The Oakdale Affair. Edgar Rice Burroughs

could furnish. The man had come to Oakdale, learned all that was to be learned there, and forthwith departed.

      This, then, will be about all concerning Oakdale for the present. We must leave her to bury her own dead.

      The sudden pressure of the knife point against the breast of the Oskaloosa Kid awakened the youth with a startling suddenness which brought him to his feet before a second vicious thrust reached him. For a time he did not realize how close he had been to death or that he had been saved by the chance location of the automatic pistol in his breast pocket—the very pistol he had taken from the dressing table of Abigail Prim's boudoir.

      The commotion of the attack and escape brought the other sleepers to heavy-eyed wakefulness. They saw Dopey Charlie advancing upon the Kid, a knife in his hand. Behind him slunk The General, urging the other on. The youth was backing toward the doorway. The tableau persisted but for an instant. Then the would-be murderer rushed madly upon his victim, the latter's hand leaped from beneath the breast of his torn coat—there was a flash of flame, a staccato report and Dopey Charlie crumpled to the ground, screaming. In the same instant The Oskaloosa Kid wheeled and vanished into the night.

      It had all happened so quickly that the other members of the gang, awakened from deep slumber, had only time to stumble to their feet before it was over. The Sky Pilot, ignoring the screaming Charlie, thought only of the loot which had vanished with the Oskaloosa Kid.

      "Come on! We gotta get him," he cried, as he ran from the barn after the fugitive. The others, all but Dopey Charlie, followed in the wake of their leader. The wounded man, his audience departed, ceased screaming and, sitting up, fell to examining himself. To his surprise he discovered that he was not dead. A further and more minute examination disclosed the additional fact that he was not even badly wounded. The bullet of The Kid had merely creased the flesh over the ribs beneath his right arm. With a grunt that might have been either disgust or relief he stumbled to his feet and joined in the pursuit.

      Down the road toward the south ran The Oskaloosa Kid with all the fleetness of youth spurred on by terror. In five minutes he had so far outdistanced his pursuers that The Sky Pilot leaped to the conclusion that the quarry had left the road to hide in an adjoining field. The resultant halt and search upon either side of the road delayed the chase to a sufficient extent to award the fugitive a mile lead by the time the band resumed the hunt along the main highway. The men were determined to overhaul the youth not alone because of the loot upon his person but through an abiding suspicion that he might indeed be what some of them feared he was—an amateur detective—and there were at least two among them who had reason to be especially fearful of any sort of detective from Oakdale.

      They no longer ran; but puffed arduously along the smooth road, searching with troubled and angry eyes to right and left and ahead of them as they went.

      The Oskaloosa Kid puffed, too; but he puffed a mile away from the searchers and he walked more rapidly than they, for his muscles were younger and his wind unimpaired by dissipation. For a time he carried the small automatic in his hand; but later, hearing no evidence of pursuit, he returned it to the pocket in his coat where it had lain when it had saved him from death beneath the blade of the degenerate Charlie.

      For an hour he continued walking rapidly along the winding country road. He was very tired; but he dared not pause to rest. Always behind him he expected the sudden onslaught of the bearded, blear-eyed followers of The Sky Pilot. Terror goaded him to supreme physical effort. Recollection of the screaming man sinking to the earthen floor of the hay barn haunted him. He was a murderer! He had slain a fellow man. He winced and shuddered, increasing his gait until again he almost ran —ran from the ghost pursuing him through the black night in greater terror than he felt for the flesh and blood pursuers upon his heels.

      And Nature drew upon her sinister forces to add to the fear which the youth already felt. Black clouds obscured the moon blotting out the soft kindliness of the greening fields and transforming the budding branches of the trees to menacing and gloomy arms which appeared to hover with clawlike talons above the dark and forbidding road. The wind soughed with gloomy and increasing menace, a sudden light flared across the southern sky followed by the reverberation of distant thunder.

      Presently a great rain drop was blown against the youth's face; the vividness of the lightning had increased; the rumbling of the thunder had grown to the proportions of a titanic bombardment; but he dared not pause to seek shelter.

      Another flash of lightning revealed a fork in the road immediately ahead—to the left ran the broad, smooth highway, to the right a dirt road, overarched by trees, led away into the impenetrable dark.

      The fugitive paused, undecided. Which way should he turn? The better travelled highway seemed less mysterious and awesome, yet would his pursuers not naturally assume that he had followed it? Then, of course, the right hand road was the road for him. Yet still he hesitated, for the right hand road was black and forbidding; suggesting the entrance to a pit of unknown horrors.

      As he stood there with the rain and the wind, the thunder and the lightning, horror of the past and terror of the future his only companions there broke suddenly through the storm the voice of a man just ahead and evidently approaching along the highway.

      The youth turned to flee; but the thought of the men tracking him from that direction brought him to a sudden halt. There was only the road to the right, then, after all. Cautiously he moved toward it, and at the same time the words of the voice came clearly through the night:

      The voice seemed reassuring—its quality and the annunciation of the words bespoke for its owner considerable claim to refinement. The youth had halted again, but he now crouched to one side fearing to reveal his presence because of the bloody crime he thought he had committed; yet how he yearned to throw himself upon the compassion of this fine voiced stranger! How his every fibre cried out for companionship in this night of his greatest terror; but he would have let the invisible minstrel pass had not Fate ordained to light the scene at that particular instant with a prolonged flare of sheet lightning, revealing the two wayfarers to one another.

      The youth saw a slight though well built man in ragged clothes and disreputable soft hat. The image was photographed upon his brain for life—the honest, laughing eyes, the well moulded features harmonizing so well with the voice, and the impossible garments which marked the man hobo and bum as plainly as though he wore a placard suspended from his neck.

      The stranger halted. Once more darkness enveloped them. "Lovely evening for a stroll," remarked the man. "Running out to your country place? Isn't there danger of skidding on these wet roads at night? I told James, just before we started, to be sure to see that the chains were on all around; but he forgot them. James is very trying sometimes. Now he never showed up this evening and I had to start out alone, and he knows perfectly well that I detest driving after dark in the rain."

      The youth found himself smiling. His fear had suddenly vanished. No one could harbor suspicion of the owner of that cheerful voice.

      "I didn't know which road to take," he ventured, in explanation of his presence at the cross road.

      "Oh," exclaimed the man, "are there two roads here? I was looking for this fork and came near passing it in the dark. It was a year ago since I came this way; but I recall a deserted house about a mile up the dirt road. It will shelter us from the inclemencies of the weather."

      "Oh!" cried the youth. "Now I know where I am. In the dark and the storm and after all that has happened to me tonight nothing seemed natural. It was just as though I was in some strange land; but I know now. Yes, there is a deserted house a little less than a mile from here; but you wouldn't want to stop there at night. They tell some frightful stories about it. It hasn't been occupied for over twenty years—not since the Squibbs were found murdered there—the father, mother three sons, and a daughter. They never discovered the murderer, and the house has stood vacant and the farm unworked almost continuously since. A couple of men tried working it; but they didn't stay long. A night or so was enough for them and their families. I remember hearing as a little—er—child stories of the frightful things that happened there in the house where the Squibbs were murdered—things that happened after dark when the lights were