Argosy All-Story Weekly — "The Purple Limited" — page 199: what you’re looking at

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

‘THE MISADVENTURE OF MANUEL. It was thus that he started pilfering from the stock, until very soon, each day a little bundle would be made up, and hidden in the closet of the back room to be taken home: late at night. It came so easy that it was but a short step for him to take enough. more to supply Lola’s parents also. Now all the village was talking and laugh- ing about it; pleased that at last the old hunchback miser was befooled. He, the wise one, the trickster overreached by a mere boy! The women squatting by the riverbank washing clothes among the scattered boul- ders exchanged chuckles, and gleeful quips with the sugar-cane cutters sitting in the shade of the banana-grove near by. “The old fool, he cannot see that which even a lizard would notice!” shouted an aged washerwoman, rubbing a camisa deftly on a rounded stone in the stream. is dotage is upon him,” averred the woman next to her in lint. A young giant, coal-black, swung his cane knife, shorter and heavier than the usual machete. . “‘ Manuel would taste a stroke like that, if only the old man knew, and had still his strength left.” He severed a sapling thick as a man’s arm with a ‘single stroke of the knife. “ The high air that Manuel carries now, and the money he spends! A prince could do no more. Shrewd and ‘cunning he is. Pedro is ‘no match for him,” said a young, trim-figured girl as she passed with finished wash; a white ball balanced on her head. ‘“‘ A silence on thy chatter. Here comes Manuel now,” warned the aged washer- woman. Along the white road that glared in the tropic sunlight, sauntered a slimlye built young man. Olive skin, straight black hair, ~ rather loose mouth, and eyes close-set, were salient features that the passing glance ob- served. He stroked a faint mustache with complacency as he ogled the passing young girl. His attitude and glance Betrayed the con- scious superiority that a spendthrift and man of large affairs could well afford to as- sume among admiring inferiors. With his. household well provided for through his ‘to his. Mother of God! 165 nightly stealing from the store Manuel was now throwing away his twenty-dollar- monthly salary with reckless abandon ip costly luxuries. | He greeted the girl with a lofty wave of his hand. “ Buen’ dia’, Carla, thy work is early done to-day?” “ Si, senor, of a quiskness I have been,” she replied, noticing with appreciative glance that the buttons on his cotton blouse were of shining, beautiful shell, at medio peso the dozen, instead of the dull bone ones that the others wore, which cost only half a real. . “Stop at my house as you go by, and see the new mantilla I bought for Lola yesterday. Two pesos it cost.” “ Ay di mi!” cried the admiring girl. “ It is wonderful! What a husband you are!” The young man drew himself up proudly, then raised his hand deprecatingly. “It is nothing. We men must dress our wo- men bravely, no? Of what else use is money?” The downward swing of his hand was eloquent of the disdain in which he held two dollars, almost a week’s wage of a lusty field-hand. ““ Money to you is as the sands upon the seashore.” The girl raised respectful eyes “It is brains, not dull flesh to which the pesos fly,” said the young man, as he strode bombastically down the white road. When he had got quite beyond hearing the girl muttered: ‘‘ Santa Maria! If Pedro ever finds thee out, young bantam, thy wings well clipped will be.”’ Manuel stopped at the group of restipg cane-cutters eating their eleven o’clock meal of frijoles and tortillas, washed down with cold coffee. “You are coming to the dance at my house to-night?” he stated rather than in- quired. The big black nodded ‘eagerly. ““ We all come. Is it not true that you have hired for the night the witch machine from the capitol? They tell me,’’ he nodded to the women. by the riverbank, “ that a band of little fairies in it send out music that be- witches the feet to tango, no?”’ Manuel drew himself up imposingly. “ True it is,” he asserted. Then with a e (CONN GDoOo S (C(O) nn