Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 44: what you’re looking at

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

B04 And the tough looking Randolph brothers appeared to be listening to distant orches- tras and catching glimpses of heaven and smelling attar of roses. I thought they looked sort of simple myself. Alvina made a cute curtsey to each as I introduced them, and into the embarrassed silence that fol- lowed immediately her voice fell like a chord of music. “Oh,” she caroled, “you must be the Mr. Clayburn who owned the hog my dogs killed!” 3 Blue veins leaped into prominence on old man Clayburn’s crimson forehead. ‘What hog—wha-what dogs?” he stut- tered. ‘That old sow of yours.” “ That old sow?” he repeated with a mys- tified air. ““Ves, The sheriff gave me his two fox terriers this afternoon and the first thing they did was to attack your sow and—it died. Oh, I can’t begin to tell you how badly I felt about it!” Well, you know how much truth there wes in this—just enough to make me a ma- terial witness if I wanted to tell the truth and didn’t want to pay for the hog. But Alvina was a picture of frank, sweet sorrow, with her red mouth drooping and her eyes f rlorn. ‘““- You see,” she explained in that velvety voice, ‘‘I thought it was just one of these wild old Florida razorbacks that don’t be- long to anybody.” Old man Clayburn had a reputation for being tight-fisted for driving hard bargains, - but you wouldn’t have thought so if you had seen him now. He began-to chuckle as if the death of that hog tickled him be- ~ yond words. ‘You needn’t have worried your little head about it. That old sow wasn’t fit’n for much more’n the buzzards nohow. Don’t fret yourself any mo’. Hogs’re a dreg on the market.” And to put her at ease he said: ‘‘ You visitin’ in Vingo, Miss Barnes?” “My brother Jeff and I have rented that . house down beyond Big Cypress Swamp.” ‘¢ Farmin’?” She shrugged her lovely shoulders and gave him a mystifying smile, which was later explained in full measure. : 2 ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY: “T reckon so.” “Great country fer farmin’,’ Ed Rant dolph put in in a voice that rasped with embarrassment. She smiled at him, then glanced, as if for corroboration, at his brother. ‘“ G-grow anything!” Jim blurted out. Alvina looked from one to the other with dancing eyes. “You twins?” ‘““Ayop,” said Jim, and grinned sheep- ishly. ‘“ I’m an hour older than him.” “Td hate to have to tell you apart—in the dark,” Alvina said and softly laughed. And it was just the way she said it that made the commissary feel suffocatingly hot all of a sudden. Another girl might have said it, and you’d have just chuckled, but not at the way Alvina said it. Her tone and that wicked little laugh implied some- thing—well, significant. No; she wasn’t flirting with them; she was simply working on them for something she had in mind. To Alvina, every man was grist to the mill. That remark killed the conversation, any- how. Silence, stiff and uncomfortable, set- tled again. To be sure, men like the Ran- dolph twins and old man Clayburn are never at ease with women until they have known them a long, long time, but that didn’t ex- plain everything. They knew from Alvina’s accent that she was either Georgian or Flor- idian, and they intuitively knew that she was a backwoods product like themselves; it was the tight-fitting red dress, her queer diamond eyes and the tantalizing thing in her manner that puzzled and embarrassed them. And you somehow know, watching them and her, that strange and dark things were having their beginnings. Don’t ask me how I knew—it was in the air. Sinister or insidious or one of those words sounding so much like a hiss fitted in somewhere, The squeaking of a dry axle was what broke the silence. It was too dark outside to see who had come up, and I supposed it was one of the teams from the quarry. But it wasn’t. The door opened and two men come in, one white, one black—strangers. “It’s Jeff!”’ Alvina cried. ‘‘ Hello, hon!” Well, hon was an eyeful, no kidding: tall, broad and husky, with arms like mahogany logs, thick, stiff black hair, shoulders like a oO COPMIE OOlKS (S@)