The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume 2: Grim Lands

Suleyman did not eat his breakfast in Vienna on the morning of the 29th. He stood on the height of Semmering, before his rich pavilion with its gold-knobbed pinnacles and its guard of five hundred Solaks, and watched his light batteries pecking away vainly at the frail walls; he saw his irregulars wasting their lives like water, striving to fill the fosse, and he saw his sappers burrowing like moles, driving mines and counter-mines nearer and nearer the bastions.

Within the city there was little ease. Night and day the walls were manned. In their cellars the Viennese watched the faint vibrations of peas on drumheads that betrayed the sounds of digging in the earth that told of Turkish mines burrowing under the walls. They sank their counter-mines accordingly, and men fought no less fiercely under the earth than above.

Vienna was the one Christian island in a sea of infidels. Night by night men watched the horizons burning where the Akinji yet scoured the agonized land. Occasionally word came from the outer world--slaves escaping from the camp and slipping into the city. Always their news was fresh horror. In Upper Austria less than a third of the inhabitants were left alive; Mikhal Oglu was outdoing himself. And the people said that it was evident the vulture-winged one was looking for one in particular. His slayers brought men't heads and heaped them high before him; he avidly searched among the grisly relics, then, apparently in fiendish disappointment, drove his devils to new atrocities.

These tales, instead of paralyzing the Austrians with dread, fired them with the mad fury of desperation. Mines exploded, breaches were made and the Turks swarmed in, but always the desperate Christians were there before them, and in the choking, blind, wild-beast madness of hand-to-hand fighting they paid in part the red debt they owed.

September dwindled into October; the leaves turned brown and yellow on Wiener Wald, and the winds blew cold. The watchers shivered at night on the walls that whitened to the bite of the frost; but still the tents ringed the city; and still Suleyman sat in his magnificent pavilion and glared at the frail barrier that barred his imperial path. None but Ibrahim dared speak to him; his mood was black as the cold nights that crept down from the northern hills. The wind that moaned outside his tent seemed a dirge for his ambitions of conquest.

Ibrahim watched him narrowly, and after a vain onset that lasted from dawn till midday, he called off the Janizaries and bade them retire into the ruined suburbs and rest. And he sent a bowman to shoot a very certain shaft into a very certain part of the city, where certain persons were waiting for just such an event.

No more attacks were made that day. The field-pieces, which had been pounding at the Karnthner Gate for days, were shifted northward, to hammer at the Burg. As an assault on that part of the wall seemed imminent, the bulk of the soldiery was shifted there. But the onslaught did not come, though the batteries kept up a steady fire, hour after hour. Whatever the reason, the soldiers gave thanks for the respite; they were dizzy with fatigue, mad with raw wounds and lack of sleep.

That night the great square, the Am-Hof market, seethed with soldiers, while civilians looked on enviously. A great store of wine had been discovered hidden in the cellars of a rich Jewish merchant, who hoped to reap triple profit when all other liquor in the city was gone. In spite of their officers, the half-crazed men rolled the great hogsheads into the square and broached them. Salm gave up the attempt to control them. Better drunkenness, growled the old warhorse, than for the men to fall in their tracks from exhaustion. He paid the Jew from his own purse. In relays the soldiers came from the walls and drank deep.

In the glare of cressets and torches, to the accompaniment of drunken shouts and songs, to which the occasional rumble of a cannon played a sinister undertone, von Kalmbach dipped his basinet into a barrel and brought it out brimful and dripping. Sinking his mustache into the liquid, he paused as his clouded eyes, over the rim of the steel cap, rested on a strutting figure on the other side of the hogshead. Resentment touched his expression. Red Sonya had already visited more than one barrel. Her burganet was thrust sidewise on her rebellious locks, her swagger was wilder, her eyes more mocking.

--a!--she cried scornfully.--t-- the Turk-killer, with his nose deep in the keg, as usual! Devil bite all topers!-- She consistently thrust a jeweled goblet into the crimson flood and emptied it at a gulp. Gottfried stiffened resentfully. He had had a tilt with Sonya already, and he still smarted.

--hy should I even look at you, in your ragged harness and empty purse,--she had mocked,--hen even Paul Bakics is mad for me? Go along, guzzler, beer-keg!----e damned to you,--he had retorted.--ou needn't be so high, just because your sister is the Soldan't mistress--

At that she had flown into an awful passion, and they had parted with mutual curses. Now, from the devil in her eyes, he saw that she intended making things further uncomfortable for him.

--ussy!--he growled.----l drown you in this hogshead.----ay, you--l drown yourself first, boar-pig!--she shouted amid a roar of rough laughter.--pity you aren't as valiant against the Turks as you are against the wine-butts!----ogs bite you, slut!--he roared.--ow can I break their heads when they stand off and pound us with cannon balls? Shall I throw my dagger at them from the wall?----here are thousands just outside,--she retorted in the madness induced by drink and her own wild nature,--f any had the guts to go to them.----y God!--the maddened giant dragged out his great sword.--o baggage can call me coward, sot or not! I--l go out upon them, if never a man follow me!-- Bedlam followed his bellow; the drunken temper of the crowd was fit for such madness. The nearly empty hogsheads were deserted as men tipsily drew sword and reeled toward the outer gates. Wulf Hagen fought his way into the storm, buffeting men right and left, shouting fiercely,--ait, you drunken fools! Don't surge out in this shape! Wait--They brushed him aside, sweeping on in a blind senseless torrent.

Dawn was just beginning to tip the eastern hills. Somewhere in the strangely silent Turkish camp a drum began to throb. Turkish sentries stared wildly and loosed their matchlocks in the air to warn the camp, appalled at the sight of the Christian horde pouring over the narrow drawbridge, eight thousand strong, brandishing swords and ale tankards. As they foamed over the moat a terrific explosion rent the din, and a portion of the wall near the Karnthner Gate seemed to detach itself and rise into the air. A great shout rose from the Turkish camp, but the attackers did not pause.

They rushed headlong into the suburbs, and there they saw the Janizaries, not rousing from slumber, but fully clad and armed, being hurriedly drawn up in charging lines. Without pausing, they burst headlong into the half-formed ranks. Far outnumbered, their drunken fury and velocity was yet irresistible. Before the madly thrashing axes and lashing broadswords, the Janizaries reeled back dazed and disordered. The suburbs became a shambles where battling men, slashing and hewing at one another, stumbled on mangled bodies and severed limbs. Suleyman and Ibrahim, on the height of Semmering, saw the invincible Janizaries in full retreat, streaming out toward the hills.

In the city the rest of the defenders were working madly to repair the great breach the mysterious explosion had torn in the wall. Salm gave thanks for that drunken sortie. But for it, the Janizaries would have been pouring through the breach before the dust settled.

All was confusion in the Turkish camp. Suleyman ran to his horse and took charge in person, shouting at the Spahis. They formed ranks and swung down the slopes in orderly squadrons. The Christian warriors, still following their fleeing enemies, suddenly awakened to their danger. Before them the Janizaries were still falling back, but on either flank the horsemen of Asia were galloping to cut them off. Fear replaced drunken recklessness. They began to fall back, and the retreat quickly became a rout. Screaming in blind panic they threw away their weapons and fled for the drawbridge. The Turks rode them down to the water-- edge, and tried to follow them across the bridge, into the gates which were opened for them. And there at the bridge Wulf Hagen and his retainers met the pursuers and held them hard. The flood of the fugitives flowed past him to safety; on him the Turkish tide broke like a red wave. He loomed, a steel-clad giant, in a waste of spears.

Gottfried von Kalmbach did not voluntarily quit the field, but the rush of his companions swept him along the tide of flight, blaspheming bitterly. Presently he lost his footing and his panic-stricken comrades stampeded across his prostrate frame. When the frantic heels ceased to drum on his mail, he raised his head and saw that he was near the fosse, and naught but Turks about him. Rising, he ran lumberingly toward the moat, into which he plunged unexpectedly, looking back over his shoulder at a pursuing Moslem.

He came up floundering and spluttering, and made for the opposite bank, splashing water like a buffalo. The blood-mad Muhammadan was close behind him--an Algerian corsair, as much at home in water as out. The stubborn German would not drop his great sword, and burdened by his mail, just managed to reach the other bank, where he clung, utterly exhausted and unable to lift a hand in defense as the Algerian swirled in, dagger gleaming above his naked shoulder. Then some one swore heartily on the bank hard by. A slim hand thrust a long pistol into the Algerian't face; he screamed as it exploded, making a ghastly ruin of his head. Another slim, strong hand gripped the sinking German by the scruff of his mail.

--rab the bank, fool!--gritted a voice, indicative of great effort.--can't heave you up alone; you must weigh a ton. Pull, dolt, pull!-- Blowing, gasping and floundering, Gottfried half clambered, was half lifted, out of the moat. He showed some disposition to lie on his belly and retch, what of the dirty water he had swallowed, but his rescuer urged him to his feet.

--he Turks are crossing the bridge and the lads are closing the gates against them--haste, before we--e cut off.-- Inside the gate Gottfried stared about, as if waking from a dream.

--here-- Wulf Hagen? I saw him holding the bridge.----ying dead among twenty dead Turks,--answered Red Sonya.

Gottfried sat down on a piece of fallen wall, and because he was shaken and exhausted, and still mazed with drink and blood-lust, he sank his face in his huge hands and wept. Sonya kicked him disgustedly.

--ame o--Satan, man, don't sit and blubber like a spanked schoolgirl. You drunkards had to play the fool, but that can't be mended. Come--let-- go to the Walloon't tavern and drink ale.----hy did you pull me out of the moat?--he asked.

--ecause a great oaf like you never can help himself. I see you need a wise person like me to keep life in that hulking frame.----ut I thought you despised me!----ell, a woman can change her mind, can't she?--she snapped.

Along the walls the pikemen were repelling the frothing Moslems, thrusting them off the partly repaired breach. In the royal pavilion Ibrahim was explaining to his master that the devil had undoubtedly inspired that drunken sortie just at the right moment to spoil the Grand Vizier-- carefully laid plans. Suleyman, wild with fury, spoke shortly to his friend for the first time.

--ay, thou hast failed. Have done with thine intrigues. Where craft has failed, sheer force shall prevail. Send a rider for the Akinji; they are needed here to replace the fallen. Bid the hosts to the attack again.-- VI

The preceding onslaughts were naught to the storm that now burst on Vienna-- reeling walls. Night and day the cannons flashed and thundered. Bombs burst on roofs and in the streets. When men died on the walls there was none to take their places. Fear of famine stalked the streets and the darker fear of treachery ran black-mantled through the alleys. Investigation showed that the blast that had rent the Karnthner wall had not been fired from without. In a mine tunnelled from an unsuspected cellar inside the city, a heavy charge of powder had been exploded beneath the wall. One or two men, working secretly, might have done it. It was now apparent that the bombardment of the Burg had been merely a gesture to draw attention away from the Karnthner wall, to give the traitors an opportunity to work undiscovered.

Count Salm and his aides did the work of giants. The aged commander, fired with superhuman energy, trod the walls, braced the faltering, aided the wounded, fought in the breaches side by side with the common soldiers, while death dealt his blows unsparingly.

But if death supped within the walls, he feasted full without. Suleyman drove his men as relentlessly as if he were their worst foe. Plague stalked among them, and the ravaged countryside yielded no food. The cold winds howled down from the Carpathians and the warriors shivered in their light Oriental garb. In the frosty nights the hands of the sentries froze to their matchlocks. The ground grew hard as flint and the sappers toiled feebly with blunted tools. Rain fell, mingled with sleet, extinguishing matches, wetting powder, turning the plain outside the city to a muddy wallow, where rotting corpses sickened the living.

Suleyman shuddered as with an ague, as he looked out over the camp. He saw his warriors, worn and haggard, toiling in the muddy plain like ghosts under the gloomy leaden skies. The stench of his slaughtered thousands was in his nostrils. In that instant it seemed to the Sultan that he looked on a gray plain of the dead, where corpses dragged their lifeless bodies to an outworn task, animated only by the ruthless will of their master. For an instant the Tatar in his veins rose above the Turk and he shook with fear. Then his lean jaws set. The walls of Vienna staggered drunkenly, patched and repaired in a score of places. How could they stand?

