Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 60: what you’re looking at

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

870 boys down at the quarry tell me he’s been selling it there by the gallon.” “ But it’s good liquor!” ; “It’s liquor. That timekeeper was so drunk yesterday he couldn’t do a lick of work. You tell that brother of yours to go easy with the whip.” I happened to glance up when I said this, and she wasn’t expecting it. I have never seen such a look in human eyes before, and I hope I will never see such a look again. No; it wasn’t furious, or angry, or any of those simple emotions. It was cold and deadly and mysterious; but it melted away an instant later—so quickly that I thought I had been mistaken. Her long lashes came down, and her lower lip trembled. “‘ T—T’Il tell him,” she said quietly. ‘ Oh, Buck, I’m sorry about all this. I wanted you to like me. If you only knew how much it meant to me—having you like me. And you—you kurt me so!” I have said elsewhere that there was something almost hypnotic in that velvety, lovely voice of hers. And I was looking at her. Great Heaven, how beautiful that little devil was! Yes; I was weakening. The same old story. Something made me want to smile; and I did. I smiled; and a tear came trickling down her cheek. “Stop being cruel,” she whispered. “You know you like me!”’ “ Ves,” I said huskily. “Darn you!” she said, and grinned; and I believe that was about all we said. I think she charged some cigarettes and went home. But I’m not sure. Those encounters with Alvina Barnes are all pretty hazy now. The mind doesn’t seem to hang onto dis- tressing things very well. VI. WE called the Randolph boys the Siamese twins—and they were just about as insep- arable. In all their lives they had never been very far apart. They had worked side by side on one job after another up in Michigan, and down in Vingo they followed the same plan. Medical men have told me that twins be- gin life as only one life cell which, by some ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. prank of nature, is divided into two individ- uals, and that that accounts for the strong bond between twins all their lives—unless something happens to turn them against each other, in which case there is no hatred that can compare to it. And judging from what happened to the Randolph twins, I can testify that that theory is a pretty sound one. Yes, sir. The hatred that two brothers can have is terrible, but it’s mild and man- nerly compared to the way a pair of twins can hate. The first inkling I had that things weren’t quite what they ought to be was the en- counter I have already related—between them, the Clayburn girls and Alvina, in the commissary that afternoon. And shortly after that incident, pretty serious rumors began percolating to me along the Vingo grapevine telegraph. These rumors drifted in one after an- other, and they were about in this order: The twins were spending every evening at the Barnes house, and they were doing a lot of drinking there. The twins had sold their two teams of mules to one of the Vingo quarries and were spending the proceeds for Jeff Barnes’s corn liquor and foolish presents for Alvina. The twins had stopped work on the two bungalows old man Clayburn was going to give them as wedding presents. The twins had had a row with old man Clayburn, and it had something to do with Alvina Barnes. And after an old colored mammy had brought in this last piece of upsetting in- formation, things began to happen pretty lively. That afternoon Belinda and Christine Clayburn drove into Vingo and came into the commissary for some rations. I knew it wasn’t the time to ask questions, but I saw some things that made me feel pretty un- comfortable. The eyes of both girls were red, as if they had been crying a great deal lately, and the Clayburn girls were not the crying kind. I also noticed that neither girl was wearing her engagement ring. That looked pretty serious. But Belinda and Christine weren’t telling their troubles to anybody. Their backwoods COPMIE NOOKS com