Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

VINGO’S LADY SERPENT. She came a little closer, and flung up her head with the same kind of smile and the same impudent little gesture that I’ve seen those Mexican senoritas use on young fellows they’re kidding along. Her head came about up to my chin, and all of a sudden the dead hog, the fox terriers, and her own part in the crime went completely out of my head, and I wasn’t aware of any- thing except that this strange, wild girl— for I didn’t know yet who she was—was a tantalizing beauty. “But don’t you reckon, sheriff,’ she went on in that melodious, slurring voice, ‘that you could maybe learn to love me a little bit? Listen, won’t you make me a present of these two dogs? I’ve been long- ing all my life to have a pair of matched -dogs like them. Will you, sheriff?” she crooned. I knew she was poking fun at me, but— Well, maybe you can’t see what I saw or feel what I felt. ‘““They’re yours,” I said. ‘““Would you mind telling me now who you are?” “ Why, I’m Alvina Barnes—Jeff Barnes’s sister. We came in last night and we're renting that house down beyond Big Cy- press.” It wasn’t strange that I hadn’t heard. I was on the outs with the negroes for put- ting in force a few game laws relating to wild turkey and quail, and the Vingo grape- vine telegraph wasn’t working as it usually did. That was their way of letting me know that they were peeved. I knew the house well. It stood away off by itself in a thick pine hammock, and had always impressed me with its loneli- ness. The negroes said it was haunted; Old Uncle Dan Vickus had seen ha’nt lights —big blue and pale-orange ones—floating out of the windows one night and sailing straight out over the trees. Previously he had been sitting on the steps of the house, waiting for his hounds to tree a raccoon near by, and a very tall, strange negro had walked up and sat down beside him; and when Uncle Dan spoke to him, the tall, strange negro had simply dissolved. But Uncle Dan had bad eyesight, and anyway I didn’t credit any of the Vingo ghost stories. Shucks, any house that stayed un- X ed—to them. Thinking of that had cleared my mind a BeHe, and I said: “What are you going to do about this — sow, Miss. Barnes?” “Who owns her?” she wanted to know. ‘Old man Clayburn,” I told her. ‘Where does he live?” “Over on the Tomoka—about four miles —that way.” And I pointed south. “Til talk to him,” she said. ‘‘ Nobody is going to pay for this hog. Don’t worry. You gave me these pups just aiter they killed the snake. And you're not mad at me any more, are you?” “No,” I answered; “of course not.” And I meant it—because I was looking at her and she was grinning at me when I said it. And I knew that she would not pay for old man Clayburn’s sow. I never saw the man who would not do exactly what Alvina Barnes wanted him to do. She told me she wanted some rations, and we walked over to the commissary, she talking all the way, rapidly, without a sign of the embarrassment that most backwoods girls show when they talk to strangers. Well, Alvina wasn’t exactly a backwoods girl, I soon found out. She said the fight between the black snake and the fox terriers was one of the prettiest fights she had ever seen. ‘And I’ve seen some pretty fights,.too,” she went on. ‘‘ Once when my brother and I were in New Orleans we took in a scrap between a wild cat and a bulldog—one of these English pit dogs with the long faces and close-set eyes. It was fine, but the po- lice had to butt in and break it up just when it was getting real exciting. I reckon the bulldog would have won if they hadn’t spoiled the party, but you could hardly tell one apart from the other after the first few minutes—and such howling and _ snarling and hissing and yowling I never heard!” “ You like that sort of thing, don’t you?” “ T love it,” she said. “TI don’t see how a girl like you can find much interest or entertainment in a place i] Ke Vingo.” * Well,” she explained, thing about me. “it’s a funny I can be as happy as a —38ol occupied for six months was always haunt- Listen, sheriff. comichook (E@)