Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 4, 1925 — page 140: what you’re looking at

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

930 nothing at all. He’s growed up in all them ways, ma’am.” ‘ But to settle down to a man’s work—”’ “TY dunno that he’s ever seen a job hard enough to look like work to him!” She gasped. ‘ Do you mean that, Sam- uel?” ‘Doin’ hard things is his idea of a game,” said he. ‘‘ Might you be able to guess how I come to meet up with him?” ‘““OFf course I’ve never heard.” “Well, lady, I hate mighty bad to get you down on me, but, startin’ a few vears back, I was sort of yvoungish like.” ‘““T suppose that you were,” smiled the girl. ‘“And I was feelin’ my oats, you might say. Well, ma’am, me bein’ sort of heavy in the foot and big in the hand, when I got to friskin’ it busted up the furniture and stove in the floors pretty general. Got so’s folks didn’t want to have me around none too much. Then they was trouble, and pretty soon they was a little argu- ment. “They was eight Louisiana bucks that jumped me in a dark alley. I piled them niggers right up like cord wood and 1 walked on. But they was sort of marked up a little. It was them that started the trouble. It was me that got the worst of it from the law. They come and arrested me and shoved me into a jail and give me nothin’ but pone and water to live by and made me sleep mighty hard on a dog-gone floor. ‘So I up and bashed out the side of the jail and walked off. They hunted me with hounds. I lost them there hounds in a swamp, and then I started out and begun hittin’ back. “Well, lady, after that they was con- siderable excitement around them parts. I kept worryin’ them, and they kept worry- in? me. Well, sir, they kept on huntin’ me with hounds, and they kept on chasin’ me with guns, but still I kept clear of ’em. They begun offerin’ rewards for me. “When folks didn’t have nothin’ else to do, they’d just get together and come down to the marshes to hunt poor Little Samuel. It was a hard life, lady; but they couldn’t catch me. A lot of men made so ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. much noise and moved so slow that I could keep away from ’em. ‘And when just a few men got to goin’ fast down my trail and met up with me— most usual they wished that they hadn’t had that much luck.” His eyes rolled, glistening with the joy- ous recollection. And he passed the tip of a fiery red tongue across his purple lips. He looked, for the moment, like a boyish devil, immensely overgrown. ‘“And you were never taken, Samuel?” ‘Well, lady, along come a young gent one day, and hears about all what had happened down there by the swamp. He didn’t get no guides to help him. He didn’t get no friends and hard fighters to come along with him. ‘He didn’t take along no scentin’ dogs nor no huntin’ and fightin’ dogs. He didn’t take along no heavy pack of grub. He didn’t even take along no rifle. No, lady, he took along some salt and a re- volver and a huntin’ knife. “He didn’t ask no questions. He just sat down anc lived in that there marsh for a week, until he got plumb used to its ways and its smells and the snakes and the mud and the jungles. When he was plumb used to it and had got his bearin’s and knew where north lay even in the middle of the night, then he come sashay- in’ out to find me. ‘““He found me all by himself, right cnough. Them things that follered after him and me met the first time ain’t the sort that the lady could hear without get- tin’ sort of sick. Anyway, I figgered that I could handle anybody that ever lived when I was just fightin’ ’em man to man. But this here gent, he wasn’t no man. He was a lightning flash. He busted all over me. When he got through I wasn’t par- ticular worth lookin’ at. And this stranger, he set down and spent a whole month patchin’ me up and makin’ me look like something—and polishin’ himself off, too, v’ understand. Well, sir, when that there month was finished up I figgered that I had a master made to order for me.” “You had learned to love him?” mur- mured the girl, smiling in her admiration of these terrible wavs of men. GIOok