--ound for the onslaught. Thirty thousand aspers to the first man on the walls!-- The Grand Vizier spread his hands helplessly.--he spirit is gone out of the warriors. They can not endure the miseries of this icy land.----rive them to the walls with whips,--answered Suleyman, grimly.--his is the gate to Frankistan. It is through it we must ride the road to empire.-- Drums thundered through the camp. The weary defenders of Christendom rose up and gripped their weapons, electrified by the instinctive knowledge that the death-grip had come.

In the teeth of roaring matchlocks and swinging broadswords, the officers of the Sultan drove the Moslem hosts. Whips cracked and men cried out blasphemously up and down the lines. Maddened, they hurled themselves at the reeling walls, riddled with great breaches, yet still barriers behind which desperate men could crouch. Charge after charge rolled on over the choked fosse, broke on the staggering walls, and rolled back, leaving its wash of dead. Night fell unheeded, and through the darkness, lighted by blaze of cannon and flare of torches, the battle raged. Driven by Suleyman't terrible will, the attackers fought throughout the night, heedless of all Moslem tradition.

Dawn rose as on Armageddon. Before the walls of Vienna lay a vast carpet of steel-clad dead. Their plumes waved in the wind. And across the corpses staggered the hollow-eyed attackers to grapple with the dazed defenders.

The steel tides rolled and broke, and rolled on again, till the very gods must have stood aghast at the giant capacity of men for suffering and enduring. It was the Armageddon of races--Asia against Europe. About the walls raved a sea of Eastern faces--Turks, Tatars, Kurds, Arabs, Algerians, snarling, screaming, dying before the roaring matchlocks of the Spaniards, the thrust of Austrian pikes, the strokes of the German Lanzknechts, who swung their two-handed swords like reapers mowing ripe grain. Those within the walls were no more heroic than those without, stumbling among fields of their own dead.

To Gottfried von Kalmbach, life had faded to a single meaning--the swinging of his great sword. In the wide breach by the Karnthner Tower he fought until time lost all meaning. For long ages maddened faces rose snarling before him, the faces of devils, and simitars flashed before his eyes everlastingly. He did not feel his wounds, nor the drain of weariness. Gasping in the choking dust, blind with sweat and blood, he dealt death like a harvest, dimly aware that at his side a slim, pantherish figure swayed and smote--at first with laughter, curses and snatches of song, later in grim silence.

His identity as an individual was lost in that cataclysm of swords. He hardly knew it when Count Salm was death-stricken at his side by a bursting bomb. He was not aware when night crept over the hills, nor did he realize at last that the tide was slackening and ebbing. He was only dimly aware that Nikolas Zrinyi tore him away from the corpse-choked breach, saying,--od-- name, man, go and sleep. We--e beaten them off--for the time being, at least.-- He found himself in a narrow, winding street, all dark and forsaken. He had no idea of how he had got there, but seemed vaguely to remember a hand on his elbow, tugging, guiding. The weight of his mail pulled at his sagging shoulders. He could not tell if the sound he heard were the cannon fitfully roaring, or a throbbing in his own head. It seemed there was some one he should look for--some one who meant a great deal to him. But all was vague. Somewhere, sometime, it seemed long, long ago, a sword-stroke had cleft his basinet. When he tried to think he seemed to feel again the impact of that terrible blow, and his brain swam. He tore off the dented head-piece and cast it into the street.

Again the hand was tugging at his arm. A voice urged,--ine, my lord--drink!-- Dimly he saw a lean, black-mailed figure extending a tankard. With a gasp he caught at it and thrust his muzzle into the stinging liquor, gulping like a man dying of thirst. Then something burst in his brain. The night filled with a million flashing sparks, as if a powder magazine had exploded in his head. After that, darkness and oblivion.

He came slowly to himself, aware of a raging thirst, an aching head, and an intense weariness that seemed to paralyze his limbs. He was bound hand and foot, and gagged. Twisting his head, he saw that he was in a small bare dusty room, from which a winding stone stair led up. He deduced that he was in the lower part of the tower.

Over a guttering candle on a crude table stooped two men. They were both lean and hook-nosed, clad in plain black garments--Asiatics, past doubt. Gottfried listened to their low-toned conversation. He had picked up many languages in his wanderings. He recognized them--Tshoruk and his son Rhupen, Armenian merchants. He remembered that he had seen Tshoruk often in the last week or so, ever since the domed helmets of the Akinji had appeared in Suleyman't camp. Evidently the merchant had been shadowing him, for some reason. Tshoruk was reading what he had written on a bit of parchment.

--y lord, though I blew up the Karnthner wall in vain, yet I have news to make my lord-- heart glad. My son and I have taken the German, von Kalmbach. As he left the wall, dazed with fighting, we followed, guiding him subtly to the ruined tower whereof you know, and giving him drugged wine, bound him fast. Let my lord send the emir Mikhal Oglu to the wall by the tower, and we will give him into thy hands. We will bind him on the old mangonel and cast him over the wall like a tree trunk.-- The Armenian took up an arrow and began to bind the parchment about the shaft with light silver wire.

--ake this to the roof, and shoot it toward the mantlet, as usual,--he began, when Rhupen exclaimed,--ark!--and both froze, their eyes glittering like those of trapped vermin--fearful yet vindictive.

Gottfried gnawed at the gag; it slipped. Outside he heard a familiar voice.--ottfried! Where the devil are you?-- His breath burst from him in a stentorian roar.--ey, Sonya! Name of the devil! Be careful, girl--

Tshoruk snarled like a wolf and struck him savagely on the head with a simitar hilt. Almost instantly, it seemed, the door crashed inward. As in a dream Gottfried saw Red Sonya framed in the doorway, pistol in hand. Her face was drawn and haggard; her eyes burned like coals. Her basinet was gone, and her scarlet cloak. Her mail was hacked and red-clotted, her boots slashed, her silken breeches splashed and spotted with blood.

With a croaking cry Tshoruk ran at her, simitar lifted. Before he could strike, she crashed down the barrel of the empty pistol on his head, felling him like an ox. From the other side Rhupen slashed at her with a curved Turkish dagger. Dropping the pistol, she closed with the young Oriental. Moving like some one in a dream, she bore him irresistibly backward, one hand gripping his wrist, the other his throat. Throttling him slowly, she inexorably crashed his head again and again against the stones of the wall, until his eyes rolled up and set. Then she threw him from her like a sack of loose salt.

--od!--she muttered thickly, reeling an instant in the center of the room, her hands to her head. Then she went to the captive and sinking stiffly to her knees, cut his bonds with fumbling strokes that sliced his flesh as well as the cords.

--ow did you find me?--he asked stupidly, clambering stiffly up.

She reeled to the table and sank down in a chair. A flagon of wine stood at her elbow and she seized it avidly and drank. Then she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and surveyed him wearily but with renewed life.

-- saw you leave the wall and followed. I was so drunk from the fighting I scarce knew what I did. I saw those dogs take your arm and lead you into the alleys, and then I lost sight of you. But I found your burganet lying outside in the street, and began shouting for you. What the hell-- the meaning of this?-- She picked up the arrow, and blinked at the parchment fastened to it. Evidently she could read the Turkish characters, but she scanned it half a dozen times before the meaning became apparent to her exhaustion-numbed brain. Then her eyes flickered dangerously to the men on the floor. Tshoruk sat up, dazedly feeling the gash in his scalp; Rhupen lay retching and gurgling on the floor.

--ie them up, brother,--she ordered, and Gottfried obeyed. The victims eyed the woman much more apprehensively than him.

--his missive is addressed to Ibrahim, the Wezir,--she said abruptly.--hy does he want Gottfried--s head?----ecause of a wound he gave the Sultan at Mohacz,--muttered Tshoruk uneasily.

--nd you, you lower-than-a-dog,--she smiled mirthlessly,--ou fired the mine by the Karnthner! You and your spawn are the traitors among us.--She drew and primed a pistol.--hen Zrinyi learns of you,--she said,--our end will be neither quick nor sweet. But first, you old swine, I-- going to give myself the pleasure of blowing out your cub-- brains before your eyes--

The older Armenian gave a choking cry.--od of my fathers, have mercy! Kill me--torture me--but spare my son!-- At that instant a new sound split the unnatural quiet--a great peal of bells shattered the air.

--hat-- this?--roared Gottfried, groping wildly at his empty scabbard.

--he bells of Saint Stephen!--cried Sonya.--hey peal for victory!--

She sprang for the sagging stair and he followed her up the perilous way. They came out on a sagging shattered roof, on a firmer part of which stood an ancient stone-casting machine, relic of an earlier age, and evidently recently repaired. The tower overlooked an angle of the wall, at which there were no watchers. A section of the ancient glacis, and a ditch interior to the main moat, coupled with a steep natural pitch of the earth beyond, made the point practically invulnerable. The spies had been able to exchange messages here with little fear of discovery, and it was easy to guess the method used. Down the slope, just within long arrow-shot, stood up a huge mantlet of bullhide stretched on a wooden frame, as if abandoned there by chance. Gottfried knew that message-laden arrows were loosed from the tower roof into this mantlet. But just then he gave little thought to that. His attention was riveted on the Turkish camp. There a leaping glare paled the spreading dawn; above the mad clangor of the bells rose the crackle of flames, mingled with awful screams.

--he Janizaries are burning their prisoners,--said Red Sonya.

--udgment Day in the morning,--muttered Gottfried, awed at the sight that met his eyes.

From their eyrie the companions could see almost all of the plain. Under a cold gray leaden sky, tinged a somber crimson with dawn, it lay strewn with Turkish corpses as far as the sight would carry. And the hosts of the living were melting away. From Semmering the great pavilion had vanished. The other tents were now coming down fast. Already the head of the long column was out of sight, moving into the hills through the cold dawn. Snow began falling in light swift flakes.

The Janizaries were glutting their mad disappointment on their helpless captives, hurling men, women and children living into the flames they had kindled under the somber eyes of their master, the monarch men called the Magnificent, the Merciful. All the time the bells of Vienna clanged and thundered as if their bronze throats would burst.

--hey shot their bolt last night,--said Red Sonya.--saw their officers lashing them, and heard them cry out in fear beneath our swords. Flesh and blood could stand no more. Look!--She clutched her companion't arm.--he Akinji will form the rear-guard.-- Even at that distance they made out a pair of vulture wings moving among the dark masses; the sullen light glimmered on a jeweled helmet. Sonya-- powder-stained hands clenched so that the pink, broken nails bit into the white palms, and she spat out a Cossack curse that burned like vitriol.

--here he goes, the bastard, that made Austria a desert! How easily the souls of the butchered folk ride on his cursed winged shoulders! Anyway, old warhorse, he didn't get your head.----hile he lives it'sl ride loose on my shoulders,--rumbled the giant.

Red Sonya-- keen eyes narrowed suddenly. Seizing Gottfried-- arm, she hurried downstairs. They did not see Nikolas Zrinyi and Paul Bakics ride out of the gates with their tattered retainers, risking their lives in sorties to rescue prisoners. Steel clashed along the line of march, and the Akinji retreated slowly, fighting a good rear-guard action, balking the headlong courage of the attackers by their very numbers. Safe in the depths of his horsemen, Mikhal Oglu grinned sardonically. But Suleyman, riding in the main column, did not grin. His face was like a death-mask.

Back in the ruined tower, Red Sonya propped one booted foot on a chair, and cupping her chin in her hand, stared into the fear-dulled eyes of Tshoruk.

--hat will you give for your life?-- The Armenian made no reply.

--hat will you give for the life of your whelp?-- The Armenian started as if stung.--pare my son, princess,--he groaned.--nything--I will pay--I will do anything.-- She threw a shapely booted leg across the chair and sat down.

-- want you to bear a message to a man.----hat man?----ikhal Oglu.-- He shuddered and moistened his lips with his tongue.

--nstruct me; I obey,--he whispered.

--ood. We--l free you and give you a horse. Your son shall remain here as hostage. If you fail us, I--l give the cub to the Viennese to play with--

Again the old Armenian shuddered.

