Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/95

 I 'lowed hit were a gasolene skiff. Don't kill me, Mister!"

"Shucks!" Murdong exclaimed, impatiently. "You wouldn't feel it a bit. Just a big bump, and you'd be dead"

"My Gawd! Don't kill me!" the man begged. "Don't kill me!"

"But it won't hurt. Hold still"

"Ah—ah—ah," gasped the little wretch, like a man sinking slowly in cold water.

"Don't you want to be put out of your misery?" Murdong asked, in polite surprise. "Why, I thought people like you were so unhappy they would rather die than live."

"Oh, Gawd!" choked the captured pirate. "Ain't you got no mercy?"

Murdong considered. He smiled grimly. He knew what the wretch was thinking. The pirate believed that Murdong was one of those heartless feline types of men who delight in torturing before they kill. Murdong had been slashed and wretched mentally by that kind of persons who despised poetic temperaments. Gurley, of the Fredonia, a star reporter and a savage toward office boys and cub reporters, was that kind.

"Well, you lied about your wife in Vicksburg," Murdong declared. "I don't think a man ought to