Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 49: what you’re looking at

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

MOONING AMONG MOONSHINERS. ly the pile of flesh disintegrated into its component parts. I lay still on the ground, unhurt but powerful winded, and looked up. Nancy Grey, or Susie I better say because she had on her Susie costume, was standing in the doorway, in her hand the smoking automatic I had sold her. At the other door was a man in civilized garb. He, too, held a smoking gun. One of the mountaineers was letting out groans that showed he was not hurt much. Another of them, even I could see, never would be hurt again. Wambold was stand- jng in the corner with his hands above his head. It was easy enough to be sure he was Wambold, even if he did have a clean shave. Nancy was gazing at my phiz, fas- cinated again. | ‘So it was you spilled the beans,’ she said slow and distinct. ‘“ Shaved!” I was too busy with wanting to know what all this was about to bother with re- senting whatever the insinuation meant. ‘‘ What is the big idea?” I demanded. The deacon spoke up, between pantings for breath, as befuddled, apparently, as 1 was myself. ‘“ Are they the gang?” he said. ‘“ Why, I put in two hours last night down at their cannery and I didn’t see anything wrong. Honest, I thought they were on the level.” “ You’d have found out if you had taken this bright little officer with you,” Susie waved at me. “ He’d have identified the canner as Wambold for you—that is, if it was before he exposed himself with a razor. That’s what we brought him along for, to point out old Wambold to you.” “So you put me up against that guy again, unsuspected!” I almost shouted, for I was pretty hot over it. ‘ You seem mighty careless with my bones.” ‘How was I to know you’d be fool enough to shave. You were safe with that fuzz on your.face. I didn’t know you my- self first time I saw it,” she answered. Then she forgot me to ask: “‘ Didn’t you find a thing suspicious, deacon?” ‘“No,” he answered slowly, watching the stoical mountain woman and an uninjured man tying up a flesh wound on the arm of the hollering fellow. ‘“ Of course, they may have a cellar under the cannery with a still 675 in it. But the place looked so businesslike and they had such good machinery I was sure it wasn’t what we were looking for. Besides, around.” “What do you mean, canned goods?” I demanded with a gleam of intelligence. ‘There have been thousands of quarts of illicit booze shipped out of these moun- tains to all parts of the country, billed as tomatoes,” Nancy deigned to explain, ap- parently feeling she had been a little hard on me. ‘“ About one can in a case would be full of fire water. They can’t make the hooch all at once; must be some around somewhere for this is the place—or Wam- bold wouldn’t be here, would you, darling?” Wammy cursed most alarmingly, but the man in the other doorway, whom I knew now must be another liquor law enforcement officer had him covered close. I stood up. ‘“Maybe I have spilled the beans for you,” I said. “ I’ll now spill the booze, and a little of it is going down my own throat, dry nation or not.” I meandered over to the curtain and pulled it down with a jerk, throwing the few clothes after it, thus exposing the piled- up cans. Before they could stop me I had jabbed my knife into the top of one of them at two places, for the most satisfying drink I had had since prohibition reared his long- haired head. “You do have your uses,” Nancy con- ceded, giving me a slap of approbation on my shoulder, the way a man might have. “Even if I am temperamental and can only stand a beard just so long?” I asked, forgiving her with a laugh. ‘Well, if I did put you into danger, it was because I knew you were capable of meeting it, no matter what you thought of yourself,” she said sharply, and I seemed to feel my stature grow a couple of inches, ‘ The offi- cer and I have been shadowing this place ever since you two arrived yesterday. You see, I didn’t dare show myself because Wambold, if he was here, would be sure to recognize meé, whereas he would not have known you probably before you shaved. The deacon had never seen Wambold. That’s why we brought you along, to point out the bird to the deacon.” Gomicbooks there were no canned goods — (E@)