--ut if you play squarely, we--l let you both go free, and my pal and I will forget about this treachery. I want you to ride after Mikhal Oglu and tell him--

Through the slush and driving snow, the Turkish column plodded slowly. Horses bent their heads to the blast; up and down the straggling lines camels groaned and complained, and oxen bellowed pitifully. Men stumbled through the mud, leaning beneath the weight of their arms and equipment. Night was falling, but no command had been given to halt. All day the retreating host had been harried by the daring Austrian cuirassiers who darted down upon them like wasps, tearing captives from their very hands.

Grimly rode Suleyman among his Solaks. He wished to put as much distance as possible between himself and the scene of his first defeat, where the rotting bodies of thirty thousand Muhammadans reminded him of his crushed ambitions. Lord of western Asia he was; master of Europe he could never be. Those despised walls had saved the Western world from Moslem dominion, and Suleyman knew it. The rolling thunder of the Ottoman power re-echoed around the world, paling the glories of Persia and Mogul India. But in the West the yellow-haired Aryan barbarian stood unshaken. It was not written that the Turk should rule beyond the Danube.

Suleyman had seen this written in blood and fire, as he stood on Semmering and saw his warriors fall back from the ramparts, despite the flailing lashes of their officers. It had been to save his authority that he gave the order to break camp--it burned his tongue like gall, but already his soldiers were burning their tents and preparing to desert him. Now in darkly brooding silence he rode, not even speaking to Ibrahim.

In his own way Mikhal Oglu shared their savage despondency. It was with a ferocious reluctance that he turned his back on the land he had ruined, as a half-glutted panther might be driven from its prey. He recalled with satisfaction the blackened, corpse-littered wastes--the screams of tortured men--the cries of girls writhing in his iron arms; recalled with much the same sensations the death-shrieks of those same girls in the blood-fouled hands of his killers.

But he was stung with the disappointment of a task undone--for which the Grand Vizier had lashed him with stinging word. He was out of favor with Ibrahim. For a lesser man that might have meant a bowstring. For him it meant that he would have to perform some prodigious feat to reinstate himself. In this mood he was dangerous and reckless as a wounded panther.

Snow fell heavily, adding to the miseries of the retreat. Wounded men fell in the mire and lay still, covered by a growing white mantle. Mikhal Oglu rode among his rearmost ranks, straining his eyes into the darkness. No foe had been sighted for hours. The victorious Austrians had ridden back to their city.

The columns were moving slowly through a ruined village, whose charred beams and crumbling fire-seared walls stood blackly in the falling snow. Word came back down the lines that the Sultan would pass on through and camp in a valley which lay a few miles beyond.

The quick drum of hoofs back along the way they had come caused the Akinji to grip their lances and glare slit-eyed into the flickering darkness. They heard but a single horse, and a voice calling the name of Mikhal Oglu. With a word the chief stayed a dozen lifted bows, and shouted in return. A tall, gray stallion loomed out of the flying snow, a black-mantled figure crouched grotesquely atop of it.

--shoruk! You Armenian dog! What in the name of Allah--

The Armenian rode close to Mikhal Oglu and whispered urgently in his ear. The cold bit through the thickest garments. The Akinji noted that Tshoruk was trembling violently. His teeth chattered and he stammered in his speech. But the Turk-- eyes blazed at the import of his message.

--og, do you lie?----ay I rot in hell if I lie!--A strong shudder shook Tshoruk and he drew his kaftan close about him.--e fell from his horse, riding with the cuirassiers to attack the rear-guard, and lies with a broken leg in a deserted peasant-- hut some three miles back--alone except for his mistress Red Sonya, and three or four Lanzknechts, who are drunk on wine they found in the deserted camp.-- Mikhal Oglu wheeled his horse with sudden intent.

--wenty men to me!--he barked.--he rest ride on with the main column. I go after a head worth its weight in gold. I--l overtake you before you go into camp.-- Othman caught his jeweled rein.--re you mad, to ride back now? The whole country will be on our heels--

He reeled in his saddle as Mikhal Oglu slashed him across the mouth with his riding-whip. The chief wheeled away, followed by the men he had designated. Like ghosts they vanished into the spectral darkness.

Othman sat his horse uncertainly, looking after them. The snow shafted down, the wind sobbed drearily among the bare branches. There was no sound except the receding noises of the trudging column. Presently these ceased. Then Othman started. Back along the way they had come, he heard a distant reverberation, a roar as of forty or fifty matchlocks speaking together. In the utter silence which followed, panic came upon Othman and his warriors. Whirling away they fled through the ruined village after the retreating horde.

VII

None noticed when night fell on Constantinople, for the splendor of Suleyman made night no less glorious than day. Through gardens that were riots of blossoms and perfume, cressets twinkled like myriad fireflies. Fireworks turned the city into a realm of shimmering magic, above which the minarets of five hundred mosques rose like towers of fire in an ocean of golden foam. Tribesmen on Asian hills gaped and marvelled at the blaze that pulsed and glowed afar, paling the very stars. The streets of Stamboul were thronged with crowds in the attire of holiday and rejoicing. The million lights shone on jeweled turban and striped khalat--on dark eyes sparkling over filmy veils--on shining palanquins borne on the shoulders of huge ebony-skinned slaves.

All that splendor centered in the Hippodrome, where in lavish pageants the horsemen of Turkistan and Tatary competed in breath-taking races with the riders of Egypt and Arabia, where warriors in glittering mail spilled one another-- blood on the sands, where swordsmen were matched against wild beasts, and lions were pitted against tigers of Bengal and boars from northern forests. One might have deemed the imperial pageantry of Rome revived in Eastern garb.

On a golden throne, set upon lapis lazuli pillars, Suleyman reclined, gazing on the splendors, as purple-togaed Caesars had gazed before him. About him bowed his viziers and officers, and the ambassadors from foreign courts--Venice, Persia, India, the khanates of Tatary. They came--including the Venetians--to congratulate him on his victory over the Austrians. For this grand f--te was in celebration of that victory, as set forth in a manifesto under the Sultan't hand, which stated, in part, that the Austrians having made submission and sued for pardon on their knees, and the German realms being so distant from the Ottoman empire,--he Faithful would not trouble to clean out the fortress (Vienna), or purify, improve, and put it in repair.--Therefore the Sultan had accepted the submission of the contemptible Germans, and left them in possession of their paltry--ortress--

Suleyman was blinding the eyes of the world with the blaze of his wealth and glory, and striving to make himself believe that he had actually accomplished all he had intended. He had not been beaten on the field of open battle; he had set his puppet on the Hungarian throne; he had devastated Austria; the markets of Stamboul and Asia were full of Christian slaves. With this knowledge he soothed his vanity, ignoring the fact that thirty thousand of his subjects rotted before Vienna, and that his dreams of European conquest had been shattered.

Behind the throne shone the spoils of war--silken and velvet pavilions, wrested from the Persians, the Arabs, the Egyptian memluks; costly tapestries, heavy with gold embroidery. At his feet were heaped the gifts and tributes of subject and allied princes. There were vests of Venetian velvet, golden goblets crusted with jewels from the courts of the Grand Moghul, ermine-lined kaftans from Erzeroum, carven jade from Cathay, silver Persian helmets with horse-hair plumes, turban-cloths, cunningly sewn with gems, from Egypt, curved Damascus blades of watered steel, matchlocks from Kabul worked richly in chased silver, breastplates and shields of Indian steel, rare furs from Mongolia. The throne was flanked on either hand by a long rank of youthful slaves, made fast by golden collars to a single, long silver chain. One file was composed of young Greek and Hungarian boys, the other of girls; all clad only in plumed head-pieces and jeweled ornaments intended to emphasize their nudity.

Eunuchs in flowing robes, their rotund bellies banded by cloth-of-gold sashes, knelt and offered the royal guests sherbets in gemmed goblets, cooled with snow from the mountains of Asia Minor. The torches danced and flickered to the roars of the multitudes. Around the courses swept the horses, foam flying from their bits; wooden castles reeled and went up in flames as the Janizaries clashed in mock warfare. Officers passed among the shouting people, tossing showers of copper and silver coins amongst them. None hungered or thirsted in Stamboul that night except the miserable Caphar captives. The minds of the foreign envoys were numbed by the bursting sea of splendor, the thunder of imperial magnificence. About the vast arena stalked trained elephants, almost covered with housings of gold-worked leather, and from the jeweled towers on their backs, fanfares of trumpets vied with the roar of the throngs and the bellowing of lions. The tiers of the Hippodrome were a sea of faces, all turning toward the jeweled figure on the shining throne, while thousands of tongues wildly thundered his acclaim.

As he impressed the Venetian envoys, Suleyman knew he impressed the world. In the blaze of his magnificence, men would forget that a handful of desperate Caphars behind rotting walls had closed his road to empire. Suleyman accepted a goblet of the forbidden wine, and spoke aside to the Grand Vizier, who stepped forth and lifted his arms.

--h, guests of my master, the Padishah forgets not the humblest in the hour of rejoicing. To the officers who led his hosts against the infidels, he has made rare gifts. Now he gives two hundred and forty thousand ducats to be distributed among the common soldiers, and likewise to each Janizary he gives a thousand aspers.-- In the midst of the roar that went up, a eunuch knelt before the Grand Vizier, holding up a large round package, carefully bound and sealed. A folded piece of parchment, held shut by a red seal, accompanied it. The attention of the Sultan was attracted.

--h, friend, what has thou there?-- Ibrahim salaamed.--he rider of the Adrianople post delivered it, oh Lion of Islam. Apparently it is a gift of some sort from the Austrian dogs. Infidel riders, I understand, gave it into the hands of the border guard, with instructions to send it straightway to Stamboul.----pen it,--directed Suleyman, his interest roused. The eunuch salaamed to the floor, then began breaking the seals of the package. A scholarly slave opened the accompanying note and read the contents, written in a bold yet feminine hand:

To the Soldan Suleyman and his Wezir Ibrahim and to the hussy Roxelana we who sign our names below send a gift in token of our immeasurable fondness and kind affection.

Sonya of Rogatino, and Gottfried von Kalmbach

Suleyman, who had started up at the name of his favorite, his features suddenly darkening with wrath, gave a choking cry, which was echoed by Ibrahim. The eunuch had torn the seals of the bale, disclosing what lay within. A pungent scent of herbs and preservative spices filled the air, and the object, slipping from the horrified eunuch-- hands, tumbled among the heaps of presents at Suleyman'ts feet, offering a ghastly contrast to the gems, gold and velvet bales. The Sultan stared down at it and in that instant his shimmering pretense of triumph slipped from him; his glory turned to tinsel and dust. Ibrahim tore at his beard with a gurgling, strangling sound, purple with rage.

At the Sultan'ts feet, the features frozen in a death-mask of horror, lay the severed head of Mikhal Oglu, Vulture of the Grand Turk.

Echoes from an Anvil

I leave to paltry poets

The tabor and the lute;

I sing in drums and tom-toms

The black abysmal brute--My voice is of the people,

That giant wild and mute.

(With blood of all the ages

His broken nails are black,

The whole world weights and burdens

His hairy bestial back;

He shambles down forever

A blind and tangled track.)

I bring no polished diamonds,

No gems from London town;

No cultured whim or fancy

My rugged verses crown;

You find here naught but power

That breaks a city down.

I spill no words of beauty,

Coins from a silver purse,

My hands are built of iron,

And iron is in my verse.

I bring no love but fury,

No blessing but a curse.

My low pitched brow is slanting,

My eyes are burning red,

With fierce black primal visions

That thunder in my head;

Behind my heart the rivers

And all the jungles spread.

I slaved in star-girt Babel

And labored at the wall;

I watched the birth of pavements

Beneath my slugging maul--And in a frenzied dawning

I saw her towers fall.

I toiled in Tuscan vineyards,

I broke the beaten loam,

I strained against the mallet

That drove the chisel home;

I sweated in the galleys

That broke the road to Rome.

Oh, Khan and king and pharaoh!

In cold and drouth and heat

I bled to build your glory,

An ant beneath your feet--But always rose a morning

When blood ran in the street.

The world upon my shoulders

Knee deep in muck and silt,

My hand beneath my tatters

Still grips the hidden hilt--Who fed the ancient rivers

With blood rebellions spilt?

