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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77343 ***
+
+
+
+
+                            MOUNTAIN KILLERS
+
+
+        Lying in wait for his brother’s murderer, Olaf Swensen
+        planned to execute mountain justice--but fate crouched
+        in the background.
+
+                       By Thomas Barclay Thomson
+
+
+The rifle barrel peered malignantly, implacably, over the edge of
+the huge rock. Behind it, his eyes fixed upon the sun-drenched
+mountain trail below, lay Olaf Swensen.
+
+A full two hours had passed since Olaf first took up his vigil; yet
+no sign of impatience did he show. For six months, now, he had
+awaited this chance to kill Sim Satterlee. What did a few minutes,
+one way or another, matter to him?
+
+Back of Olaf, above him, in the fork of the giant pine, the thing
+crouched, jaws slavering, tail twitching. Hunger urged it to leap,
+but man was not to be thus lightly attacked. The cougar, old, slow
+on the game trails, had learned the slower speed of man and his puny
+strength, but animal instinct demanded caution. This man below was
+armed, himself a killer who lay in ambush.
+
+From far down the cañon, came the ring of iron on stone, followed by
+heavy oaths, as the driver urged his string of pack-mules up the
+steep trail.
+
+Yesterday Sim Satterlee, Shifty Sim, had been tried and acquitted of
+the murder of Lars Swensen, Olaf’s brother. Olaf knew that nothing
+would prevent Sim’s hurried flight to the sanctity of his mountain
+retreat in the fastnesses of Dead Man’s Gulch. So, overlooking the
+trail over which Sim must pass on his way to his mountain aerie,
+Olaf grimly awaited his coming.
+
+Man and gun were welded in one weapon, grim, purposeful, vengeful.
+The lion, too, ceased all motion; the twitching tail was stilled.
+
+With effortless stride, the lanky, black-visaged mountaineer
+slouched along below, trailing the plodding, scuffing feet of the
+mules. His shifty, darting eyes, afurtive with the uneasiness of
+guilt, searched vainly for a possible ambush.
+
+Stoical, diabolically cool, Olaf continued to wait until Sim slunk
+along directly beneath him. He had no chance, now, to dodge back to
+a sheltering bush, or dart ahead to a friendly turn in the trail.
+
+Shifty Sim’s keen, penetrating eyes located that grim, gaping
+gun-barrel at the very moment Olaf halted him. Sim stood in a
+tableau not unknown to him; but the roles were reversed, and fear
+shook him like a palsy; his vicious black soul turned sick within
+him.
+
+No doubts had he of the identity of his Nemesis. Many times, lying
+on his prison cot, awaiting trial, he had regretted his failure to
+remove Lars Swensen’s brother when opportunity offered. His plea of
+self-defense, so carefully planned, could easily have covered the
+two cases. The witnesses, in deathly fear of his vengeful methods,
+would as readily have sworn to a double lie. But perhaps there was
+still a chance.
+
+Slowly Sim’s hand crept toward the bib of his greasy overalls, his
+piercing glance seeking the outline of his hidden enemy.
+
+“Yust leave your gun be!” Olaf called. The rifle barrel concentrated
+on a point slightly to the left of, and above Sim’s breastbone. Its
+unwinking stare caused his flesh to crawl at that spot; his heart
+did queer things. His hand dropped limply to his side. Clammy sweat
+exuded from every pore of him, but his eyes still searched the
+covert above.
+
+“Say your prayers, murderer, for now you die!”
+
+             *       *       *       *       *
+
+There came a long, tense silence. Sim stood without motion,
+helpless, doomed. In that moment he distinguished the form of Olaf,
+prone upon the rock, behind the unwavering rifle. And, hopelessly,
+he cursed an oath-laden prayer, a blasphemous petition for a chance
+to die fighting. Once more, his hand crept toward the resting place
+of his well-oiled old .45; slowly, so slowly.
+
+Taunts from the hidden Olaf; more taunts. Revenge is admittedly
+sweet, and long had Olaf awaited this moment. Again he ordered the
+creeping hand down.
+
+Shifty Sim was on the brink of collapse. Like so many of his
+kind--those who kill on slight provocation, and with insatiable
+bloodthirstiness--he was weak and cowardly at heart.
+
+He sensed a stir overhead; slight, almost imperceptible. The
+nervous, twitching tail of the crouching Death in the great pine
+caught the fear-glazed eyes of Sim Satterlee. He traced the lion’s
+tense outline. Would it leap in time, drop upon the prostrate Olaf,
+thereby liberating Sim and sending his enemy to a tragic death? Or
+would Olaf, unhindered, press the trigger and snuff out his life?
+
+And then Olaf, the stoical, who thrice had taken upon himself the
+execution of his mortal foe, broke under the strain. He sprang to
+his feet, arms upraised; fists clenched, eyes gazing skyward. The
+loosened rifle clattered unnoticed down the stony slope. Bitterly he
+cried out:
+
+“Ay can’t do it! Ay can’t do it! Lars, you hear me? Ay tried, but Ay
+can’t!”
+
+Nerves, drawn taut as steel wires, snapped into dynamic action. The
+huge cougar, with a snarling cry, catapulted itself straight toward
+the spot so lately occupied by the recumbent Olaf, a huge,
+rapier-armed paw swishing viciously down in vain effort to crush
+him. A frenzied shriek of warning, defiance, and relief came from
+Sim, as his hand leaped to his breast and out again, bearing the
+death-dealing forty-five. The bullet from its muzzle met the lion in
+mid-air.
+
+Olaf reeled away from this unexpected menace. The wounded lion
+landed on the edge of the rock directly above Sim Satterlee. His
+next leap was instantaneous and purposeful. Again Sim’s gun crashed
+its message of death, but in vain. The great cat struck squarely,
+and the two killers, man and brute, went down in a sickening
+scramble. The beast’s claws raked convulsively and were still. Sim’s
+bullets had done their work too late.
+
+Crushed beneath the body of the dying beast lay Shifty Sim, clawed
+and mauled almost beyond recognition, his lifeblood spurting from
+his mangled body.
+
+Overcome with shock and horror, Olaf, on hands and knees, crawled
+down to his stricken foes, idiotically gibbering a mixture of
+Swedish and English, attempting to express his gratitude to Sim, his
+late enemy.
+
+Sim raised himself on an elbow, made a convulsive attempt to reach
+the revolver lying beside him--and sank back, eyes glazing.
+
+“Hell!” he mumbled thickly. “Missed ya with--my--last shot.”
+
+Stark incredulity--then the horror of belief--dawned in the eye of
+Swede Olaf, as the import of the words struck home. Shifty Sim saw.
+A sardonic, triumphant gleam fitfully lit the hardened countenance,
+and as he had lived, so Sim died--unregenerate, spurning all
+gratitude, profanely denying that even for one brief moment he had
+been a man.
+
+
+[Transcriber’s note: This story appeared in the March 23, 1929 issue
+of _Argosy All Story Weekly_ magazine.]
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77343 ***