Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

= VINGO’S LADY SERPENT. That moved him. Suddenly the two dogs dived under the commissary and their yelps came out, muffled. ‘“He’s coming out the other side!” Al- vina screamed. And waving the frond she raced around the end of the building. She reminded me of movies I had seen of the French mob that churned through the streets of Paris after the nobility had been overthrown and the revolution was in full swing—a long snake of wild-eyed men with cleavers and axes and prancing women with butcher knives cutting down every aristocrat they found—the poor devils. It may seem strange that Viney Barnes should have reminded me of that, and yet I think you'll agree, when you’ve heard a little more about her, that it wasn’t. When I reached the sandy ground on the other side of the commissary, she and the fox terriers and the snake were having it out. If you have ever seen a snake-and- dog fight, you don’t have to be told that the next few minutes were pretty lively ones. The red-haired girl was keeping up the dogs’ excitement by screaming at them, and the snake had been reduced to the state of ineffectual rage that the dogs had hoped for. It was striking at them; it was strik- ing furiously at the frond Alvina slapped it with; it was even striking at bunches of grass. ‘Sick ’im! Sick ’im!” she was scream- ing, over and over. The dogs were darting in and snapping; and the snake’s skin was bruised in a dozen places, and it was tiring. Well, I had seen those pups kill black- snakes before, and I always encouraged them, for blacksnakes are egg-suckers, and they are chicken killers; but I suddenly lost my enthusiasm for that fight. And it was watching Alvina that made me do it. Down in Mexico I had seen fashionable and beau- tiful senoritas act that way when a bull was goring a horse, and their excited gloating always made me much sicker than the con- dition of the horse. It was that same sort of feeling that came over me now as I looked at that beautiful red-haired, white- skinned girl, I saw that she was simply enjoying the 349 | / cruelty of it, prancing around and scream- ing. For she was cruel, with her eyes like flashing diamonds. They were of a gray so pale that they were almost colorless; sometimes I caught a glint of pale-blue or of pale-green flashing in them; and it was her eyes, I think, that gave her away, for there was nothing bad or sinister in her face. Some time after the blacksnake had stopped struggling, and lay stretched out, limp, with its back broken in five or six places, the dogs continued to charge it and snap at it. But presently the girl whistled, and the dogs whirled about and faced her with their ears straight up and quivering, their shiny black noses in the air, their lit- tle eyes gleaming like polished black coals. I wish I could tell you sensibly and rationally just why I shivered at the sound of that whistle. It was not because it had caused those dogs to do a thing that I, their owner and master, had never been able to make them do, short of a whipping. They would have torn the dead snake until they were exhausted. But at the sound of Al- vina’s whistle, they had stopped. That, of course, was astonishing. Have you ever tried to imagine what the sound of Pan’s pipes would be? I know it would resemble Alvina’s whistle —a thin, tantalizing, melodious, quivering sound, not of this world. It made those dogs snap to attention, and it made me shiver. And if you know fox terriers, you will know that it was not an ordinary whistle. They were not tired; and they were “ hot,” as the ani- mal men say. Moreover, they were spoiled, unmanageable little beasts. The back- woods of Florida is a bad place to bring any well bred dog; the call of the wild is too strong. Well, there was a big hog in the field of broom sage across the road that runs from the commissary to my house, and Alvina, thirsty for more excitement, saw the hog. “Sick ’im!” she cried, and the dogs streaked into the sage grass with her after © them. A moment later I heard the hog grunting in panic, and I started across the road to stop what I fully realized would be an as- sassination. I knew that hog well. It be- oO CORMIC OOKS (EC)