp upon her body, in order to raise the white face to his lips. But then, at last, the energies of the woman were suddenly restored. A hot flush of mingled shame and anger dyed face and throat. The heavy lids lifted from the dark eyes, which now were blazing. Her body tensed, then writhed in an abrupt, violent effort for freedom. Her action caught the man unawares. She slipped from his arms, and darted behind the chair in which she had been sitting, so that its bulk was interposed as a barrier between them.

      "Oh, you have dared—!" She broke off, choking over the humiliation of such an outrage against her womanhood. She was pale and flushed by turns. Her body was racked by convulsive shudderings. She was wounded to the depths of her being.

      Dan, nevertheless, was without compunction at sight of her distress. He was still crazed by desire of her—a desire only intensified a thousand-fold by that brief contact of her within his arms. With a great leap, he was upon her before she could flee again, had caught her shoulder, wrenched her about, and, for a second time, swung her to his breast. The shriek she would have uttered was muffled by his lips on her mouth.

      Jim returned early from the fields that afternoon. His heart was fairly singing with happiness, as he mounted the steps of the house. His love was overflowing. All things in life were perfect to him. He halted on the porch, somewhat surprised that neither Lou nor their guest should be there. He chanced to glance through the window into the living-room. It was the very moment when Dan McGrew held the woman strained to his bosom, his mouth on hers. Jim stared, uncomprehending, unbelieving. Then, horror fell upon him, enveloped him in a black pall of agony—for his wife lay supine, unresisting, yielding to the kisses that polluted purity. But, in another second, Lou found strength to twist her lips aside, and the cry that had been stifled broke from her. Its appeal was unmistakable in its frantic suffering. Jim heard and understood, and answered with a roar of rage, as he hurled himself through the door and upon the man who thus dishonored him. Lou, released as Dan heard Jim's shout, shrank away, and stood trembling against the wall, while the two men reeled back and forth in a frenzied grapple. Their strength was so well matched that neither at the outset could gain an advantage; for each was keyed to extreme endeavor by the urge of elemental passions at their full. Then, as their lurching bodies sent a massive chair volleying to the floor, Jim's hold was loosened. Dan had time to snatch the automatic from his pocket—but not time to use it. Before his arm could be raised to fire, Jim had caught his wrist in a grip not to be broken. A hip-lock threw Dan backward violently against the table that stood on one side of the room. Strong though it was, the table yielded under the impact of the two heavy bodies upon it, and went crashing to the floor, with the two men atop the splintered boards. The force of the fall stunned Dan for a moment. The automatic dropped from his released hand. Jim saw, and seized the weapon. Ere Dan could move, he had scrambled to his feet, where he stood menacing the fallen man. Perhaps he would have shot his enemy there and then—but Lou interposed. She had watched with dilated eyes the fight between the men who loved her. Her whole feeling had been a desperate prayer for her husband's victory: a prayer made vital by hate against the man who had so grossly insulted her. Now at the end, however, a softer, feminine emotion compelled her. She leaped forward, and clung to her husband's arm.

      THE TABLE WENT CRASHING TO THE FLOOR, WITH THE TWO MEN ATOP THE SPLINTERED BOARDS.

      "No, no, Jim!" she implored him. "Don't shoot! Tell him to go. … Oh, my God! Tell him to go, Jim."

      Dan clambered clumsily to his feet. The muzzle of the automatic stared at him in vicious threat of death. The issue had left him helpless. He was too weak for further combat, in the reaction from great emotions. He stood with downcast eyes, swaying a little unsteadily.

      Jim spoke, his voice metallic:

      "You hear?" he said. "Get out of here, you dog! I'll send your things to the hotel to-night. Not a word out of you—damn you!—or I'll kill you in your tracks."

      Husband and wife stood rigidly motionless, watching. The beaten man ventured no rebellion against the decree. He went out of the room with a stealthy, slinking haste, as though he feared lest the self-restraint of his victor might fail. But in his heart was neither remorse nor despair—only a fiercer hatred of