Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 47: what you’re looking at

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

MOONING AMONG MOONSHINERS, per to have Miss Nancy show up kept bit- ing into my soul. I was perfectly frank with myself. My anxiety had been chiefly for myself, not for her; I’d been plumb scared still of a bunch of mountaineers that didn’t look like they had brains enough to raise anything but whiskers, not even toma- toes. I had even gone to the ignominious depths of raising hair on my own face and of using it to hide behind from such as they. That girl officer, I reflected, must have seen something rich in those damn whiskers of mine. As I recalled it, she’d sort of formed the habit of looking at them in a fas- cinated way. Id thought it was because they were funny looking, which I had to confess was the truth, but now I believed I could penetrate deeper into her thoughts. She had been speculating on the chicken- heartedness that must have raised them in an effort to hide from old Wambold. I hon- estly hadn’t grown them with any such idea, I never had a hunch that the meon- shiner would get loose—but who was going to believe that? Suddenly I realized that if I wasn’t in love with this girl I had a natural masculine aversion to having her think of me as afraid of anything that walked on two or four legs, flew in the air or navigated the seas. The appearance of the deacon put an end to my bitter cogitations. “Damn you!” he murmured. “ You nearly gummed the cards for me. I had to make a fresh start. Don’t you know bet- ter than to scorn any people’s food?” “Tt wasn’t their food. It was their faces,” I came back. But he didn’t get me at all—he wore whiskers himself. Disdaining to continue the subject he says: “T’m going te go down and inspect their cannery—they invited me to, after I got ’em warmed up a little on the respective merits of this and the next county in the matter of canned tomatoes. You better stay here and keep an eye out for the girl.” “I may turn in early,” I objected. ‘“‘ You said Susie would be all right.” “Sure, she will be. Just shinny up the ladder to the loft when you get ready and take your pick of shakedowns. Old lady says she laid out two for us.” 673 He lit his corncob pipe and went off with the men, little dreaming of the desperate resolve to which my whisker-tortured soul had given birth. I proposed to shave right here and now. How I was going to do it I didn’t know, not possessing a razor and hav- ing no time or taste for pulling the indi- vidual hairs out by the roots. But shaved I was going to be just the same. There must be a razor somewhere around this dump, Id interview the old lady on the subject. I went back into the cabin. The-dim oil light was still burning, but the woman wasn’t in sight. Looking out the back door I saw a lantern moving around the log barn and heard chickens protesting. My heart rejoiced. Could it be I was going to en- counter chicken again in an edible form? With a shave and real food in me, I would again become a regular human being. I cast a speculative eye over the cabin. It wouldn’t do to go poking around here, shot-on-sight would be the reward I would get if 1 was caught at it. But my eye could rove for that needed razor if my hands and feet had to be still, Nothing rewarded the anxious glances. Everything was fairly clean and ship- shape; the woman was neater about her house than the men were about their ap- pearance. Across part of one end of the room hung a curtain from a built-out shelf, making a closet of sorts. It occurred to me to wonder how people so far back in the mountains happened to have so many ‘other clothes ” that they needed a closet like that. Of course, this was a more pros- perous cabin than most hereabouts, still its inhabitants didn’t look like they would run to fancy duds. I almost forgot my wild desire for a shave in puzzling over this. The more I looked, the more I wondered what they wanted of that closet. And the more I wondered the more I wanted to know. Agonized poultry cries from out back told me that the drama of some chick- en’s life was fast approaching its climax. Boldly, which was the only way to do it, I braved sudden death, got up, drifted aim- lessly over to that side of the room and raised the curtains. A little clothing hung there and behind, in orderly rows, Stood two (EO) VOOKS AUUNG (C@