Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 189, No. 4 — page 27: what you’re looking at

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

TICKETS TO PARADISE. another. Add a few yards of silk to the trail in the dust. First thing you know the job’s done. Cinch! Have some coffee, and the sun ‘ll be shining again.” “Thanks, I will. I’m terribly ashamed to get up with such a grouch, and all over so trivial a matter as a new frock.” “Sore at Mart, too, ain’t you?” and Hugh deftly speared two fried eggs. “ Be- cause he let you down day before yester- day.” “T’m not sore at anybody,” Janice re- plied with great dignity. “Sa-ay!” Hugh jeered good naturedly. “T’m not blind. But you ought to give a chap the chance to explain before sinking your heels in his ribs. Mart couldn’t come.” “Why not?” Janice demanded, a trace of color showing on her cheeks. “ Poor devil was thrown off his cayuse on the way out here. Mighty near killed him too. His face is a sight.” All of Jan’s resentment was swept away in a feeling of concern for Martin Sandis- field, together with a sense of guilt that she had been so unjust. ‘Oh, I’m sorry!” she gasped. really injured seriously?” ‘Thanks to Doc Peaseley he’ll be O K in a few days, but Mart was worried a lot over what you’d think when he didn’t show up for the ride. Asked me how you took it. Also he said tell you it would need more’n being bucked off a broncho to keep him from taking you to the dance.” “T haven’t promised to go with him— not yet,” Janice murmured pensively. “ But all the time you’re working on a new dress to wear!” Hugh chuckled. “ Women are sure hard to beat. What’s the big idea of keeping a man dangling?” “T don’t know,” Janice confessed, with a hopeless shrug of her shoulders. “ Just the devil cropping up in me, I suppose. Some- times—it’s awfully hard to explain, Hugh, but I feel as if I didn’t know Mart at all. He seems like a stranger to me, and I imag- “Ts he 497 ine he’s holding himself on guard, trying to keep me from seeing what sort of man he is inside.” “Why, Jan,” Hugh cried. ‘‘ What sort of foolishness are you raving now?” “It is foolishness, isn’t it, Hugh?” “Of course it’s foolishness! And you want to snap yourself out pronto.” “ Tt’s something to do with Martin’s eyes, I think,” Janice mused aloud. ‘‘ They’re so expressionless that they frighten me at times, and I can’t help wondering what’s wrong with a man who has eyes like that. You know Martin better than I do, Hugh. Are you sure he’s all right?” ‘“* Mart Sandisfield lacks a lot of being perfect, mebbe,” Hugh replied slowly. “ No man’s perfect, for that matter.” “That’s not what I mean, Hugh,” Jan- ice interrupted quickly. ‘‘ I know he’s not perfect—any more than I am. I’m not so unreasonable as to expect perfection, or even want it, in my friends. But if Martin wasn’t all right—you know what I mean by that, Hugh—you’d tell me, wouldn’t you? You see it’s awfully important for me. I’ve just got to know, and there’s no one else I can ask.” Hugh Lamberton shoved back from the table, his appetite for food suddenly gone. An impulse momentarily swept over him— an impulse to be decent for once at least toward this girl whom he had been defraud- ing for years. Hugh even opened his mouth to speak, to warn her against Sandisfield as if he were the personification of evil. But the words remained unsaid. Hugh visioned himself ruined, disgraced, prob- ably condemned to prison—and he lacked the manhood to save Janice when saving her meant his own destruction. “ Mart Sandisfield is all right, Jan,” he told her steadily. Then Hugh Lamberton rose from his chair and abruptly left the room, his spurs jingling. He could not bear to stay there and face the look in his cousin’s clear, hon- est eyes. TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK The amazing experiences of George Washington, brought back to life in this modern age, are told in “ The Return of George Washington,” by George F.Worts. The story starts in Argosy- 2A | (E(0) ibook : * — . —— = ~ (E(0) : - PA ¥ ys