Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

SEE AMERICA Luck had run against Micky, the dirty- faced, demon driver. He had to stop to change a tire. Fancy Burke knelt beside him in the mud, working with a rim wrench while Micky jacked the wheel. Only the bridegroom was idle. He teetered anxious- ly, his hands clasped,. uttering timid, plain- tive little cries that got r no attention from the busy workers. It was Fancy, her face plentifully smeared with mud, who discovered Bruce Ray and Wally Newell lurching down the road, splashed waist high in mud and . charging like the Light Brigade. She wel- gpmed their impetuous onset with a calm, collected- smile and a cheerful, “ Look what’s here!” But Sid Wilcox, after one wide-eyed giance, fled yelping into the cur- tained shelter of Honest John’s big touring NorMALLy Honest John was not quick on his feet, and he had passed a ‘terrible half-hour. He soon ceased to run toward the stalled machine ahead and began to limp. Once he fell headlong into a puddle and continued to wallow there in a way that would persuade an innocent bystander he liked it. Finally he found his footing and kept on. He was in shouting distance of the run- aways when his goal, the tail light of his ‘own car, began to move from him. He bellowed frantically after it and tried again to run. In a moment the big car was gone. But Honest John was not left alone. Bruce Ray and Wally Newell materialized - from the darkness beside him. They were ommously calm. <°S all ri right, ” Wally explained when the fond father’s profanity had run down, “ we give ’em your blessing.” “Yes,” Bruce Ray echoed quietly, “ it’s all right. They both want to get married —to each other.”’ “Want to get married! Want to get married! What’s want to got to do with it? You mean to say you two gibbering imbeciles stood around and let my girl run off with that—that perfumed, performing poodle, and—” Ray interrupted, quietly and sternly: FIRST. 439 “We mean to say your girl’s about old enough to know her own mind. She says she wants to marry Sid Wilcox, and that’s the end of it, far’s we’re concerned.” ‘‘ That’s it,” Newell seconded cheerfully. ‘I don’t pretend to account for her taste in a man, but that’s what she wants, and me and Bruce are willin’.” “ You let him steal my car—my car that’s worth five thousand dollars if it’s worth a cent! You let him run off with that.” , “Oh, he’ll run back again, ”” Newell promised easly. “ He’ll have-to run back to his pa-in-law as soon ’s the gasoline gives out. Come to think of it, I dunno but you got just the kind of son you deserve. And speakin’ of cars, Burke—” ‘Yes, speaking of cars,” Ray echoed eagerly. They brushed against Burke in the dark. - On either side he felt the press of their big shoulders. There was something menacing _ about their nearness. Burke spoke like a stricken man when he murmured dully, ‘“ What about cars?” The lights were still bright in Honest “John Burke’s Summer and Winter Resort Hotel when the two friends, on foot, neared it. The dance was still in progress in the rlor. ‘We'll get out our turkeys and just kind of fade away,” Bruce Ray suggested. “I got my new suit a little muddy, and I guess I don’t want to see nobody right now.” Newell assented cheerfully. “‘ We'll go down to the dock and wait for the Seattle boat,” he said. Then he added with a thoughtfulness eloquent of his sorrow for his heart-stricken friend: ‘And, say, Bruce, you know they’re still selling man’s drinks up in Canada. We could go up to Vancouver if you got a hankering after re- vivin’ old days and drownin’ out sorrows!”’ “Nope, Wally,” answered Ray. “ Some- how I don’t feel like I’d have felt about this if it was ten years back. Say, we got our five hundred off’n Honest John again. My notion is we buy us a new Tin Lizzie that ll go, and start off again on that trip. Me, I. don’t feel like neither booze nor ‘Matrimony. Il see America first.” awa fl (CO (C DOO (COL