Argosy All-Story Weekly — "The Purple Limited" — page 107: what you’re looking at

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

THE STRAY-MAN, ‘‘ Yes. He is somewhere with father, now. His name is Knable—‘ Lefty’ Kna- ble. He got the doctor—from Dry Bot- tom—for you.” She was. wondering what he would have to say about his trouble with Blandell in Loma, or whether he would mention it at all. So she said, quietly: _ “Did you meet Blandell in Loma?” He looked quickly at her; saw guile in her eyes. ‘Was you expectin’ he asked mildly. I’d meet Blandell?”’ ‘Mr. Knable said he saw you talking to Blandell. ” ' He frowned. “I'll be havin’ a talk with Mr. Knable when I get out of this,” he threatened. “I trusted him a heap.” A smile was her reply to this; and she got up and raised the curtain of the win- dow at the side of the bed so that the clear white light came stealing in. Thereafter, for some time, she busied herself about the © room, while he lay there covertly watching her. He fated that she limped a little as she walked; but he saw that a shoe encased the injured foot; and from that he gath- ered that on the day he had found her she had been suffering more from hunger and exhaustion than from pain. He decided that she was more attractive than she had been on the morning he had helped her from the saddle after the jour- ‘ney from the water-hole. For one thing, she was not wearing the riding habit she had worn then—raiment that Shorty had always thought ridiculous, though of course inevitable if a woman persisted in riding straddle. , He had always had his own views on that subject, though he had never put them into words. He had always thought a wo- man looked better -if clothing that suggest- ed domesticity than in a garb that indi- cated a desire to imitate the opposite, sex. At any rate there was about her now an atmosphere that was essentially and ex- clusively feminine. She dominated the room, she gave to it that air of complete- ness and gentleness which makes a home of a place that would be merely a house if she were absent. She seemed to fit, to TA 673 belong; seemed to be living the part that nature had intended as woman’s logical sphere. And at this minute Shorty was an en- thusiastic believer in nature’s schemes of life and existence. He had never had a_ nome of his own, but he had looked into other houses which had been made into homes by women, and he knew they were good. The girl wore a dress of some striped material—a house dress—though Shorty was not familiar enough with such things to attempt to become technical. He only knew that it became her, revealing not too suggestively the graceful: lines of her fig- ure; that the neck was just low enough and the sleeves just short enough. The last time he had seen her her hair had been in disorder—in maddeningly beautiful disorder which, while ,she had lain in his arms that morning had made him want to caress it—and her clothing had been soiled by the dust she had en- countered during her long walk to the water-hole. Now the hair was twisted and looped into heavy coils and waves. The beauty of it thrilled him. He went to sleeg’ watching her. When he again opened his eyes, Lefty Knable and a big man were in the room with him. Knable grinned broadly. “Lefty Knable, eh?” said Shorty. “ I’m a heap glad to meet you.” “You come mighty close to not bein’ able to meet anybody,” declared Knable grimly. “If you’d been like a lot of other guys—not quite so much man to you—the daisies would have got a right good start over the place where you’d have been planted.” His grin broadened and then softened. | | “ But I reckon you'll live now—you'll ‘live to understand that you made a mis- take in lettin’ Blandell off when you ought to have salivated him. Also, you'll live to work an’ rassle a lot more of ham an’ aigs —which you looked sort of scornful at a few days ago—lettin’ me do the gobblin’.” He saw that Shorty’s gaze had gone to the big man who was standing near, and he grinned guiltily. sal (C(O) 6)(0)©) S (C(O) nn