LITMIR.BIZ

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Now, for instance, if I hadn’t just happened to have a card with the name ‘Robinson’ on it, this flier in junk couldn’t have been pulled across, and I’d have been out ninety.

      “I wonder who Robinson really was, though, and what happened to Liz?

      “I wonder!”

THE SILO

      Originally published in Argosy-All Story.

      I.

      The roaring of the eight horse-power gasoline-engine and of the voracious ensilage-cutter, out there in the yard, blending with the windy chatter of the cut corn as it skittered up the pipe and whirled down into the dark silo, masked the coming of Lucky Ruggles. Pownall swung up from broadcasting a shovelful of ensilage that he had dug out of the swiftly growing mound under the pipe, to find himself confronted by the man he feared and hated more than any in this world.

      Ruggles grinned, and spat tobacco. An absurd figure to be afraid of—a slouching hobo, with an old cloth cap on, a long black coat possibly stolen from some scarecrow, and torn trousers tucked into a pair of worn out high boots that a farmer’s wife had given him. A weak figure, unshaven and watery-eyed; but packed with potential dynamite for Pownall, none the less.

      “Hello, there, Powdy!” the hobo greeted the proprietor of the farm. He swaggered a little, with dirty hands deep in trouser pockets, and scuffed his boot-toes into the soft ensilage. “Glad t’ see me, ain’t you? An’ I’m sure glad t’ see you! This is my lucky mornin’. They’re all lucky mornin’s to Lucky Ruggles. That’s me!”

      Pownall could only stare, with fallen jaw. The in-whirling fodder, shot down from the curved pipe high aloft, flicked him with bits of corn-leaf and stalk. At his side, now that he had stopped shoveling, swift­ly rose the pile of chopped corn. Only unceasing toil with the shovel and with trampling feet could keep it level in the silo.

      “Well, ain’t you glad to see an ole friend like me?” demanded Ruggles, squint­ing with that evil, watery eye. This eye gladdened at sight of his victim’s fear. Not even the vague light from the hole in the roof, where the pipe came through, could mask the lines and hues of terror on Pownall’s bearded face.

      “How—how the devil did you git here?” stammered Pownall. He raised the shovel as if to strike.

      “Lay off on that rough stuff!” command­ed Ruggles, his stubbly jaw stiffening. “You ain’t never gonna hit me, see?”

      “Git outa here!”

      “When I’m damn good an’ ready! I didn’t come here to—”

      “You got no right on this here farm. Git!”

      Ruggles only laughed.

      “You got the nerve, I must say!” he gibed. “After what I’m wise to about you! Now, looka here, mister. I’m gonna have a little privut talk with you, see? We got a few minutes all to our lonesomes. This here’s a swell place fer a privut talk, ain’t it?” He glanced appraisingly about the silo. “Nobody seen me come. Nobody knows I’m here. So it’s all hunky-dory. Some luck, hey?”

      “Cut that out!” retorted Pownall. “I got nothin’ to say to you!”

      The men’s voices were hardly audible over the droning roar of the machinery, the whirring of the corn. This racket had kept Pownall from hearing Ruggles as the hobo had climbed the ladder into the silo.

      Unseen by the workers in the yard, Rug­gles had crept up through the meadow, skirted the stone wall and gained the south side of the barn. Here a door had admitted him. The rest had been easy. Now, with that grin of conscious and cruel power, he confronted the gray-faced victim of his blackmail.

      “What d’you want o’ me?” Pownall de­manded.

      “Oh, you don’t know! Oh, no! My letter—you got it, all right.”

      “T’hell with your letter, an’ you, too!”

      “You ain’t gonna come across with that thousand?”

      “Git out o’ here!”

      “All right,” grinned the tramp with yel­lowed snags of teeth. “Suits me! But I’m goin’ right from here to them insurance people. An’ they’ll slip me a few, fer wisin’ ’em up. I’m playin’ in luck, either way. Lucky Ruggles, that’s me!”

      “They won’t believe no bum like you!”

      “We’ll see about that, mister. An’ when you’re doin’ a five-year bit you’ll reckon a thousand bucks is pretty small money to be holdin’ out on me. A man what’ll stay in the big house ruther’n cough up at the rate o’ two hundred bucks a year, ain’t much!”

      “I’ll say you set the fire! I’ll—”

      “Ta-ta, mister!”

      Lucky Ruggles turned to go. Then Pownall struck.

      II.

      A shovel blade may be a murderous weapon in strong hands of hate and terror.

      The hobo crumpled forward. He fell, facedown, in the soft ensilage. Immediate­ly a storm of tiny fragments of corn sprayed itself over his motionless body.

      Pownall recoiled against the sweeping curve of the silo wall, his eyes white-rimmed with horror. He dropped the shovel. Flat against the wall his calloused fingers extended widely. His back pressed that wall, as if he were trying to push fur­ther away from the silent figure.

      “Ruggles!” he cried.

      No answer. Then Pownall laughed ex­plosively.

      It came as a relief after all. Now that the thing, often dreamed, was really done, the farmer felt a vast lightening of his soul’s burden. It wasn’t hard, was it, to kill a man? Why, an ox required twice as hard a blow! And a man—but was this black­mailing snake a man?

      “Damn you!” mouthed Pownall, and stumbled toward the body.

      Already it was half hidden by the tor­nado of ensilage. Pownall understood where his own safety lay, and laughed again. No one had seen the tramp. No one knew. And here, actively at hand, was burial.

      He dragged the body, still face-down­ward, more into the direct line of discharge of the pipe. He stood up and watched the swift drive of the cut fodder over it. Then an idea whipped him to the quick. What if somebody had happened to see, to know? That might be possible. Somebody might have been in the barn. Might be there, even now.

      Pownall’s heart thrashed, sickeningly. An obsession clutched him that somebody really was in the barn. Quivering, he recoiled. He must know!

      He stumbled to the tall row of openings that, one above the other, extended up one side of the great cylindrical pit. Through one of these openings—later to be closed by doors, as the silo should fill—he swung himself to the ladder. His legs shook so that he could hardly clamber down. His hands felt putty-like and lax. He dragged himself out to the barn floor. Horribly afraid, he peered up and down.

      His terror had him as a dog has a rat, shaking him. But in spite of everything he felt the surge of an immeasurable glad­ness. Ruggles was dead! Dead, and well punished for all his threats of blackmail, ruin, imprisonment.

      “He was a skunk, anyhow,” thought the farmer. “I kill skunks on sight. Damned, egg-suckin’ skunks! He’s only gittin’ what was comin’ to him!”

      Pownall was sick and weak. His mouth felt baked. He swallowed hard. What he wanted was a drink. Water! He walked unsteadily to the faucet that supplied the horse trough near the big barn door. He drew a dipper of water, and gulped it. The water slopped down his neck and chest, wet­ting his beard, his shirt. That felt good! He smeared his mouth with his hairy hand, and grew calmer.

      “It was comin’ to him all right,” he re­peated, and blinked at the October sun­shine, golden through the crimsoned maples by the roadside. “Comin’ to him!”

      What

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