The Bull Dog Breed

--nd so,--concluded the Old Man,--his big bully ducked the seltzer bottle and the next thing I knowed I knowed nothin't I come to with the general idee that the Sea-Girl was sinkin'twith all hands and I was drownin't--but it was only some chump pourin'twater all over me to bring me to. Oh, yeah, the big French cluck I had the row with was nobody much, I learned--just only merely nobody but Tiger Valois, the heavyweight champion of the French navy--

Me and the crew winked at each other. Until the captain decided to unburden to Penrhyn, the first mate, in our hearing, we-- wondered about the black eye he's sported following his night ashore in Manila. He-- been in an unusual bad temper ever since, which means he's been acting like a sore-tailed hyena. The Old Man was a Welshman, and he hated a Frenchman like he hated a snake. He now turned on me.

--f you was any part of a man, you big mick ham,--he said bitterly,--ou wouldn't stand around and let a blankety-blank French so-on and so-forth lay out your captain. Oh, yeah, I know you wasn't there, then, but if you--l fight him--

--ragh!--I said with sarcasm,--eavin'tout the fact that I-- stand a great chance of gettin'tmatched with Valois--why not pick me somethin'teasy, like Dempsey? Do you realize you--e askin'tme, a ordinary ham-an'tegger, to climb the original and only Tiger Valois that-- whipped everything in European and the Asian waters and looks like a sure bet for the world-- title?----erahh!--snarled the Old Man.--e that-- boasted in every port of the Seven Seas that I shipped the toughest crew since the days of Harry Morgan--He turned his back in disgust and immediately fell over my white bulldog, Mike, who was taking a snooze by the hatch. The Old Man give a howl as he come up and booted the innocent pup most severe. Mike instantly attached hisself to the Old Man't leg, from which I at last succeeded in prying him with a loss of some meat and the pants leg.

The captain danced hither and yon about the deck on one foot while he expressed his feelings at some length and the crew stopped work to listen and admire.

--nd get me right, Steve Costigan,--he wound up,--he Sea-Girl is too small for me and that double-dash dog. He goes ashore at the next port. Do you hear me?----hen I go ashore with him,--I answered with dignity.--t was not Mike what caused you to get a black eye, and if you had not been so taken up in abusin'tme you would not have fell over him.

--ike is a Dublin gentleman, and no Welsh water rat can boot him and get away with it. If you want to banish your best A.B. mariner, it's up to you. Till we make port you keep your boots off of Mike, or I will personally kick you loose from your spine. If that-- mutiny, make the most of it--and, Mister First Mate, I see you easin'ttoward that belayin'tpin on the rail, and I call to your mind what I done to the last man that hit me with a belayin'tpin.-- There was a coolness between me and the Old Man thereafter. The old nut was pretty rough and rugged, but good at heart, and likely he was ashamed of himself, but he was too stubborn to admit it, besides still being sore at me and Mike. Well, he paid me off without a word at Hong-Kong, and I went down the gangplank with Mike at my heels, feeling kind of queer and empty, though I wouldn't show it for nothing, and acted like I was glad to get off the old tub. But since I growed up, the Sea-Girl-- been the only home I knowed, and though I--e left her from time to time to prowl around loose or to make a fight tour, I--e always come back to her.

Now I knowed I couldn't come back, and it hit me hard. The Sea-Girl is the only thing I-- champion of, and as I went ashore I heard the sound of Mushy Hansen and Bill O--rien trying to decide which should succeed to my place of honor.

Well, maybe some will say I should of sent Mike ashore and stayed on, but to my mind, a man that won't stand by his dog is lower down than one which won't stand by his fellow man.

Some years ago I-- picked Mike up wandering around the wharfs of Dublin and fighting everything he met on four legs and not averse to tackling two-legged critters. I named him Mike after a brother of mine, Iron Mike Costigan, rather well known in them higher fight circles where I--e never gotten to.

Well, I wandered around the dives and presently fell in with Tom Roche, a lean, fighting engineer that I once knocked out in Liverpool. We meandered around, drinking here and there, though not very much, and presently found ourselves in a dump a little different from the general run. A French joint, kinda more highbrow, if you get me. A lot of swell-looking fellows was in there drinking, and the bartenders and waiters, all French, scowled at Mike, but said nothing. I was unburdening my woes to Tom, when I noticed a tall, elegant young man with a dress suit, cane and gloves stroll by our table. He seemed well known in the dump, because birds all around was jumping up from their tables and waving their glasses and yelling at him in French. He smiled back in a superior manner and flourished his cane in a way which irritated me. This galoot rubbed me the wrong way right from the start, see?

Well, Mike was snoozing close to my chair as usual, and, like any other fighter, Mike was never very particular where he chose to snooze. This big bimbo could have stepped over him or around him, but he stopped and prodded Mike with his cane. Mike opened one eye, looked up and lifted his lip in a polite manner, just like he was sayin't--e don't want no trouble; go--ong and leave me alone.-- Then this French dipthong drawed back his patent leather shoe and kicked Mike hard in the ribs. I was out of my chair in a second, seeing red, but Mike was quicker. He shot up off the floor, not for the Frenchman't leg, but for his throat. But the Frenchman, quick as a flash, crashed his heavy cane down across Mike-- head, and the bulldog hit the floor and laid still. The next minute the Frenchman hit the floor, and believe me he laid still! My right-hander to the jaw put him down, and the crack his head got against the corner of the bar kept him there.

I bent over Mike, but he was already coming around, in spite of the fact that a loaded cane had been broken over his head. It took a blow like that to put Mike out, even for a few seconds. The instant he got his bearings, his eyes went red and he started out to find what hit him and tear it up. I grabbed him, and for a minute it was all I could do to hold him. Then the red faded out of his eyes and he wagged his stump of a tail and licked my nose. But I knowed the first good chance he had at the Frenchman he's rip out his throat or die trying. The only way you can lick a bulldog is to kill him.

Being taken up with Mike I hadn't had much time to notice what was going on. But a gang of French sailors had tried to rush me and had stopped at the sight of a gun in Tom Roche's hand. A real fighting man was Tom, and a bad egg to fool with.

By this time the Frenchman had woke up; he was standing with a handkerchief at his mouth, which latter was trickling blood, and honest to Jupiter I never saw such a pair of eyes on a human! His face was dead white, and those black, burning eyes blazed out at me--say, fellows!--they carried more than hate and a desire to muss me up! They was mutilation and sudden death! Once I seen a famous duelist in Heidelberg who-- killed ten men in sword fights--he had just such eyes as this fellow.

A gang of Frenchies was around him all whooping and yelling and jabbering at once, and I couldn't understand a word none of them said. Now one come prancing up to Tom Roche and shook his fist in Tom-- face and pointed at me and yelled, and pretty soon Tom turned around to me and said:--teve, this yam is challengin'tyou to a duel--what about?-- I thought of the German duelist and said to myself:--bet this bird was born with a fencin'tsword in one hand and a duelin'tpistol in the other.--I opened my mouth to say--othin'tdoin't-- when Tom pipes:--ou--e the challenged party--the choice of weapons is up to you.-- At that I hove a sigh of relief and a broad smile flitted across my homely but honest countenance.--ell him I--l fight him,--I said,--ith five-ounce boxin'tgloves.-- Of course I figured this bird never saw a boxing glove. Now, maybe you think I was doing him dirty, pulling a fast one like that--but what about him? All I was figuring on was mussing him up a little, counting on him not knowing a left hook from a neutral corner--takin'ta mean advantage, maybe, but he was counting on killing me, and I-- never had a sword in my hand, and couldn't hit the side of a barn with a gun.

Well, Tom told them what I said and the cackling and gibbering bust out all over again, and to my astonishment I saw a cold, deadly smile waft itself across the sinister, handsome face of my t--te----t--te.

--hey ask who you are,--said Tom.--told--m Steve Costigan, of America. This bird says his name is Francois, which he opines is enough for you. He says that he'sl fight you right away at the exclusive Napoleon Club, which it seems has a ring account of it occasionally sponsoring prize fights.--

As we wended our way toward the aforesaid club, I thought deeply. It seemed very possible that this Francois, whoever he was, knew something of the manly art. Likely, I thought, a rich clubman who took up boxing for a hobby. Well, I reckoned he hadn't heard of me, because no amateur, however rich, would think he had a chance against Steve Costigan, known in all ports as the toughest sailor in the Asian waters--if I do say so myself--and champion of--what I mean--ex-champion of the Sea-Girl, the toughest of all the trading vessels.

A kind of pang went through me just then at the thought that my days with the old tub was ended, and I wondered what sort of a dub would take my place at mess and sleep in my bunk, and how the forecastle gang would haze him, and how all the crew would miss me--I wondered if Bill O--rien had licked Mushy Hansen or if the Dane had won, and who called hisself champion of the craft now--Well, I felt low in spirits, and Mike knowed it, because he snuggled up closer to me in the'sickshaw that was carrying us to the Napoleon Club, and licked my hand. I pulled his ears and felt better. Anyway, Mike wouldn't never desert me.

Pretty ritzy affair this club. Footmen or butlers or something in uniform at the doors, and they didn't want to let Mike in. But they did--oh, yeah, they did.

In the dressing room they give me, which was the swellest of its sort I ever see, and looked more like a girl-- boodwar than a fighter-- dressing room, I said to Tom:--his big ham must have lots of dough--notice what a hand they all give him? Reckon I--l get a square deal? Who-- goin'tto referee? If it's a Frenchman, how-- I gonna follow the count?----ell, gee whiz!--Tom said,--ou ain't expectin'thim to count over you, are you?----o,--I said.--ut I-- like to keep count of what he tolls off over the other fellow.----ell,--said Tom, helping me into the green trunks they-- give me,--on't worry none. I understand Francois can speak English, so I--l specify that the referee shall converse entirely in that language.----hen why didn't this Francois ham talk English to me?--I wanted to know.

--e didn't talk to you in anything,--Tom reminded me.--e-- a swell and thinks you--e beneath his notice--except only to knock your head off.------m,--said I thoughtfully, gently touching the slight cut which Francois--cane had made on Mike-- incredibly hard head. A slight red mist, I will admit, waved in front of my eyes.

When I climbed into the ring I noticed several things: mainly the room was small and elegantly furnished; second, there was only a small crowd there, mostly French, with a scattering of English and one Chink in English clothes. There was high hats, frock-tailed coats and gold-knobbed canes everywhere, and I noted with some surprise that they was also a sprinkling of French sailors.

I sat in my corner, and Mike took his stand just outside, like he always does when I fight, standing on his hind legs with his head and forepaws resting on the edge of the canvas, and looking under the ropes. On the street, if a man soaks me he's likely to have Mike at his throat, but the old dog knows how to act in the ring. He won't interfere, though sometimes when I-- on the canvas or bleeding bad his eyes get red and he rumbles away down deep in his throat.

Tom was massaging my muscles light-like and I was scratching Mike-- ears when into the ring comes Francois the Mysterious. Qui! Qui! I noted now how much of a man he was, and Tom whispers to me to pull in my chin a couple of feet and stop looking so goofy. When Francois threw off his silk embroidered bathrobe I saw I was in for a rough session, even if this bird was only an amateur. He was one of these fellows that look like a fighting man, even if they--e never seen a glove before.

A good six one and a half he stood, or an inch and a half taller than me. A powerful neck sloped into broad, flexible shoulders, a limber steel body tapered to a girlishly slender waist. His legs was slim, strong and shapely, with narrow feet that looked speedy and sure; his arms was long, thick, but perfectly molded. Oh, I tell you, this Francois looked more like a champion than any man I-- seen since I saw Dempsey last.

And the face--his sleek black hair was combed straight back and lay smooth on his head, adding to his sinister good looks. From under narrow black brows them eyes burned at me, and now they wasn't a duelist-- eyes--they was tiger eyes. And when he gripped the ropes and dipped a couple of times, flexing his muscles, them muscles rippled under his satiny skin most beautiful, and he looked just like a big cat sharpening his claws on a tree.

--ooks fast, Steve,--Tom Roche said, looking serious.--ay know somethin'tyou better crowd him from the gong and keep rushin't--

--ow else did I ever fight?--I asked.

A sleek-looking Frenchman with a sheik mustache got in the ring and, waving his hands to the crowd, which was still jabbering for Francois, he bust into a gush of French.

