Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 1 (1925-01).djvu/73

pole turned another half-circle; the sheet sank in, cramped; a pain floated around Butch's stomach.

The tourniquet was getting stubborn, and the Chinaman now had to tug with all his might to budge the pole farther.

Butch's neck turned black. His eyes grew bigger. Rushing noises swooped down upon him. And still his brute strength fought the death Yong Lo was inflicting.

"Big boob, Butch Killian is."

Yong Lo now had to hang on the pole to move it. The sheet tightened. Something ripped inside of Butch. Crazed, the door of hell just over the pole winding an inch farther, pain racking his vitals, being ground to death in the middle by Yong Lo's infernal pole, Butch Killian tugged on the handcuffs with all his weight and strength.

He drew steadily. In a tug of war with death he pulled on those handcuffs. Continually, harder, horribly. every ounce of effort went into that pull to burst or bend the cuffs about his wrists.

Fiercer, terribly, he drew and drew with those mighty arms, till his temples thrummed, the handcuffs seared, champed through flesh, bit on the bone.

Still Butch drew down with that mighty, tigerish strength; the sheet tightened a bit; his thighs seemed to take what belonged in his torso.

Red and black spots before his eyes, Butch strained on his distended arms, drew—something slocked—something blazed at his wrist—another sickening slock of his arm, like the sound of a fowl being drawn.

A groan from Butch as Yong Lo drew down the pole another inch, flooding Killian's vitals with a hot mass from something that seeped within him.

Then Butch's arm came down upon the Chinaman's head. The blow sent the heathen down, forced him to let go of the pole, which unwound like a pinwheel.

Knocked from his balance, Yong Lo's head bumped Butch's thighs, and the big man opened his legs and caught Yong's neck between them. Still suspended, Killian's thighs closed on the Chinaman's throat, held him breathless in that sinewy vise.

Two minutes, three minutes, four minutes he held Yong Lo, then Butch's senses left.

When they found them next morning, Yong Lo was dead on the floor. A ruby patty of coagulation plastered the Chinaman's black hair, blood that had dripped from Butch Killian: for Butch, when his arm hit Yong Lo's head, had pulled with his beast's strength so mightily on the chain that his wrist gave way, separated where the steel cuff chewed.

His dismembered, clenched fist remained aloft in the locked handcuff, next to his other arm by which he swung, bleeding to death from the handless right arm dangling over Yong Lo's strangled body.