Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 189, No. 4 — page 45: what you’re looking at

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

THE BULLY OF She looked like the kind of girl who would shoot at the conclusion of her counting. Teddy departed with dignity. He walked, not ran, to the nearest exit. The area be- tween his shoulder blades itched and tingled and crept; but he did not accelerate his pace. Disgraceful though his retreat may have been it was gentlemanly. He heard her say “ four,” but at the word “five,” he must have been beyond earshot. Walking swiftly over the neatly trimmed lawn toward the dark bulk of his roadster at the end of the lane, what he heard was a strange, gasping sound, as if, perhaps, that arrogant, uncivilized girl were smother- ing laughter beneath a hand. A hotter tide of humiliation swept into his already steaming face and he fotind, as he climbed into his roadster, that he was clammy with perpiration and so tremu- lous with destructive emotions that his foot, touching the accelerator pedal, shook like a leaf. He would, somehow, show her! Some- how he would make—her-suffer as she had made him suffer—the little bully! / VII. Trppy ARMBISTER, returning through the moon-drenched, sweetly perfumed night to his plantation, became a battlefield of emo- tions. He wanted to take Georgia Michi- gan Woodstock by the slfoulders and shake her until her teeth rattled. Never in his life had he been so humili- ated. And as a result of thinking over his misadventure from every angle, he did not fall asleep until nearly daylight. He heard the alligators barking in the jungle across the river; he heard the night birds calling to their mates; he heard the chirping of insects and the murmur of the trade wind in the palms; he heard the far- away, lonesome whistle of a train. The first faint gray of dawn was at his windows when he fell asleep, and he fell asleep upon the discovery that he wanted to hurt and humiliate Georgia Michigan Woodstock more than he had ever wanted to do anything in his life. He awoke toward noon to the reflection that he had been done a great, burning in- O15 justice. His pride still throbbed from the rudeness with which it had been treated. But he realized, sensibly, as he prepared himself his breakfast coffee and fried some eggs, that by far the wiser course would be to treat Georgia Michigan Woodstock as one who did not exist. Teddy set about the business of becom- ing a power in the Florida grapefruit and tomato world with that commendable reso- lution. He hired a negro to look aiter his grove. He bought books and sent away for a vast amount of literature dealing with the culture of citrus fruit. He purchased—for a song—a Fordson tractor and resolutely set about learning the art of making several things grow where only one thing had grown before. It was his praiseworthy intention not to be a gentlemanly farmer. The time would, of course, come when his rolling acres would demand all of his time in an executive way; but until that time came he was deter- mined to roll up his sleeves and work. Accordingly, he plowed, he harrowed, he raked. For a few days his backbone be- came a deep and continuous ache; but he was in good physical condition when he BISCAYNE BAY. came to Florida, and it was not long before - he toughened. He set out, with rather a flourish, ten acres of tomatoes and five of yams. And a Sunday came when he could pause and look about upon the work he had done and call it good. His ambition to put this farm of his on a paying basis was further fired by a some- what vague necessity of showing “ that girl next door.” Obviously, she looked upon him with the contempt of an old settler for a tenderfoot; and he was, among other things, going to show her that he was a better man than she was. This splendid aim was further fired, for a reason even more difficult to assay, on that particular Sunday when he looked about him and called his handiwork well done. the harsh, lumpy white soil; tired of the scuttling land crabs; tired of the odor in his nostrils of the tractor’s exhaust. Obey- ing a whim, he drove over to Miami Beach for a swim. eer He was tired of trudging about in | comichbooks (E(O) Se SE * >, pelea eee And,” Poe “ber rt Atl EE EE BPS Fe Se ay Se G. see pee” ve o PPE NE Prt ARE ONS Ole eee LE ew eet 4 ane Tn ft Hee.