--hat-- he mean?--I asked Tom, and Tom said,--w, he's just sayin'twhat everybody knows--that this ain't a regular prize fight, but an affair of honor between you and--uh--that Francois fellow there.-- Tom called him and talked to him in French, and he turned around and called an Englishman out of the crowd. Tom asked me was it all right with me for the Englishman to referee, and I tells him yes, and they asked Francois and he nodded in a supercilious manner. So the referee asked me what I weighed and I told him, and he hollered:--his bout is to be at catch weights, Marquis of Queensberry rules. Three-minute rounds, one minute rest; to a finish, if it takes all night. In this corner, Monsieur Francois, weight 205 pounds; in this corner, Steve Costigan of America, weight 190 pounds. Are you ready, gentlemen?----tead of standing outside the ring, English style, the referee stayed in with us, American fashion. The gong sounded and I was out of my corner. All I seen was that cold, sneering, handsome face, and all I wanted to do was to spoil it. And I very nearly done it the first charge. I came in like a house afire and I walloped Francois with an overhand right hook to the chin--more by sheer luck than anything, and it landed high. But it shook him to his toes, and the sneering smile faded.

Too quick for the eye to follow, his straight left beat my left hook, and it packed the jarring kick that marks a puncher. The next minute, when I missed with both hands and got that left in my pan again, I knowed I was up against a master boxer, too.

I saw in a second I couldn't match him for speed and skill. He was like a cat; each move he made was a blur of speed, and when he hit he hit quick and hard. He was a brainy fighter--he thought out each move while traveling at high speed, and he was never at a loss what to do next.

Well, my only chance was to keep on top of him, and I kept crowding him, hitting fast and heavy. He wouldn't stand up to me, but back-pedaled all around the ring. Still, I got the idea that he wasn't afraid of me, but was retreating with a purpose of his own. But I never stop to figure out why the other bird does something.

He kept reaching me with that straight left, until finally I dived under it and sank my right deep into his midriff. It shook him--it should of brought him down. But he clinched and tied me up so I couldn't hit or do nothing. As the referee broke us Francois scraped his glove laces across my eyes. With an appropriate remark, I threw my right at his head with everything I had, but he drifted out of the way, and I fell into the ropes from the force of my own swing. The crowd howled with laughter, and then the gong sounded.

--his baby-- tough,--said Tom, back in my corner, as he rubbed my belly muscles,--ut keep crowdin'thim, get inside that left, if you can. And watch the right.-- I reached back to scratch Mike-- nose and said,--ou watch this round.-- Well, I reckon it was worth watching. Francois changed his tactics, and as I come in he met me with a left to the nose that started the claret and filled my eyes full of water and stars. While I was thinking about that he opened a cut under my left eye with a venomous right-hander and then stuck the same hand into my midriff. I woke up and bent him double with a savage left hook to the liver, crashing him with an overhand right behind the ear before he could straighten. He shook his head, snarled a French cuss word and drifted back behind that straight left where I couldn't reach him.

I went into him like a whirlwind, lamming head on full into that left jab again and again, trying to get to him, but always my swings were short. Them jabs wasn't hurting me yet, because it takes a lot of them to weaken a man. But it was like running into a floating brick wall, if you get what I mean. Then he started crossing his right--and oh, baby, what a right he had! Blip! Blim! Blam!

His rally was so unexpected and he hit so quick that he took me clean off my guard and caught me wide open. That right was lightning! In a second I was groggy, and Francois beat me back across the ring with both hands going too fast for me to block more than about a fourth of the blows. He was wild for the kill now and hitting wide open.

Then the ropes was at my back and I caught a flashing glimpse of him, crouching like a big tiger in front of me, wide open and starting his right. In that flash of a second I shot my right from the hip, beat his punch and landed solid to the button. Francois went down like he's been hit with a pile driver--the referee leaped forward--the gong sounded!

As I went to my corner the crowd was clean ory-eyed and not responsible; and I saw Francois stagger up, glassy-eyed, and walk to his stool with one arm thrown over the shoulder of his handler.

But he come out fresh as ever for the third round. He-- found out that I could hit as hard as he could and that I was dangerous when groggy, like most sluggers. He was wild with rage, his smile was gone, his face dead white again, his eyes was like black fires--but he was cautious. He side-stepped my rush, hooking me viciously on the ear as I shot past him, and ducking when I slewed around and hooked my right. He backed away, shooting that left to my face. It went that way the whole round; him keeping the right reserved and marking me up with left jabs while I worked for his body and usually missed or was blocked. Just before the gong he rallied, staggered me with a flashing right hook to the head and took a crushing left hook to the ribs in return.

The fourth round come and he was more aggressive. He began to trade punches with me again. He-- shoot a straight left to my face, then hook the same hand to my body. Or he's feint the left for my face and drop it to my ribs. Them hooks to the body didn't hurt much, because I was hard as a rock there, but a continual rain of them wouldn't do me no good, and them jabs to the face was beginning to irritate me. I was already pretty well marked up.

He shot his blows so quick I usually couldn't block or duck, so every time he's make a motion with the left I-- throw my right for his head haphazard. After rocking his head back several times this way he quit feinting so much and began to devote most of his time to body blows.

Now I found out this about him: he had more claws than sand, as the saying goes. I mean he had everything, including a lot of stuff I didn't, but he didn't like to take it. In a mix-up he always landed three blows to my one, and he hit about as hard as I did, but he was always the one to back away.

Well, come the seventh round. I-- taken plenty. My left eye was closing fast and I had a nasty gash over the other one. My ribs was beginning to feel the body punishment he was handing out when in close, and my right ear was rapidly assuming the shape of a cabbage. Outside of some ugly welts on his torso, my dancing partner had only one mark on him--the small cut on his chin where I-- landed with my bare fist earlier in the evening.

But I was not beginning to weaken for I-- used to punishment; in fact I eat it up, if I do say so. I crowded Francois into a corner before I let go. I wrapped my arms around my neck, worked in close and then unwound with a looping left to the head.

Francois countered with a sickening right under the heart and I was wild with another left. Francois stepped inside my right swing, dug his heel into my instep, gouged me in the eye with his thumb and, holding with his left, battered away at my ribs with his right. The referee showed no inclination to interfere with this pastime, so, with a hearty oath, I wrenched my right loose and nearly tore off Francois--head with a torrid uppercut.

His sneer changed to a snarl and he began pistoning me in the face again with his left. Maddened, I crashed into him headlong and smashed my right under his heart--I felt his ribs bend, he went white and sick and clinched before I could follow up my advantage. I felt the drag of his body as his knees buckled, but he held on while I raged and swore, the referee would not break us, and when I tore loose, my charming playmate was almost as good as ever.

He proved this by shooting a left to my sore eye, dropping the same hand to my aching ribs and bringing up a right to the jaw that stretched me flat on my back for the first time that night. Just like that! Biff--bim--bam! Like a cat hitting--and I was on the canvas.

Tom Roche yelled for me to take a count, but I never stay on the canvas longer than I have to. I bounced up at--our!--my ears still ringing and a trifle dizzy, but otherwise O.K.

Francois thought otherwise, rushed rashly in and stopped a left hook which hung him gracefully over the ropes. The gong!

The beginning of the eighth I come at Francois like we-- just started, took his right between my eyes to hook my left to his body--he broke away, spearing me with his left--I followed swinging--missed a right--crack!

He musta let go his right with all he had for the first time that night, and he had a clear shot to my jaw. The next thing I knowed, I was writhing around on the canvas feeling like my jaw was tore clean off and the referee was saying:--seven--

Somehow I got to my knees. It looked like the referee was ten miles away in a mist, but in the mist I could see Francois--face, smiling again, and I reeled up at--ine--and went for that face. Crack! Crack! I don't know what punch put me down again but there I was. I beat the count by a hair-- breadth and swayed forward, following my only instinct and that was to walk into him!

Francois might have finished me there, but he wasn't taking any chances for he knowed I was dangerous to the last drop. He speared me a couple of times with the left, and when he shot his right, I ducked it and took it high on my forehead and clinched, shaking my head to clear it. The referee broke us away and Francois lashed into me, cautious but deadly, hammering me back across the ring with me crouching and covering up the best I could.

On the ropes I unwound with a venomous looping right, but he was watching for that and ducked and countered with a terrible left to my jaw, following it with a blasting right to the side of the head. Another left hook threw me back into the ropes and there I caught the top rope with both hands to keep from falling. I was swaying and ducking but his gloves were falling on my ears and temples with a steady thunder which was growing dimmer and dimmer--then the gong sounded.

I let go of the ropes to go to my corner and when I let go I pitched to my knees. Everything was a red mist and the crowd was yelling about a million miles away. I heard Francois--scornful laugh, then Tom Roche was dragging me to my corner.

--y golly,--he said, working on my cut up eyes,--ou--e sure a glutton for punishment; Joe Grim had nothin'ton you.

--ut you better lemme throw in the towel, Steve. This Frenchman't goin'tto kill you--

--e--l have to, to beat me,--I snarled.----l take it standin't----ut, Steve,--Tom protested, mopping blood and squeezing lemon juice into my mouth,--his Frenchman is--

But I wasn't listening. Mike knowed I was getting the worst of it and he's shoved his nose into my right glove, growling low down in his throat. And I was thinking about something.

One time I was laid up with a broken leg in a little fishing village away up on the Alaskan coast, and looking through a window, not able to help him, I saw Mike fight a big gray devil of a sled dog--more wolf than dog. A big gray killer. They looked funny together--Mike short and thick, bow-legged and squat, and the wolf dog tall and lean, rangy and cruel.

Well, while I lay there and raved and tried to get off my bunk with four men holding me down, that blasted wolf-dog cut poor old Mike to ribbons. He was like lightning--like Francois. He fought with the slash and get away--like Francois. He was all steel and whale-bone--like Francois.

Poor old Mike had kept walking into him, plunging and missing as the wolf-dog leaped aside--and every time he leaped he slashed Mike with his long sharp teeth till Mike was bloody and looking terrible. How long they fought I don't know. But Mike never give up; he never whimpered; he never took a single back step; he kept walking in on the dog.

At last he landed--crashed through the wolf-dog-- defense and clamped his jaws like a steel vise and tore out the wolf-dog-- throat. Then Mike slumped down and they brought him into my bunk more dead than alive. But we fixed him up and finally he got well, though he'sl carry the scars as long as he lives.

And I thought, as Tom Roche rubbed my belly and mopped the blood off my smashed face, and Mike rubbed his cold, wet nose in my glove, that me and Mike was both of the same breed, and the only fighting quality we had was a everlasting persistence. You got to kill a bulldog to lick him. Persistence! How-- I ever won a fight? How-- Mike ever won a fight? By walking in on our men and never giving up, no matter how bad we was hurt! Always outclassed in everything except guts and grip! Somehow the fool Irish tears burned my eyes and it wasn't the pain of the collodion Tom was rubbing into my cuts and it wasn't self-pity--it was--I don't know what it was! My grandfather used to say the Irish cried at Benburb when they were licking the socks off the English.

Then the gong sounded and I was out in the ring again playing the old bulldog game with Francois--walking into him and walking into him and taking everything he handed me without flinching.

I don't remember much about that round. Francois--left was a red-hot lance in my face and his right was a hammer that battered in my ribs and crashed against my dizzy head. Toward the last my legs felt dead and my arms were like lead. I don't know how many times I went down and got up and beat the count, but I remember once in a clinch, half-sobbing through my pulped lips:--ou gotta kill me to stop me, you big hash!--And I saw a strange haggard look flash into his eyes as we broke. I lashed out wild and by luck connected under his heart. Then the red fog stole back over everything and then I was back on my stool and Tom was holding me to keep me from falling off.

--hat round-- this comin'tup?--I mumbled.

--he tenth,--he said.--or th--luvva Pete, Steve, quit!-- I felt around blind for Mike and felt his cold nose on my wrist.

--ot while I can see, stand or feel,--I said, deliriously.--t-- bulldog and wolf--and Mike tore his throat out in the end--and I--l rip this wolf apart sooner or later.-- Back in the center of the ring with my chest all crimson with my own blood, and Francois--gloves soggy and splashing blood and water at every blow, I suddenly realized that his punches were losing some of their kick. I-- been knocked down I don't know how many times, but I now knew he was hitting me his best and I still kept my feet. My legs wouldn't work right, but my shoulders were still strong. Francois played for my eyes and closed them both tight shut, but while he was doing it I landed three times under the heart, and each time he wilted a little.

