Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 138: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

y CLAIMS you takes chances; sometimes you makes a getaway, and again you gets gypped. I ain’t a saying that we shouldn’t help a friend if he’s in bad, but always have your getaway framed and a piece of fall money in your kick, for yeu never knews just how things is going to break. | But when I restores Hooch to his girl and. his friends’: I does something*I never regrets. Hooch ain’t made for yegging no - more than I am for sitting in at a church sociable. As Tommy the Yegg expresses it, we are all “ creatures of our environ- ment,” which means, he says, that if you’re used to table linen with your eats you never gets used to oilcloth. I don’t see no use in being too finicky, though I admits to sleeping better on the floor of a box-car | ‘ than in a regular bed. Hooch joins on with us at Roodhouse, Illmois. There was only three of us in the mob at the time; Tommy the Yegg, New Castle Slim, and me. He comes on us in the jungles, where we was waiting - for a ‘diser’ to come through, which we figures on holding down into K. C., and was a trying to get a nap so as to be in shape for an all-night ramble on the rat- tler. We was just about asleep when this fel- low I’m telling you about drops-in on us ‘and sits down alongside of Slim. We ain’t none too sociable with strangers for you never knows who you're mixing with. This PA. Price right, but it’s more apt to be an elbow looking for a pinch. As‘I says, we’re care- ful, and this guy being so free and éasylike, kind of makes us leary. . Slim sits up and gives him the up and down. “ Which way, ’bo?” he asks him. ~ ‘“Do you mean which way am I going?” says our visitor. . “Just that,” says Slim, “and as it’s getting on toward evening, I.suggests you keep moving!”’ and Slim stands up, the guy still sitting there cool and calm. He looks at Slim easylike, and says: “TI was’ thinking I might be invited to join ort with this little party, the destination and mode of travel being immaterial! ” This was a new kind of a‘deal to us and we looks to Tommy for dope on future ac- tivities, Tommy being able to make a lot of stuff that’s too deep for us. So Tommy gets up and comes over to the gink, who maybe sees trouble ahead, for he stands up, too. “‘What’s the big idea?” says Tommy. “Ts it regular for a guy to horn his way into a crowd and invite the attention of an assemblage as you have done? Do you know,” says Tommy, as he frisks the guy’s coat-pockets, “‘ that it’s contrary to all rules of etiket’—and here he frisks the gink’s vest-pockets—‘ for a gentleman to invite himself”—here he makes a pass to see if the gazabo has a gat—‘‘into the sacred and inviolate precincts of a gentleman’s ‘gathering place’”—here he feels him over “entertaining angels unawares ” stuff is alt’ for a shiv—“ without the formality of an / 512 Digitized by Go gle 8 A S Original from CONN CG 6) 0)(0) (G 0) (Lf THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY