ARGONAUT STORIES Argonaut Stories J. LONDON, F. NORRIS, S. E. WHITE, J. F. WILSON, W. C. MORROW, G. OVERTON, W. O. McGEEHAN, W. H. IRWIN, K. THOMPSON, M. ROBERTS, B. O’NEILL, E. MUNSON, C. F. EMBREE, C. ALFRED, G. C. TERRY, N. KOUNS, NEIL GILLESPIE, B. W. SINCLAIR, C. W. DOYLE, C. D. WILLARD, R. D. MILNE, G. BONNER. Selected from the Argonaut Jerome Hart, Editor SAN FRANCISCO: PAYOT, UPHAM & COMPANY Agents for Pacific Coast 1906 Copyright, 1906 By the Argonaut Publishing Company THE ARGONAUT PRESS SAN FRANCISCO CONTENTS JACK LONDON: Moon-Face FRANK NORRIS: A Caged Lion GWENDOLEN OVERTON: The Race Bond WILLIAM C. MORROW: The Rajah’s Nemesis BUCKEY O’NEILL: The Man-Hunters’ Reward GERALDINE BONNER: Conscience Money CHARLES DWIGHT WILLARD: The Jack-Pot C. W. DOYLE: The Seats of Judgment STEWART EDWARD WHITE: A Double Shot ROBERT DUNCAN MILNE: Ten Thousand Years in Ice W. O. McGEEHAN: Leaves on the River Pasig CHARLES F. EMBREE: The Great Euchre Boom MARIA ROBERTS: The Sorcery of Asenath E. MUNSON: Old “Hard Luck” WILL H. IRWIN: The Dotted Trail C. ALFRED: The White Grave GIBERT CUNYNGHAM TERRY: The Jewels of Bendita NATHAN C. KOUNS: The Man-Dog JOHN F. WILSON: The Amateur Revolutionist NEIL GILLESPIE: The Blood of a Comrade BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR: Under Flying Hoofs KATHLEEN THOMPSON: The Colonel and “The Lady” MOON FACE By Jack London John Claverhouse was a moon-faced man. You know the kind--cheek-bones wide apart, chin and forehead melting into the cheeks to complete the perfect round, and the nose, broad and pudgy, equidistant from the circumference, flattened against the very centre of the face like a dough-ball upon the ceiling. Perhaps that is why I hated him, for truly he had become an offense to my eyes, and I believed the earth to be cumbered with his presence. Perhaps my mother may have been superstitious of the moon and looked upon it over the wrong shoulder at the wrong time. But be that as it may, I hated John Claverhouse. Not that he had done me what society would consider a wrong or an ill turn. Far from it, in any such sense. The evil was of a deeper, subtler sort; so elusive, so intangible, as to defy clear, definite analysis in words. We all experience such things at some period in our lives. For the first time we see a certain individual, one whom the very instant before we did not dream existed; and yet, at the first moment of meeting, we say: “I do not like that man.” Why do we not like him? And we do not know why; we only know that we do not. We have taken a dislike, that is all. And so I with John Claverhouse.