--hat round-- comin'tup?--I groped for Mike because I couldn't see.

--he eleventh--this is murder,--said Tom.--know you--e one of these birds which fights twenty rounds after they--e been knocked cold, but I want to tell you this Frenchman is--

--ance my eyelid with your pocket-knife,--I broke in, for I had found Mike.--gotta see.-- Tom grumbled, but I felt a sharp pain and the pressure eased up in my right eye and I could see dim-like.

Then the gong sounded, but I couldn't get up; my legs was dead and stiff.

--elp me up, Tom Roche, you big bog-trotter,--I snarled.--f you throw in that towel I--l brain you with the water bottle!-- With a shake of his head he helped me up and shoved me in the ring. I got my bearings and went forward with a funny, stiff, mechanical step, toward Francois--who got up slow, with a look on his face like he's rather be somewhere else. Well, he's cut me to pieces, knocked me down time and again, and here I was coming back for more. The bulldog instinct is hard to fight--it ain't just exactly courage, and it ain't exactly blood lust--it's--well, it's the bulldog breed.

Now I was facing Francois and I noticed he had a black eye and a deep gash under his cheek bone, though I didn't remember putting them there. He also had welts a-plenty on his body. I-- been handing out punishment as well as taking it, I saw.

Now his eyes blazed with a desperate light and he rushed in, hitting as hard as ever for a few seconds. The blows rained so fast I couldn't think and yet I knowed I must be clean batty--punch drunk--because it seemed like I could hear familiar voices yelling my name--the voices of the crew of the Sea-Girl, who-- never yell for me again.

I was on the canvas and this time I felt that it was to stay; dim and far away I saw Francois and somehow I could tell his legs was trembling and he shaking like he had a chill. But I couldn't reach him now. I tried to get my legs under me, but they wouldn't work. I slumped back on the canvas, crying with rage and weakness.

Then through the noise I heard one deep, mellow sound like an old Irish bell, almost. Mike-- bark! He wasn't a barking dog; only on special occasions did he give tongue. This time he only barked once. I looked at him and he seemed to be swimming in a fog. If a dog ever had his soul in his eyes, he had; plain as speech them eyes said:--teve, old kid, get up and hit one more blow for the glory of the breed!-- I tell you, the average man has got to be fighting for somebody else besides hisself. It-- fighting for a flag, a nation, a woman, a kid or a dog that makes a man win. And I got up--I dunno how! But the look in Mike-- eyes dragged me off the canvas just as the referee opened his mouth to say--en!--But before he could say it--In the midst I saw Francois--face, white and desperate. The pace had told. Them blows I-- landed from time to time under the heart had sapped his strength--he's punched hisself out on me--but more-- anything else, the knowledge that he was up against the old bulldog breed licked him.

I drove my right smash into his face and his head went back like it was on hinges and the blood spattered. He swung his right to my head and it was so weak I laughed, blowing out a haze of blood. I rammed my left to his ribs and as he bent forward I crashed my right to his jaw. He dropped, and crouching there on the canvas, half supporting himself on his hands, he was counted out. I reeled across the ring and collapsed with my arms around Mike, who was whining deep in his throat and trying to lick my face off.

The first thing I felt on coming to was a cold, wet nose burrowing into my right hand, which seemed numb. Then somebody grabbed that hand and nearly shook it off and I heard a voice say:--ey, you old shellback, you want to break a unconscious man't arm?-- I knowed I was dreaming then, because it was Bill O--rien't voice, who was bound to be miles away at sea by this time. Then Tom Roche said:--think he's comin'tto. Hey, Steve, can you open your eyes?-- I took my fingers and pried the swollen lids apart and the first thing I saw, or wanted to see, was Mike. His stump tail was going like anything and he opened his mouth and let his tongue loll out, grinning as natural as could be. I pulled his ears and looked around and there was Tom Roche'sand Bill O--rien and Mushy Hansen, Olaf Larsen, Penrhyn, the first mate, Red O--onnell, the second--and the Old Man!

--teve!--yelled this last, jumping up and down and shaking my hand like he wanted to take it off,--ou--e a wonder! A blightin'tmarvel!----ell,--said I, dazed,--hy all the love fest--

--he fact is,--bust in Bill O--rien,--ust as we--e about to weigh anchor, up blows a lad with the news that you--e fightin'tin the Napoleon Club with--

-- and as soon as I heard who you was fightin'twith I stopped everything and we all blowed down there,--said the Old Man.--ut the fool kid Roche had sent for us loafed on the way--

-- and we hadda lay some Frenchies before we could get in,--said Hansen.

--o we saw only the last three rounds,--continued the Old Man.--ut, boy, they was worth the money--he had you outclassed every way except guts--you was licked to a frazzle, but he couldn't make you realize it--and I laid a bet or two--

And blow me, if the Old Man didn't stuff a wad of bills in my sore hand.

--alfa what I won,--he beamed.--nd furthermore, the Sea-Girl ain't sailin'ttill you--e plumb able and fit.----ut what about Mike?--My head was swimming by this time.

-- bloomin'tbow-legged angel,--said the Old Man, pinching Mike-- ear lovingly.--he both of you kin have my upper teeth! I owe you a lot, Steve. You--e done a lot for me, but I never felt so in debt to you as I do now. When I see that big French ham, the one man in the world I would of give my right arm to see licked--

--ey!--I suddenly seen the light, and I went weak and limp.--ou mean that was--

--ou whipped Tiger Valois, heavyweight champion of the French fleet, Steve,--said Tom.--ou ought to have known how he wears dude clothes and struts amongst the swells when on shore leave. He wouldn't tell you who he was for fear you wouldn't fight him; and I was afraid I-- discourage you if I told you at first and later you wouldn't give me a chance.----might as well tell you,--I said to the Old Man,--hat I didn't know this bird was the fellow that beat you up in Manila. I fought him because he kicked Mike.----low the reason!--said the Old Man, raring back and beaming like a jubilant crocodile.--ou licked him--that-- enough. Now we--l have a bottle opened and drink to Yankee ships and Yankee sailors--especially Steve Costigan.----efore you do,--I said,--rink to the boy who stands for everything them aforesaid ships and sailors stands for--Mike of Dublin, an honest gentleman and born mascot of all fightin'tmen!--

Black Harps in the Hills

Let Saxons sing of Saxon kings,

Red faced swine with a greasy beard--Through my songs the Gaelic broadsword sings,

The pibrock skirls and the sporran swings,

For mine is the blood of the Irish kings

That Saxon monarchs feared.

The heather bends to a marching tread,

The echoes shake to a marching tune--For the Gael has supped on bitter bread,

And follows the ghosts of the mighty dead,

And the blue blades gleam and the pikes burn red

In the rising of the moon.

Norseman reaver or red haired Dane,

Norman baron or English lord--Each of them reeled to a reddened rain,

Drunken with fury and blind with pain,

Till the black fire spilled from the Gaelic brain

And the steel from the broken sword.

But never the chiefs in death lay still,

Never the clans lay scattered and few--But a new face rose and a new voice roared,

And a new hand gripped the broken sword,

And the fleeing clans were a charging horde,

And the old hate burned anew!

Brian Boruma, Shane O--eill,

Art McMurrough and Edward Bruce,

Thomas Fitzgerald--ringing steel

Shakes the hills and the trumpets peal,

Skulls crunch under the iron heel!

Death is the only truce!

Clontarf, Benburb, and Yellow Ford--The Gael with red Death rides alone!

Lamh derg abu! And the riders reel

To Hugh O--onnell-- girding steel

And the lances of Tyrone!

Edward Fitzgerald, Charles Parnell,

Robert Emmet--I smite the harp!

Wolfe Tone and Napper Tandy--hail!

The song that you sang shall never fail

While one brain burns with the fire of the Gael

And one last sword is sharp--

Lamh laidir abu! Lamh derg abu!

Munster and Ulster, north and south,

The old hate flickers and burns anew,

The heather shakes and the pikes gleam blue.

And the old clans charge as they charged with you

Into Death-- red grinning mouth!

We have not won and we have not lost--Fire in Kerry and Fermanagh--We have broken the teeth in the Saxon't boast

Though our dead have littered each heath and coast,

And by God, we will raise another host!

Slainte--Erin go bragh.

The Man on the Ground

Cal Reynolds shifted his tobacco quid to the other side of his mouth as he squinted down the dull blue barrel of his Winchester. His jaws worked methodically, their movement ceasing as he found his bead. He froze into rigid immobility; then his finger hooked on the trigger. The crack of the shot sent the echoes rattling among the hills, and like a louder echo came an answering shot. Reynolds flinched down, flattening his rangy body against the earth, swearing softly. A gray flake jumped from one of the rocks near his head, the ricocheting bullet whining off into space. Reynolds involuntarily shivered. The sound was as deadly as the singing of an unseen rattler.

He raised himself gingerly high enough to peer out between the rocks in front of him. Separated from his refuge by a broad level grown with mesquite-grass and prickly-pear, rose a tangle of boulders similar to that behind which he crouched. From among these boulders floated a thin wisp of whitish smoke. Reynold-- keen eyes, trained to sun-scorched distances, detected a small circle of dully gleaming blue steel among the rocks. That ring was the muzzle of a rifle, but Reynolds well knew who lay behind that muzzle.

The feud between Cal Reynolds and Esau Brill had been long, for a Texas feud. Up in the Kentucky mountains family wars may straggle on for generations, but the geographical conditions and human temperament of the Southwest were not conducive to long-drawn-out hostilities. There feuds were generally concluded with appalling suddenness and finality. The stage was a saloon, the streets of a little cow-town, or the open range. Sniping from the laurel was exchanged for the close-range thundering of six-shooters and sawed-off shotguns which decided matters quickly, one way or the other.

The case of Cal Reynolds and Esau Brill was somewhat out of the ordinary. In the first place, the feud concerned only themselves. Neither friends nor relatives were drawn into it. No one, including the participants, knew just how it started. Cal Reynolds merely knew that he had hated Esau Brill most of his life, and that Brill reciprocated. Once as youths they had clashed with the violence and intensity of rival young catamounts. From that encounter Reynolds carried away a knife scar across the edge of his ribs, and Brill a permanently impaired eye. It had decided nothing. They had fought to a bloody gasping deadlock, and neither had felt any desire to--hake hands and make up.--That is a hypocrisy developed in civilization, where men have no stomach for fighting to the death. After a man has felt his adversary-- knife grate against his bones, his adversary-- thumb gouging at his eyes, his adversary-- boot-heels stamped into his mouth, he is scarcely inclined to forgive and forget, regardless of the original merits of the argument.

So Reynolds and Brill carried their mutual hatred into manhood, and as cowpunchers riding for rival ranches, it followed that they found opportunities to carry on their private war. Reynolds rustled cattle from Brill-- boss, and Brill returned the compliment. Each raged at the other-- tactics, and considered himself justified in eliminating his enemy in any way that he could. Brill caught Reynolds without his gun one night in a saloon at Cow Wells, and only an ignominious flight out the back way, with bullets barking at his heels, saved the Reynolds scalp.

Again Reynolds, lying in the chaparral, neatly knocked his enemy out of his saddle at five hundred yards with a .30-.30 slug, and, but for the inopportune appearance of a line-rider, the feud would have ended there, Reynolds deciding, in the face of this witness, to forego his original intention of leaving his covert and hammering out the wounded man't brains with his rifle butt.

Brill recovered from his wound, having the vitality of a longhorn bull, in common with all his sun-leathered iron-thewed breed, and as soon as he was on his feet, he came gunning for the man who had waylaid him.

Now after these onsets and skirmishes, the enemies faced each other at good rifle range, among the lonely hills where interruption was unlikely.

For more than an hour they had lain among the rocks, shooting at each hint of movement. Neither had scored a hit, though the .30-.30-- whistled perilously close.

