Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 27: what you’re looking at

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

DESERT the twenty-foot uprights that once had served as the support for this roof, as well as tethering posts for the saddle horses, were fallen and buried in-sand drifts. The name of the saloon—Golden Cloud—was still visible, lettered against a background of scaly and blistered red. But the interior, thanks to the dry Ari- zona air, gave little evidence of decay. The climate that enables adobe missions—mere edifices of mud—to stand for a century or two and the templelike formations of the Grand Cafion to retain their exquisite facades—had scarcely mellowed the rawness of the Golden Cloud’s unpainted boards. The bar was smeared -slightly with cob- webs, flies had specked the signs on the wall which stipulated the price of jackass brandy as well as the management’s desire that dancing girls were not only to be s seen, but to be treated. Initials and names carved in the tables, the bar and the rudely planed uprights might have been the marks of dance girls or two-gun men still in the prime of their careers. Where knives had cut these names in the fresh hewn lumber the resin, now dry and powdery, still marked the ancient wounds. One particular sign, with streaks of rust from the nails which held it up, caught Hallie Crockett’s eyes. It was a placard. evoking the whole picturesque career of her father: Dan Crockett. His Alabama Band. No Vibrating after Sunrise. “There we are!” Fred Hayden ex- claimed, removing his derby and standing rapturously before this shrine. “ The very name! The very dais upon which he played! And the scene! Picture it; a smoke-befogged place, and all about rugged heroic men defiant of death, ready at any moment to be sent into eternity at the smile of a woman, at the challenge of a man, the passionate touching of a trigger. “ Glorious! Gambling away gold mines! Dancing to Dixie songs—to the clink of spurs, to the rhythm of great oaths and smashing fists and blasting guns! Mortal life was nothing in their eyes—they were like gods, and the ‘smoke: Haged red by that VOICES. old locomotive headlight up there was like a cloud on Olympus tinged by old Aurora herself! -*“And, in the midst of this scene, pic- ture your father,. handsome, devil-may-care hero that he was, with all the women crazy _ about him, and the men treating him with cigars or a split of champagne or a slug of gin, and the gamblers inviting him to sit in on their game—and your father breaking the bank and then treating the whole house for the rest of the night!” Hallie’s eyes glowed, and she looked - 309 about as fatently. with as rapt a gaze as if. she saw the ghosts of all those. frontier characters assembled again, and heard the jingle of spur chains, the shuffle of cowboy = boots, the yipping of miners drunk with their riches, the tinkle of glasses, the dry rattle of poker chips and dice. Hayden watched her face and saw the vision fade, -and her expression break into” a ‘winsome — = smile. sees oe _ “ Those days are gone,” she said ae ; “You are going to bring them back. — You’re the only one in the county who- could do it. : rious spirit of abandon. It’s immortal. sie is here again in you! When I look into your face I can see a flicker of lights—like these night mirages you have in the Gold Your father typified that glo-. = Poke Desert.” _ a 2 “There can’t be — more Sof thar sine Re shooting. There oughtn’t to be. And the law’s shut down on the liquor. left?” “The heart of it’s left!” Hayden cried dramatically. “The hates, the vengeance, the avarice, the love, the heroism—it’ s all in this town just as it was then. Do you What’s — suppose a man like Noah Doxey, backed - by a few laws, could-wipe out those eternal _ passions? They’ re here! ‘They’re pent up and simmering in every. Arizona town now ~as it was then! “ But how can I bring those days back?” — “Look here!” Hayden pointed to the warped old bar. “I’m going to turn that — ~ - ~~ . place into a tamale stand. We'll have a = Mex’ sell tamales, enchiladas, hot dogs. Se Nothing crazy about that. Ee Ae a Arizona has already ‘transform bars just that way = com coer