Argosy, Vol. 120, No. 1 — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

THE DEBT. each after his nature, expressed the con- viction that life was good. The shoulders - of Harry Stowe took on a wider swing and he caressed his mustache with an air of sat- isfaction as he talked; which forced David to suppress many a,smile of friendly amuse- ment.. He felt exactly as Stowe did, with the difference that he took his feelings out in roundabout attentions to Molly, whom he held to be a kind of human rabbit’s foot. She’d brought luck, comfort, and, al-_ though he did not name it that, an ideal into their lives. Winter brought the beginning of a change; a change that worked slowly and pitilessly, like a malicious fate, until all those external influences which affected greatly the lives of the three were the op- posite of what they had been a year before. Snow, for one thing, piled up in layer upon layer until the trapping was practically spoiled. An ice-fishing venture on Lake Champlain brought hardly enough to cover the cost of the shanty and outfit. Burns tried to get a job chopping at last, but it had grown late and the difficulties of draw- ing wood out from the mountains were so. great that year that he failed. And so a March blizzard, that came roar- ing down upon Mink Hill just after there. had been promise of a thaw, found the two men and the woman penned up, something after the manner of the animals that fur- nished them the greater part of their living. Like all of their breed, neither Burns nor Stowe saved. A tireless body, a steady hafd with a rifle, and the friendliness of the out-of-doors were thought to be suff- cient insurance against the future; but David, feeding wood to the stove on the second day of the blizzard, began to doubt these gods. | He looked at Molly, paring potatoes in the afternoon twilight for their supper. Her cheeks, so curved and faintly pink even at Christmas, had hollows in;,them now; he knew that she had not been a dozen yards away from the door in weeks, because her moccasins and overshoes had gone be- yond repair. Stowe sat behind the stove, elbows on knees and head in hands. He had hardly spoken during all that dark, wind-pierced day. At the clatter of the 15 griddles he roused and drew the bitten cor- ner of a plug of chewing-tobacco from his pocket. He bit off a carefully measured piece. : ‘What you got for supper?” he asked, turning his head toward Molly. With the hint of a smile that always preceded her words to him she answered cheerfully. ‘‘ Boiled potatoes, Harry,” she said. ‘And salt!”. grinned Burns, dropping into a chair with a thud. . “Bah!” Stowe spat at a stove-leg. “Why don’t you fry ’em? We had boiled potatoes for dinner!” | “The pork-grease is all gone.” Burns was looking up under his eyebrows as she answered, watching her face. He saw that she framed the words mechanical- ly, with her gaze upon the ugly blotch her husband had made upon the clean kitchen floor. Before her coming, as was common enough among Mink Hill bachelors, the floor had served as a cuspidor. But her mere presence, without a word of protest or nagging, had been enouginto change all that until this hour when Stowe, coming out of his day-long brooding, broke restraint. “ This is a hell of a life!” The master of the house got up and shook his six feet of toughened muscle and sinew. Neat darns were upon the elbows of his blue flannel shirt, and patches, equally skil- ful, upon his trousers. His eye found in them now fresh evidence of his poverty, and he growled into his mustache as he tried . to rub the frost from a window-pane and look out. ‘“‘ We’re tied up here like a couple of old women!” Molly winced at that. Dave, his thick, powerful shoulders squared against the bacl: of his chair and his head still bent, saw her; and resentment began to burn within him like the slow flame of a sulfur-match. He could no more have been brutal to Molly than he could have struck his own mother —and Harry was her husband! Harry! who was now rummaging on the partry shelves and muttering to himself. “Say!” he cried, turnine back into the room suddenly. “ Ain’t I got another plug of tobacco?” “No.” Molly held her head lower as she began to sort the potatoes out of the | CoOMmiicloo CO@