In each of Reynold-- temples a tiny pulse hammered maddeningly. The sun beat down on him and his shirt was soaked with sweat. Gnats swarmed about his head, getting into his eyes, and he cursed venomously. His wet hair was plastered to his scalp; his eyes burned with the glare of the sun, and the rifle barrel was hot to his calloused hand. His right leg was growing numb and he shifted it cautiously, cursing at the jingle of the spur, though he knew Brill could not hear. All this discomfort added fuel to the fire of his wrath. Without process of conscious reasoning, he attributed all his suffering to his enemy. The sun beat dazingly on his sombrero, and his thoughts were slightly addled. It was hotter than the hearthstone of hell among those bare rocks. His dry tongue caressed his baked lips.

Through the muddle of his brain burned his hatred of Esau Brill. It had become more than an emotion: it was an obsession, a monstrous incubus. When he flinched from the whip-crack of Brill-- rifle, it was not from fear of death, but because the thought of dying at the hands of his foe was an intolerable horror that made his brain rock with red frenzy. He would have thrown his life away recklessly, if by so doing he could have sent Brill into eternity just three seconds ahead of himself.

He did not analyze these feelings. Men who live by their hands have little time for self-analysis. He was no more aware of the quality of his hate for Esau Brill than he was consciously aware of his hands and feet. It was part of him, and more than part: it enveloped him, engulfed him; his mind and body were no more than its material manifestations. He was the hate; it was the whole soul and spirit of him. Unhampered by the stagnant and enervating shackles of sophistication and intellectuality, his instincts rose sheer from the naked primitive. And from them crystallized an almost tangible abstraction--a hate too strong for even death to destroy; a hate powerful enough to embody itself in itself, without the aid or the necessity of material substance.

For perhaps a quarter of an hour neither rifle had spoken. Instinct with death as rattlesnakes coiled among the rocks soaking up poison from the sun't rays, the feudists lay each waiting his chance, playing the game of endurance until the taut nerves of one or the other should snap.

It was Esau Brill who broke. Not that his collapse took the form of any wild madness or nervous explosion. The wary instincts of the wild were too strong in him for that. But suddenly, with a screamed curse, he hitched up on his elbow and fired blindly at the tangle of stones which concealed his enemy. Only the upper part of his arm and the corner of his blue-shirted shoulder were for an instant visible. That was enough. In that flash-second Cal Reynolds jerked the trigger, and a frightful yell told him his bullet had found its mark. And at the animal pain in that yell, reason and life-long instincts were swept away by an insane flood of terrible joy. He did not whoop exultantly and spring to his feet; but his teeth bared in a wolfish grin and he involuntarily raised his head. Waking instinct jerked him down again. It was chance that undid him. Even as he ducked back, Brill-- answering shot cracked.

Cal Reynolds did not hear it, because, simultaneously with the sound, something exploded in his skull, plunging him into utter blackness, shot briefly with red sparks.

The blackness was only momentary. Cal Reynolds glared wildly around, realizing with a frenzied shock that he was lying in the open. The impact of the shot had sent him rolling from among the rocks, and in that quick instant he realized that it had not been a direct hit. Chance had sent the bullet glancing from a stone, apparently to flick his scalp in passing. That was not so important. What was important was that he was lying out in full view, where Esau Brill could fill him full of lead. A wild glance showed his rifle lying close by. It had fallen across a stone and lay with the stock against the ground, the barrel slanting upward. Another glance showed his enemy standing upright among the stones that had concealed him.

In that one glance Cal Reynolds took in the details of the tall, rangy figure: the stained trousers sagging with the weight of the holstered six-shooter, the legs tucked into the worn leather boots; the streak of crimson on the shoulder of the blue shirt, which was plastered to the wearer-- body with sweat; the tousled black hair, from which perspiration was pouring down the unshaven face. He caught the glint of yellow tobacco-stained teeth shining in a savage grin. Smoke still drifted from the rifle in Brill-- hands.

These familiar and hated details stood out in startling clarity during the fleeting instant while Reynolds struggled madly against the unseen chains which seemed to hold him to the earth. Even as he thought of the paralysis a glancing blow on the head might induce, something seemed to snap and he rolled free. Rolled is hardly the word: he seemed almost to dart to the rifle that lay across the rock, so light his limbs felt.

Dropping behind the stone he seized the weapon. He did not even have to lift it. As it lay it bore directly on the man who was now approaching.

His hand was momentarily halted by Esau Brill-- strange behavior. Instead of firing or leaping back into cover the man came straight on, his rifle in the crook of his arm, that damnable leer still on his unshaven lips. Was he mad? Could he not see that his enemy was up again, raging with life, and with a cocked rifle at his heart? Brill seemed not to be looking at him, but to one side, at the spot where Reynolds had just been lying.

Without seeking further for the explanation of his foe-- actions, Cal Reynolds pulled the trigger. With the vicious spang of the report a blue shred leaped from Brill-- broad breast. He staggered back, his mouth flying open. And the look on his face froze Reynolds again. Esau Brill came of a breed which fights to its last gasp. Nothing was more certain than that he would go down pulling the trigger blindly until the last red vestige of life left him. Yet the ferocious triumph was wiped from his face with the crack of the shot, to be replaced by an awful expression of dazed surprize. He made no move to lift his rifle, which slipped from his grasp, nor did he clutch at his wound. Throwing out his hands in a strange, stunned, helpless way, he reeled backward on slowly buckling legs, his features frozen into a mask of stupid amazement that made his watcher shiver with its cosmic horror.

Through the opened lips gushed a tide of blood, dyeing the damp shirt. And like a tree that sways and rushes suddenly earthward, Esau Brill crashed down among the mesquite-grass and lay motionless.

Cal Reynolds rose, leaving the rifle where it lay. The rolling grass-grown hills swam misty and indistinct to his gaze. Even the sky and the blazing sun had a hazy unreal aspect. But a savage content was in his soul. The long feud was over at last, and whether he had taken his death-wound or not, he had sent Esau Brill to blaze the trail to hell ahead of him.

Then he started violently as his gaze wandered to the spot where he had rolled after being hit. He glared; were his eyes playing him tricks? Yonder in the grass Esau Brill lay dead--yet only a few feet away stretched another body.

Rigid with surprize, Reynolds glared at the rangy figure, slumped grotesquely beside the rocks. It lay partly on its side, as if flung there by some blind convulsion, the arms outstretched, the fingers crooked as if blindly clutching. The short-cropped sandy hair was splashed with blood, and from a ghastly hole in the temple the brains were oozing. From a corner of the mouth seeped a thin trickle of tobacco juice to stain the dusty neck-cloth.

And as he gazed, an awful familiarity made itself evident. He knew the feel of those shiny leather wrist-bands; he knew with fearful certainty whose hands had buckled that gun-belt; the tang of that tobacco juice was still on his palate.

In one brief destroying instant he knew he was looking down at his own lifeless body. And with the knowledge came true oblivion.

Old Garfield-- Heart

I was sitting on the porch when my grandfather hobbled out and sank down on his favorite chair with the cushioned seat, and began to stuff tobacco in his old corncob-pipe.

-- thought you-- be goin'tto the dance,--he said.

---- waiting for Doc Blaine,--I answered.---- going over to old man Garfield-- with him.-- My grandfather sucked at his pipe awhile before he spoke again.

--ld Jim purty bad off?----oc says he hasn't a chance.----ho-- takin'tcare of him?----oe Braxton--against Garfield-- wishes. But somebody had to stay with him.-- My grandfather sucked his pipe noisily, and watched the heat lightning playing away off up in the hills; then he said:--ou think old Jim-- the biggest liar in this county, don't you?----e tells some pretty tall tales,--I admitted.--ome of the things he claimed he took part in, must have happened before he was born.----came from Tennesee to Texas in 1870,--my grandfather said abruptly.--saw this town of Lost Knob grow up from nothin't There wasn't even a log-hut store here when I came. But old Jim Garfield was here, livin'tin the same place he lives now, only then it was a log cabin. He don't look a day older now than he did the first time I saw him.----ou never mentioned that before,--I said in some surprize.

-- knew you-- put it down to an old man't maunderin't,--he answered.--ld Jim was the first white man to settle in this country. He built his cabin a good fifty miles west of the frontier. God knows how he done it, for these hills swarmed with Comanches then.

-- remember the first time I ever saw him. Even then everybody called him--ld Jim.----remember him tellin'tme the same tales he's told you--how he was at the battle of San Jacinto when he was a youngster, and how he's rode with Ewen Cameron and Jack Hayes. Only I believe him, and you don't.----hat was so long ago--I protested.

--he last Indian raid through this country was in 1874,--said my grandfather, engrossed in his own reminiscences.--was in on that fight, and so was old Jim. I saw him knock old Yellow Tail off his mustang at seven hundred yards with a buffalo rifle.

--ut before that I was with him in a fight up near the head of Locust Creek. A band of Comanches came down Mesquital, lootin'tand burnin't rode through the hills and started back up Locust Creek, and a scout of us were hot on their heels. We ran on to them just at sundown in a mesquite flat. We killed seven of them, and the rest skinned out through the brush on foot. But three of our boys were killed, and Jim Garfield got a thrust in the breast with a lance.

--t was an awful wound. He lay like a dead man, and it seemed sure nobody could live after a wound like that. But an old Indian came out of the brush, and when we aimed our guns at him, he made the peace sign and spoke to us in Spanish. I don't know why the boys didn't shoot him in his tracks, because our blood was heated with the fightin'tand killin't but somethin'tabout him made us hold our fire. He said he wasn't a Comanche, but was an old friend of Garfield--, and wanted to help him. He asked us to carry Jim into a clump of mesquite, and leave him alone with him, and to this day I don't know why we did, but we did. It was an awful time--the wounded moanin'tand callin'tfor water, the starin'tcorpses strewn about the camp, night comin'ton, and no way of knowin'tthat the Indians wouldn't return when dark fell.

--e made camp right there, because the horses were fagged out, and we watched all night, but the Comanches didn't come back. I don't know what went on out in the mesquite where Jim Garfield-- body lay, because I never saw that strange Indian again; but durin'tthe night I kept hearin'ta weird moanin'tthat wasn't made by the dyin'tmen, and an owl hooted from midnight till dawn.

--nd at sunrise Jim Garfield came walkin'tout of the mesquite, pale and haggard, but alive, and already the wound in his breast had closed and begun to heal. And since then he's never mentioned that wound, nor that fight, nor the strange Indian who came and went so mysteriously. And he hasn't aged a bit; he looks now just like he did then--a man of about fifty.-- In the silence that followed, a car began to purr down the road, and twin shafts of light cut through the dusk.

--hat-- Doc Blaine,--I said.--hen I come back I--l tell you how Garfield is.-- Doc Blaine was prompt with his predictions as we drove the three miles of post-oak covered hills that lay between Lost Knob and the Garfield farm.

----l be surprized to find him alive,--he said,--mashed up like he is. A man his age ought to have more sense than to try to break a young horse.----e doesn't look so old,--I remarked.

----l be fifty, my next birthday,--answered Doc Blaine.----e known him all my life, and he must have been at least fifty the first time I ever saw him. His looks are deceiving.--

Old Garfield-- dwelling-place was reminiscent of the past. The boards of the low squat house had never known paint. Orchard fence and corrals were built of rails.

Old Jim lay on his rude bed, tended crudely but efficiently by the man Doc Blaine had hired over the old man't protests. As I looked at him, I was impressed anew by his evident vitality. His frame was stooped but unwithered, his limbs rounded out with springy muscles. In his corded neck and in his face, drawn though it was with suffering, was apparent an innate virility. His eyes, though partly glazed with pain, burned with the same unquenchable element.

--e-- been ravin't--said Joe Braxton stolidly.

--irst white man in this country,--muttered old Jim, becoming intelligible.--ills no white man ever set foot in before. Gettin'ttoo old. Have to settle down. Can't move on like I used to. Settle down here. Good country before it filled up with cow-men and squatters. Wish Ewen Cameron could see this country. The Mexicans shot him. Damn--m!-- Doc Blaine shook his head.--e-- all smashed up inside. He won't live till daylight.-- Garfield unexpectedly lifted his head and looked at us with clear eyes.

--rong, Doc,--he wheezed, his breath whistling with pain.----l live. What-- broken bones and twisted guts? Nothin't It-- the heart that counts. Long as the heart keeps pumpin't a man can't die. My heart-- sound. Listen to it! Feel of it!-- He groped painfully for Doc Blaine-- wrist, dragged his hand to his bosom and held it there, staring up into the doctor-- face with avid intensity.

