Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 3 — page 215: what you’re looking at

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

ODD AND BEAUTIFUL. ‘\ The feud, left to him by his father, was as much a part of Blalock’s existence as were his bread and butter—and his corn- bread and hominy grits and fried chicken. It, the enmity, had begun—so oldest inhabi- tants averred—in some Late-Blalovs and Palley-Deceased having been rivals as marksmen. From acute competition in shooting at various targets without conclu- sive decision, they had taken to shooting at each other. Faithful inheritance of this hate went to show that a feud may still exist these days, and thrive; verifying tdles are often read- able in Dixie dailies. Both of these incum- bents were widowers now, and neither had set foot on the other’s land in several de- cades. Appropriately trimmed, too, even if conventionally, was this feud; the only son of Palley and the daughter of the House of Blalock loved each other completely, and both surviving and warring parents united in refusing sanction to so peace-making a marriage. Boy and girl were together now—some- where—the colonel]. surmised. He sighed and moved slowly within, to clean and re- load his revolver—against the Palleys, father and son. ‘‘ Reckon I may have to be fuhst next time,” he mused. As Colonel Blalock had foreseen, - Cal- labee enthused over his new idea. Every resident wanted to do something odd and beautiful, the one small, sweeping difficulty being that nobody could ‘think of anything odd and beautiful to do. This dilemma seemed to endure for a couple of weeks. Later news revealed an exception, however. It developed that three young best-society men had got busy im- mediately—on the night of July 5, in fact, at the dance persistently held every week despite a bewildered pastor’s weekly pro- test. At this dance they had formed them- selves into a triad of pity and had proposed to the three most ineligible young women of Callabee. Of these three gentler ones none was the homeliest in all the town. Their previous dearth of matrimonial offer had been caused, severally, by a raspy voice, a maspier tem- 14 A Digitized by Go ogle 497 per, and a scantiness of crowning glory— but since this fails to identify them individ- ually nobody’s feelings are hurt. The three noble young fellows—hand- .some, all of them—dquickly discovered that each had picked out the wrong girl. In the succeeding two weeks each pair changed partners, then balanced all, and did one more grand right and left, all finally finish- ing satisfactorily mated and announced on July 20. “Very odd and beautiful, ” said Nancy Blalock, in telling her father of the wind- - up. ‘““Humph! Reckon they could have ‘matched it soonuh if they’d been as open with each othuh as they’ve all been with me,” was the colonel’s comment. “ Might have settled it like they did last fuhst.” And the wedding sextette had been done for keeps, as after years went to prove. Little spirits of kindness, reborn of the words themselves, now kept “ Odd and Beautiful ” alive in the hearts of Callabee. That trio of best boys had set the pace. The weazened general-store proprietor did his bit early in the third week of July. He put a monitor over his clerks, pad and pencil ready to jot down a fifty-cent bonus to each one every time he was caught smil- ing while serving a hard-to-wait-on cus- tomer: Beautiful! Private instructions to the clerks were to tack the fifty cents on the price if the customer didn’t return the smile: Odd. Of course these general-store instances - were no secrets. The colonel had told everybody to tell everybody else—and no- body could ever keep a secret long in Calla- bee, anyway; the three young men had established a two-weeks’ secrecy record ad infinitum. Most of life’s pages in the little town were mighty well thumbed. So much grati- fied gossip now went on in the mail hour, after the daily stage-coach had come in, that Postmaster Poindexter forgot the pre- rogative of his perennial tenancy of that democratic job, and actually waxed cour- teous for once—quickly excusing himself for it with the remark that he reckoned he must be coming down with pellagra. The hotel landlord experienced a sudden ginal fre NGO TALC STATE UN SITY eS) THE OH 10 NOOK CO