Argosy All-Story Weekly — "The Purple Limited" — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

BAD BILL STARK. - A gate of hand-clapping swept the room. Bil} saw the tremendous pakns of Monk Grimes come together, and guessed that the first shout had come from him; he saw the face of Richard Hurley glowering with the blackness of an almost msane jealousy. For himself, Bill Stark cared nothing, but to him it was sacrilege that such a creature as she who stood beside him should be sub- jected to this and the snwitted jests that might follow. Janet McCullough, however, was not perturbed; her chin had titted upward a Kittle, and she glanced, still smiling, at lnm “4 a Injua wedding!” bellowed Monk Grimes. ‘Somebody get a broomstick!” Bill himself saw no harm in this ancient mock ceremony, and a swift look at, Janet told him that she was reconciled to the fact that they must make sport for Daddy Papineau’s tunk. But in Monk Grimes he sensed the possibility of trouble. Some- thing more powerful -than hard cider had quickly put a lurch and heave in hid gait, and the little following that always clus- ters about a leader had been with him when the hip-pockets were called upon. Yet it might go off all right, for everybody up te that moment was good natured. Sezale Howard and grinning Judd Dick- inson held the broomstick while Grimes . drew his face into what he thought, doubt- less, was a logk of mock solemnity for the pronouncement of the doggerel ending with “ever the broomstick you must go.” Stark, again with Janet’s hand in his, start- ‘ed to back away for the run preliminary to their leap over the broomstick. She lagged briefly, to gather up her skirt in the free hand, and it may have been that Monk thought she was unwilling. “ Get a move on you, Jan!” he roared. And be made the mistake of laying his hand upon her shoulder. Bad Bill had to overreach himself in order to land a blow as quickly as he want- ed to upon the face of the giant. He was too far away to strike effectively, and he chose the face from a desire to see the bleod of the man who had dared to touch her. So Grimes, instead of gomg down, crashed backward among the chairs along the wail, and Bill staggered almost into the arms of the man he had struck before he could recover himself. Monk bounded back from the wall and caught Stark with @ hiplock. Bill knew that thé now silent and wait- ing guests under Papineau’s roof expected to see him lifted and thrown the length of the room. He realized this, almost smil- ing to himself, as his body writhed slightly and one brown sleeve went around the back of Grimes’s neck and over his shoulder— the other wrist slid beneath an armpit and his hands clasped — simultaneously he curved his leg in front of Monk’s and plant- ed his foot on the outside. He had a vise- like arm-and-neck hold, and when he bore down with a sudden twist, Monk Grimes “turned over his hip as upon a pivot. The head of the bully of Ripley Road struck the floor first, bent to one side under the weight of following shoulders, and roiled limpty upon the boards as his whole body settled to a clumsy inertia. For a heart-gripping instant it looked as though Monk Grimes might be dead. The room held its breath and Bill stood waiting, with an eye upon the nearest window. Then Grimes stirred and hell broke loose. ~ The phalanx of Monk’s half-dozen im- mediate followers moved to take swift ven geance upon his conqueror—and they were between him and the door. Bad Bill stepped backward and lifted down from its bracket on the wall one of the oil lamps: that he hurled, flaming, at the foremost man, and saw him go down as it ricocheted from his head into the thick of the others. It halted them for the few preciops seconds that Stark needed—then he went bound- ing, catlike, toward the door, with a fist ' crashing into a face at each bound. He chose the door rather than a window near- er at hand, hecause with the latter there was always the possibility of a sprained ankle or a broken arm: Bill drove a straight right into the mid- dle of Sozzle Howard and passed out of the house of Papineau. He ran across road, vaulted a stone wall, and sat down in the shadow of some scrubby cedars. From there he saw them pour out of the building, heard the bedlam of their shouts -CORNICL NOOK CO