Argosy All-Story Weekly — "Sea Marauders" — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

NOT FOR PUBLICATION. 489 “I savvy,” he said softly. It was the first time I’d ever heard him lapse into the vernacular. Of course, I felt like a dog. Poor Mendez, the pouter pigeon, if they had all been as gentle and harmless as he— ‘VE always had an idea that when a man’s emotions get heated up he becomes receptive, in some inex-~ plicable fashion, to impressions that are not conveyed by the ordinary senses. I don’t mean ‘ele pathy: perhaps it might best be called an inward, grow- ing conviction that amounts, in the end, to a sure and settled knowledge; an opinion that becomes a fact; mental radio, maybe. But you have—I have —to be under a strain before it works. The thing began to bite into me that Mr. Logan was already dead. Per- haps my speculations as to what might happen if he made a break for liberty started it. nerve. We all knew that. It got to me. He was dead, and | would have bet my own life on it. | tried to feel sorry and I couldn't. It was better for him to die than for Sallie to marry Alavardo. Mr. Logan had lived his life—he was an old man. If there is anything worse than mur- der it’s these rotten marriages. You never know what kind of blood might be in the life stream down in those free-and-easy tropics. Sallie! I got to thinking of her there on the porch. Seemed like I was looking at a picture of Joan of Arc when she saw visions. Sallie had it— that fineness; that remoteness from self. It’s the real thing, and it’s the stuff they make martyrs and saints of. If I could only make her believe the truth of my hunch about her father’s death, that would end Alavardo. I went to her. She listened patiently. “Perhaps you are right,” she said, in a thin voice. ‘ And again you may be wrong. In either case, I must go through with my plan.” The old boy had plenty of I was too upset to ask her; the dread was too great. “ Alavardo: wants me to go to the border with him; to wait there in El Paso while he goes across. When he comes back with dad—then—” I tried to tell her, but I couldn’t drive the idea through her solidness. Mr. Logan was already dead.. Their little tin can revolution was already falling to pieces and another was brew- ing. Alavardo would get her to the border, and the next thing she knew she’d be on the other side, one way or another, and she’d better be decently dead here at home right now! If. you’ve ever tried to talk to a woman of her type you know how far I got. She just sat there looking out into the night, and her chin was like a chunk of granite. Class! N the way home I made up my mind it wasn’t going to be any governmental affair. With me it was personal. Alavardo—and I thanked God he wasn’t out of town yet. Sammy Goldberg took me into the back room of his pawnshop on Locust Avenue and sold me what I wanted. It was a .38 caliber. Just to feel it in the side pocket of my coat made me happy once more. I don’t remember my mother, and from what I recall of my dad I don’t imagine he would have waited as long as I did. ‘There weren’t any other relatives in particular that would carry on about it. I rang up the office of the Mexican consulate to make sure Alavardo was in. No one answered the telephone, and I realized it was the lunch hour. That would give me time to go to my room and put on some fresh clothes. ALVADORE MENDEZ was in my room waiting for me when I got there. I scarcely recognized him. His face was set; it was deeply grained like the shell of a walnut. I comicbooks.c¢ com = Sa i