Argosy All-Story Weekly — "The Purple Limited" — page 30: what you’re looking at

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

596 Road, Monk Grimes, was towering over him—at least Monk had been the bully, and he still looked the part as he cursed earnestly in the first heat of his welcome. A big paw gripped one of Bill’s hands and : refused to let it go: it was not until Monk stopped to spit that the visitor got a chance to speak. “‘ I’m glad to. get home,” he said, warmed to a smile by this reception. ‘‘ There ain’t no place like it!” “ You said a mouthful!” Grimes looked him over with the eye of a man trained in appraising men. ‘“ You’re a lot huskier than you was, Bill!” “Yes.” Stark had his eye upon the dancing floor, which had just been cleared by the ending of the quadrille. He wanted to get @ girl for the next dance-—some kind of a girl. An old girl or a new girl—it didn’t matter about that if only she were — a real American girl frem Ripley Road. The voice of Monk Grimes was filing him with information about their old friends, but he took note, consciously, only of bits here and there: his eyes sought among the -heads brown and black and yel- low for some one whom he knew. Sud- denly Daddy Papineau drained his glass and drew a long, warning wail from his fiddle. Judd leaped, with the sprightli- ness of many drinks, to the.seat of a chair, and shouted above the roar of tongues. “Take yer pardners fer the Money -Musk!” A tall, slender young fellow, whose white collar and pressed clothes proclaimed him not of the road, spun a girl to the center of the kitchen. She pirouetted in a dainty flutter of white skirts and silken ankles— her dress was one that had never known the needle of the Valley Forks dressmaker. Bad Bill sensed this difference in her at- tire and then let it pass into the realm of: discarded thoughts: it was her uplifted face with which he had concern. | This was she—the woman. Not that she matched feature for.feature his dreams; he did not then, indeed, remark the color of her eyes and hair. But from the depths of him there was a pull, gentler than a ca- ress and stronger than the mountains, to- ward that girl who showed her ankles there ARGOSY-ALLSTORY: WEEKLY. at Papineau’s tunk. Thus it struck him, stabbing even as his heart leaped to answer the look in her face. . No other woman would* ever look like that to him. He had dreamed this reality when gray seas pounded the reeling decks —when he lay face downward in the death infested mud of France. There she was. ‘‘Gawd!” he said aloud. ‘“She’s a beauty!” . A laugh from Monk Grimes jarred him like a blow to the point of the chin. He snapped around, with the muscles about his eyes and mouth tightening. | “Well?” he questioned. Monk looked at him curiously, searchingly, and dropped a staggering hand down upon his shoulder. “Come have a drink,” he said: “‘ They’s some of the boys you use to know out- side.” ‘“‘T ain’t drinking,” answered Bill. On Ripley Road a man either drank or he didn’t drink. If he did drink there could be no passing up a round, and the jug must gurgle as long as it stayed at his lips. Bill Stark knew this, and he wanted all the best that was in him to win a word with that girl. : “Hell!” Grimes spat disgustedly out of a window. “It ain’t going to do you any good, for Papineau and Hurley’s both after her!” “What do you mean, Monk?” “Say! Didn’t I see your face when you was a looking at Janet McCullough?”’ “You mean the girl in the fluffy dress— dancing with the white-collared guy?” “ That’s Hurley—Richard Hurley. You know his pa—one of the county supervis- ors and deacon in the Valley Forks church!” ““ Sure,” answered Bil] quietly; but in- wardly he marveled. Had church mem- bers taken to going to tunks on Ripley Road? “Well, this here Dick Hurley is hang- ing onto his job, and he still goes to church, but his folks kicked him out three months ago on account of Jan!” It was as- though she belonged to Bad Bill—in his mind she did—and he ‘stepped in so that he could get the whole lifting power of his body under an uppercut. when CGOMIIGIOO SS CO