--egular dynamo, ain't it?--he gasped.--tronger-- a gasoline engine!-- Blaine beckoned me.--ay your hand here,--he said, placing my hand on the old man't bare breast.--e does have a remarkable heart action.-- I noted, in the light of the coal-oil lamp, a great livid scar in the gaunt arching breast--such a scar as might be made by a flint-headed spear. I laid my hand directly on this scar, and an exclamation escaped my lips.

Under my hand old Jim Garfield-- heart pulsed, but its throb was like no other heart action I have ever observed. Its power was astounding; his ribs vibrated to its steady throb. It felt more like the vibrating of a dynamo than the action of a human organ. I could feel its amazing vitality radiating from his breast, stealing up into my hand and up my arm, until my own heart seemed to speed up in response.

-- can't die,--old Jim gasped.--ot so long as my heart-- in my breast. Only a bullet through the brain can kill me. And even then I wouldn't be rightly dead, as long as my heart beats in my breast. Yet it ain't rightly mine, either. It belongs to Ghost Man, the Lipan chief. It was the heart of a god the Lipans worshipped before the Comanches drove--m out of their native hills.

-- knew Ghost Man down on the Rio Grande, when I was with Ewen Cameron. I saved his life from the Mexicans once. He tied the string of ghost wampum between him and me--the wampum no man but me and him can see or feel. He came when he knowed I needed him, in that fight up on the headwaters of Locust Creek, when I got this scar.

-- was dead as a man can be. My heart was sliced in two, like the heart of a butchered beef steer.

--ll night Ghost Man did magic, callin'tmy ghost back from spirit-land. I remember that flight, a little. It was dark, and gray-like, and I drifted through gray mists and heard the dead wailin'tpast me in the mist. But Ghost Man brought me back.

--e took out what was left of my mortal heart, and put the heart of the god in my bosom. But it's his, and when I-- through with it, he'sl come for it. It-- kept me alive and strong for the lifetime of a man. Age can't touch me. What do I care if these fools around here call me an old liar? What I know, I know. But hark--e!-- His fingers became claws, clamping fiercely on Doc Blaine-- wrist. His old eyes, old yet strangely young, burned fierce as those of an eagle under his bushy brows.

--f by some mischance I should die, now or later, promise me this! Cut into my bosom and take out the heart Ghost Man lent me so long ago! It-- his. And as long as it beats in my body, my spirit'sl be tied to that body, though my head be crushed like an egg underfoot! A livin'tthing in a rottin'tbody! Promise!----ll right, I promise,--replied Doc Blaine, to humor him, and old Jim Garfield sank back with a whistling sigh of relief.

He did not die that night, nor the next, nor the next. I well remember the next day, because it was that day that I had the fight with Jack Kirby.

People will take a good deal from a bully, rather than to spill blood. Because nobody had gone to the trouble of killing him, Kirby thought the whole countryside was afraid of him.

He had bought a steer from my father, and when my father went to collect for it, Kirby told him that he had paid the money to me--which was a lie. I went looking for Kirby, and came upon him in a bootleg joint, boasting of his toughness, and telling the crowd that he was going to beat me up and make me say that he had paid me the money, and that I had stuck it into my own pocket. When I heard him say that, I saw red, and ran in on him with a stockman't knife, and cut him across the face, and in the neck, side, breast and belly, and the only thing that saved his life was the fact that the crowd pulled me off.

There was a preliminary hearing, and I was indicted on a charge of assault, and my trial was set for the following term of court. Kirby was as tough-fibered as a post-oak country bully ought to be, and he recovered, swearing vengeance, for he was vain of his looks, though God knows why, and I had permanently impaired them.

And while Jack Kirby was recovering, old man Garfield recovered too, to the amazement of everybody, especially Doc Blaine.

I well remember the night Doc Blaine took me again out to old Jim Garfield-- farm. I was in Shifty Corlan't joint, trying to drink enough of the slop he called beer to get a kick out of it, when Doc Blaine came in and persuaded me to go with him.

As we drove along the winding old road in Doc-- car, I asked:--hy are you insistent that I go with you this particular night? This isn't a professional call, is it?----o,--he said.--ou couldn't kill old Jim with a post-oak maul. He-- completely recovered from injuries that ought to have killed an ox. To tell the truth, Jack Kirby is in Lost Knob, swearing he'sl shoot you on sight.----ell, for God-- sake!--I exclaimed angrily.--ow everybody--l think I left town because I was afraid of him. Turn around and take me back, damn it!----e reasonable,--said Doc.--verybody knows you--e not afraid of Kirby. Nobody-- afraid of him now. His bluff--broken, and that-- why he's so wild against you. But you can't afford to have any more trouble with him now, and your trial only a short time off.-- I laughed and said:--ell, if he's looking for me hard enough, he can find me as easily at old Garfield-- as in town, because Shifty Corlan heard you say where we were going. And Shifty-- hated me ever since I skinned him in that horse-swap last fall. He--l tell Kirby where I went.----never thought of that,--said Doc Blaine, worried.

--ell, forget it,--I advised.--irby hasn't got guts enough to do anything but blow.-- But I was mistaken. Puncture a bully-- vanity and you touch his one vital spot.

Old Jim had not gone to bed when we got there. He was sitting in the room opening on to his sagging porch, the room which was at once living-room and bedroom, smoking his old cob pipe and trying to read a newspaper by the light of his coal-oil lamp. All the windows and doors were wide open for the coolness, and the insects which swarmed in and fluttered around the lamp didn't seem to bother him.

We sat down and discussed the weather--which isn't so inane as one might suppose, in a country where men't livelihood depends on sun and rain, and is at the mercy of wind and drouth. The talk drifted into other kindred channels, and after some time, Doc Blaine bluntly spoke of something that hung in his mind.

--im,--he said,--hat night I thought you were dying, you babbled a lot of stuff about your heart, and an Indian who lent you his. How much of that was delirium?----one, Doc,--said Garfield, pulling at his pipe.--t was gospel truth. Ghost Man, the Lipan priest of the Gods of Night, replaced my dead, torn heart with one from somethin'the worshipped. I ain't sure myself just what that somethin'tis--somethin'tfrom away back and a long way off, he said. But bein'ta god, it can do without its heart for awhile. But when I die--if I ever get my head smashed so my consciousness is destroyed--the heart must be given back to Ghost Man.----ou mean you were in earnest about cutting out your heart?--demanded Doc Blaine.

--t has to be,--answered old Garfield.--livin'tthing in a dead thing is opposed to nat--r. That-- what Ghost Man said.----ho the devil was Ghost Man?----told you. A witch-doctor of the Lipans, who dwelt in this country before the Comanches came down from the Staked Plains and drove--m south across the Rio Grande. I was a friend to--m. I reckon Ghost Man is the only one left alive.----live? Now?----dunno,--confessed old Jim.--dunno whether he's alive or dead. I dunno whether he was alive when he came to me after the fight on Locust Creek, or even if he was alive when I knowed him in the southern country. Alive as we understand life, I mean.----hat balderdash is this?--demanded Doc Blaine uneasily, and I felt a slight stirring in my hair. Outside was stillness, and the stars, and the black shadows of the post-oak woods. The lamp cast old Garfield-- shadow grotesquely on the wall, so that it did not at all resemble that of a human, and his words were strange as words heard in a nightmare.

-- knowed you wouldn't understand,--said old Jim.--don't understand myself, and I ain't got the words to explain them things I feel and know without understandin't The Lipans were kin to the Apaches, and the Apaches learnt curious things from the Pueblos. Ghost Man was--that-- all I can say--alive or dead, I don't know, but he was. What-- more, he is.----s it you or me that-- crazy?--asked Doc Blaine.

--ell,--said old Jim,----l tell you this much--Ghost Man knew Coronado.----razy as a loon!--murmured Doc Blaine. Then he lifted his head.--hat-- that?----orse turning in from the road,--I said.--ounds like it stopped.--

I stepped to the door, like a fool, and stood etched in the light behind me. I got a glimpse of a shadowy bulk I knew to be a man on a horse; then Doc Blaine yelled:--ook out!--and threw himself against me, knocking us both sprawling. At the same instant I heard the smashing report of a rifle, and old Garfield grunted and fell heavily.

--ack Kirby!--screamed Doc Blaine.--e-- killed Jim!-- I scrambled up, hearing the clatter of retreating hoofs, snatched old Jim-- shotgun from the wall, rushed recklessly out on to the sagging porch and let go both barrels at the fleeing shape, dim in the starlight. The charge was too light to kill at that range, but the bird-shot stung the horse and maddened him. He swerved, crashed headlong through a rail fence and charged across the orchard, and a peach tree limb knocked his rider out of the saddle. He never moved after he hit the ground. I ran out there and looked down at him. It was Jack Kirby, right enough, and his neck was broken like a rotten branch.

I let him lie, and ran back to the house. Doc Blaine had stretched old Garfield out on a bench he's dragged in from the porch, and Doc-- face was whiter than I-- ever seen it. Old Jim was a ghastly sight; he had been shot with an old-fashioned .45-70, and at that range the heavy ball had literally torn off the top of his head. His features were masked with blood and brains. He had been directly behind me, poor old devil, and he had stopped the slug meant for me.

Doc Blaine was trembling, though he was anything but a stranger to such sights.

--ould you pronounce him dead?--he asked.

--hat-- for you to say.--I answered.--ut even a fool could tell that he's dead.----e is dead,--said Doc Blaine in a strained unnatural voice.--igor mortis is already setting in. But feel his heart!-- I did, and cried out. The flesh was already cold and clammy; but beneath it that mysterious heart still hammered steadily away, like a dynamo in a deserted house. No blood coursed through those veins; yet the heart pounded, pounded, pounded, like the pulse of Eternity.

-- living thing in a dead thing,--whispered Doc Blaine, cold sweat on his face.--his is opposed to nature. I am going to keep the promise I made him. I--l assume full responsibility. This is too monstrous to ignore.-- Our implements were a butcher-knife and a hack-saw. Outside only the still stars looked down on the black post-oak shadows and the dead man that lay in the orchard. Inside, the old lamp flickered, making strange shadows move and shiver and cringe in the corners, and glistened on the blood on the floor, and the red-dabbled figure on the bench. The only sound inside was the crunch of the saw-edge in bone; outside an owl began to hoot weirdly.

Doc Blaine thrust a red-stained hand into the aperture he had made, and drew out a red, pulsing object that caught the lamplight. With a choked cry he recoiled, and the thing slipped from his fingers and fell on the table. And I too cried out involuntarily. For it did not fall with a soft meaty thud, as a piece of flesh should fall. It thumped hard on the table.

Impelled by an irresistible urge, I bent and gingerly picked up old Garfield-- heart. The feel of it was brittle, unyielding, like steel or stone, but smoother than either. In size and shape it was the duplicate of a human heart, but it was slick and smooth, and its crimson surface reflected the lamplight like a jewel more lambent than any ruby; and in my hand it still throbbed mightily, sending vibratory radiations of energy up my arm until my own heart seemed swelling and bursting in response. It was cosmic power, beyond my comprehension, concentrated into the likeness of a human heart.

The thought came to me that here was a dynamo of life, the nearest approach to immortality that is possible for the destructible human body, the materialization of a cosmic secret more wonderful than the fabulous fountain sought for by Ponce de Leon. My soul was drawn into that unterrestrial gleam, and I suddenly wished passionately that it hammered and thundered in my own bosom in place of my paltry heart of tissue and muscle.

Doc Blaine ejaculated incoherently. I wheeled.

The noise of his coming had been no greater than the whispering of a night wind through the corn. There in the doorway he stood, tall, dark, inscrutable--an Indian warrior, in the paint, war bonnet, breech-clout and moccasins of an elder age. His dark eyes burned like fires gleaming deep under fathomless black lakes. Silently he extended his hand, and I dropped Jim Garfield-- heart into it. Then without a word he turned and stalked into the night. But when Doc Blaine and I rushed out into the yard an instant later, there was no sign of any human being. He had vanished like a phantom of the night, and only something that looked like an owl was flying, dwindling from sight, into the rising moon.

Vultures of Wahpeton

I

GUNS IN THE DARK