Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 7, 1928 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

g ‘ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. to realize that they had lost a valuable man when they let him out. Blithely he swung himself down to the dusty platform at Los Chicos Junc- tion—the point where he had to leave the main line and stop overnight, since there was no train out on the branch railroad to Rio Rita, the county seat, until the following morning—and, picking up his bag, started over toward the ramshackle, stucco hotel. But halfway across the sun-baked plaza he suddenly stopped, the first faint splutter of a dynamite bomb sounding in his ears; for there upon the veranda, with his chair tilted back into the shade, sat Dick Crawford, de- bonair, star salesman for Blair & Co., of Detroit. Then, as Norman stood halted, star- ing at this unwelcome spectacle, Craw- ford sprang excitedly to his feet. “ Back, you simp!’ he shouted warn- ingly, leaning over the veranda rail and waving his arms. “ Jump back!” Involuntarily Norman obeyed; and as he did so, it seemed to him that not metaphorical dynamite, but the real thing had struck him. Something caught him with a jolt under the coat-tails, and, lifting him into the air, tossed him to one side and sent him sprawling, face downward, in the dust of the plaza. He was not knocked unconscious; but the shock was sufficient to scatter his wits, and for a moment he lay there, uncertain just what had hap- pened to him. Then he felt himself being picked up and raised to a reclining position against somebody’s knee; and when he had blinked the sand out of his eyes, he found himself gazing up into the face of the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life. “ Are you hurt?” she asked, her vio- let eyes full of solicitude. But Norman was so taken aback by the vision of unexpected loveliness— all the women he had hitherto seen in Los Chicos County would have made a mtid fence seem pretty by comparison —that he could only goggle at her daz- edly, and open and shut his mouth like a fish. “No; ’m—I’m all right,’’ he finally managed to gulp as she repeated her question. Realizing all at once how disheveled he must appear, and also that he was lying with his head in this strange young woman’s lap, he blushed a violent crimson, and, scrambling to his feet, started brushing off his clothes. “Oh, are you sure?” the girl per- sisted anxiously, still supporting him with a hand on his arm. “ Of course, I only hit you sidewise with the corner of my fender, and you were thrown clear of the wheels.) But you went down so heavily that I was afraid some bones might be broken.” Norman saw then what it was that had laid him low—a shining, high- powered roadster from which she. had evidently dismounted hastily to render him assistance. By this time, too, Dick Crawford, his Panama hat tilted jauntily on one side of his head, had come over from the hotel, and began trying to ingrati- ate himself by declaring that the acci- dent had been all Norman’s fault. But instead of appearing grateful, the girl turned to him with a hostile flash in her eye. “Your fault, you mean!” she snapped. “I could have avoided him easily if you hadn’t called out like a ninny, and made him jump back right in the path of my machine. So the least you can do “now is to stop that stupid chatter and lend a hand here to help him over to the hotel.” Crawford, who had rather a reputa- tion as a lady killer, didn’t quite know how to take it. He was not accustomed to being addressed so curtly by mem- bers of the other sex. The half smirk | he had bestowed upon her was replaced by a sort of sulky pout. “Don’t you hear me?” flung up her head impatiently. “ Catch Gomichbooks The girl | (E@)