Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 12, 1927 — page 135: what you’re looking at

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

| ALKALT, ing him in for fear of accident, He reached the valley bed itself without, apparently, being seen. Or had his father seen him and ignored his coming? Soon the sounds of some one at work in the house reached his ears. He kicked his heels against his pony’s sides. Sudden- ly his mother stood framed in the doorway, and he saw her brush her hair back from her eyes in a manner characteristic of her. He gulped, started to call out his joy. Then he saw her hand stop in mid air, her gaze fasten upon him. ‘“ Jimmie!” she called. Not loudly, not frantically, but with a note in her voice that twisted her very soul. “Ma!” he said. “Ma!” And _ not knowing how he did it, he was off his pony, and her small form was crushed close against his chest. CHAPTER XXVII. _ WHISPERINGS ADRIFT. HE two stood thus for several mo- ments. No words were spoken; there seemed an understanding, a_senti- ment between them, which would have been blasphemed by attempted expression. Jimmie felt a hand on his arm presently, and saw that Betty had come to them and was looking up into his face with a sort of awe in her eyes. He loosed one-arm and passed it about the girl, drawing her into a double em- brace. Somehow he appeared big as he held the two thus. The mother was weeping very softly; he could feel her wasted body tremble in the throes of her joy. Tears came to Betty’s eyes, and Jimmie himself admitted a vast lump in his throat which blocked effectually all attempts at words. It was the girl who broke the silence. “ You come back!” she said. “ You come back, Jimmie! I’m right glad!” He leaned over then and kissed her, and she clung to him as she never had before. He sensed that life in the valley had been harder upon the women than ever before. It struck him that, perhaps, he had been sf in see’ meas as he had. Ss to have done was to take a definite stand when he himself had left the valley—a stand that they should go with him. His mother was standing on tiptoe, that her wrinkled cheek might rest against his own in a silent caress that twisted his heart strings. He leaned down and kissed her again and again. Suddenly she was laugh- ing through her tears. “I reckon I’m plumb foolish, Jimmie,” she said presently, raising the corner of her worn apron to wipe her eyes, “ but it’s kinda nice—kinda surprisin’—” Once again she dropped close to him, hiding her features against his chest, and he patted her shoulder. Hardly had he adopted that form of caress than it came to him that he often had seen his father do the same thing. He stopped as though his hand might have been burned, then began again, falteringly, as though he was delib- erately fighting the impulse to be unlike the father, from whom he had separated in anger. Suddenly his mother straightened, her face aglow with control and happiness: ‘We'll be goin’ in, Jimmie,” she smiled. “ Lan’ sakes, standin’ here like we was lost souls!” Each of them caught one of his arms and led him inside. His nostrils were fairly overwhelmed by familiar smells. Across the screen of his memory raced multitu- dinous recollections. He felt his heart beat- ing more rapidly; somehow he knew that he was home. That nowhere else on earth was there a spot which held for him the glories that clung to this blackened cabin, this desolate valley. A pot was hanging over low flames in the fireplace. The great log table still stood in the center of the room. His father’s chair bulked before the hearth just as it aiways had, and on the table he saw the black pipe from which his parent had made smoke rings when he and Betty were chil- dren watching with thrilled countenances! His nostrils caught again the very odor that pipe emitted. Before his eyes danced a picture of his father as he had seen him through the years of his boyhood. Sitting bite the ds lingerin a he soe, a “hele 08 iy ae! —— ES a. 5, Manta ee as Paws ae oe 129. s+ ae = — . “ “_~ em comiebooke. com