Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 5, 1928 — page 143: what you’re looking at

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

THE FOXY GUY. “Well, that’s that. Now for a snooze and then a sneak outa town. The owner of the joint here will give me a pack of grub and a couple o’ bot- tles of hooch. Then me for a hide- out somewhere along that trail until this Jack guy comes along. Maybe I am dumb, heh? Oh, yeh! I ain’t no foxy guy! I’m dumb!” IJ. THERE was consternation in the town of Purdy and in the home of Alf Lowring when he was brought there by the men who had found him. They declared he must have been hit by rocks falling down the clifflike bank above the trail as they had discovered several beside him. At first the young man had lain as one dead. But the doctor who exam- ined him announced to the silently sympathetic crowd that Alf would live. “ Cranial fracture, possibly cerebral. Some concussion. Severe shock,” the old doctor muttered briskly. ‘‘ What hit him? Rock from the bank, you say? Huh? Live? Sure he'll live. Too husky an individual to let a thing like this get him. Be weeks, maybe months, before I can get him up and around, but he’ll be all right.” The sympathetic townsfolk went away, leaving but one of them to con- sole Mrs. Lowring, Alf’s mother. And that one was a young man who was Alf’s best friend, “‘ Smiling Jack ” Pee- bles, the Jack upon whom Alf had called in his unconsciousness as he lay on the trail. Although the old lady was relieved, in fact raised from despair to a joyous hope, consternation still showed on her trembling face as she lifted it to Smiling Jack’s six-feet-three of brawn. “T don’t see what we’re a-going to do now,” she said tremulously. “ I¢ sure looks like the bad luck of the Lowrings still holds. It mighty near finished. me when they killed pore Paw 709 right after he’d found all that gold, buried it, and was comin’ home with the news. And I thought I’d die, sure, when I see them carryin’ pore Alfie home from his trip after that same gold. My pore boy! What ’ll we do if, after pore Paw losing his life, and Alf mighty near losing his, some one else should happen to discover that gravel claim and accidentally stumble on the hiding place of the gold Paw and his partner took out and hid for safe keeping? ‘Then, too, it may be the bandit that killed Paw had friends who'll keep on looking for the gold.” Smiling Jack Peebles towered above Mrs. Lowring as she sat in a low chair. Suddenly he dropped to his knees and awkwardly patted the old lady’s shoul- der. His clear gray eyes were troubled, and the nearly constant little smile which earned for him his soubriquet, was settled into mechanical lines, like wrinkles. “Don’t yuh fret. Alf’s goin’ to be all right,” he said gently. “Yes. Thank the Lord, the doctor said so. But, I—I’m just a mite nerv- ous, I guess. I can’t seem to stop shaking so—inside me.” “No wonder,” breathed the young man. Then his famous smile lifted the corners of his wide mouth. ‘I feel a little nervous my own self. But, now you tell me what you’re aiming to do about that gold buried over there in the Green Mountains.” As the old lady spoke of the high hopes she and Alf Lowring had enter- tained when the young man had pre- pared to set out on his ill-starred trip, Jack Peebles’s tanned face grew grim. The little smile still lifted the corners of his mouth, but it was as mechanical as the smile of a dancer on the stage. But, unlike the dancer’s smile, it was grim. His gray eyes narrowed as he looked straight ahead of him. When the old lady had finished he rose to his feet and stood looking quietly down at her. (@ EOPMIC LOO KS