Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 48: what you’re looking at

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

there were as many moons as there are Malaga grapes in a bunch; and she was - growing sleepier and sleepier and Don Juan was kissing her oftener and oftener. It didn’t take Christine long to realize that she was in a mighty dangerous predica- ment. She could not fight off the sleep. And when she told him to turn around and head for town, he only laughed and kissed her some more. It was like one of these dreams, Christine said, when you want to get out of the path of an onrushing locomotive and your feet are just glued to the ties. All she knew was that she must not go to sleep; but she grew drowsier and drowsier, and without knowing what she was doing, she took an- other drink of gin, this time raw from the flask. They reached the inlet finally, and Lar- son parked on the curve where the Halifax sweeps past into the ocean. Christine’s only idea was to escape. She thought she might run as far as the lighthouse and get pro- tection from the keeper’s wife until she was herself again. And with that idea in mind, she jumped out of the car—and fell flat on her face in the deep white sand! And couldn’t get up! She said she remembered seeing a bright, flaring light close to the shore, and knew it must be one of three things—a rum runner unloading liquor, some fisherman out look- ing for flounders, or the moon in still an- other position. Fortunately for her it wasn’t a rum boat or the moon, but two young fellows with a gasoline torch and spears, flounder fishing. She heard a voice, she said, that sounded familiar and miles away asking what was going on and was the lady sick or anything? ‘Then she heard Bud Larson telling the fellow to get to hell out of here before he busted him a good one in the jaw. And a minute later she sat up and thought she was dreaming, for in the moon- light, there was the brother ef her future ‘brother-in-law fighting Bud Larson for all he was worth and beside him yelling blue murder was Billy Smeed, the timekeeper of one of the Vingo quarries, holding up the gasoline torch! It must have been a fight well worth see- ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. ing. Bud Larson, along with his other envi- able accomplishments, was more or less of a professional scrapper. Anyhow, he was good enough to have been in the ring a few times, and what he did to Ed Randolph was plenty. After blacking both his eyes, break- ing his nose and knocking four or five of his teeth loose, he started in systematically to chop poor old Ed’s face into mincemeat. The only fighting Ed had done had been in rough and tumble gang fights up in the Michigan lumber camps before he and Jim came south. He was as strong as an ox and | as hard as nails, and if he couldn’t have taken a lot of punishment, the outcome of that scrap would certainly have been differ- ent, because Billy Smeed was just waiting to drop the torch and run hell for leather if the battle started coming his way. Christine, after the first five minutes or so of that cruel slaughter, was sober enough to realize that something just about as im- portant, as far as she was concerned, as life or death, hung on the outcome. Bud Larson had his feet planted wide apart in the shifty, tricky sand and was lashing out with every blow known in the prize ring. When Ed was knocked down, Bud stood over him and stretched him out as soon as he started to climb up. How many times that valiant young warrior was knocked down none of them could say after- ward. But it must have been terrible. It must have been something like the way Firpo came up time after time in his second round with Dempsey—coming up from blows wicked enough to kill a man not in good physical condition—nothing keeping him coming but the miracle that we call will power, backed by his belief in the righteousness of his cause. Time after time, he came up swinging those big clumsy arms of his and—smash! —down he would flop in the sand another time! And neither he, nor Billy Smeed, nor Christine could explain afterward just how his victory happened. All they knew was that he was crawling back to his knees one of those times and Bud Larson was reach- ing down behind him to pick another hay- maker out of the air when Ed—still on his knees—uncorked a wild punch at the me- chanic’s stomach. It landed with one of EoOmichbooks:co