Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 6, 1923 — page 36: what you’re looking at

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

818 short stopped to listen in rapt attention to this voice from civilization. A great man, a historical personage, was speaking quite confidentially, it seemed, to a group of cowdogs and muckers in a desert town! One of these muckers, however, a hermit from the Granite Wash Mountains, did not join in with the reverential spirit of the others. When the speech rasped to a close, and Hallie slid another record onto the disk, the old mucker spat and said: “T ain’t believin’ everythin’ that’s told me in this here bar.” The crowd turned its gaze upon the speaker of this extremely irreverent re#fark. The red-haired young man in the highly colored clothes burst into a loud, prolonged laugh. Phil Wyndham saw his open mouth and the gold fillings of his teeth. He hated him suddenly for no reason he could ex- actly designate. ‘And I’m wagerin’ here and now,” the skeptical mucker went on, “ that that ain’t the voice of no President.” ‘What ’ll you wager?” was Hallie’s very natural but good natured retort. “Tf I do make a wager how can you prove it?” He looked around at the guffaw- ing circle of guests. “Is there any man here who knows the President’s voice?” he demanded bitingly. This quieted them for a moment, and it appeared that the old mucker was to win his extraordinary argument until the well dressed red-haired one struck upon a happy answer: “It’s written here on the record, Jo! Read it for yourself!” Inasmuch as he knew the mucker couldn’t read, he con- sidered that the argument was won. But the old man was still resourceful. “T’ll grant it’s printed on this here pan. Maybe so. But you can’t prove it by no- body.” “Look here, Jo,’ Hallie remonstrated, “this pan as you call it has the actual voice of the President recorded here—just as vou write a letter on paper. It’s the President’s voice speaking to us—it’s hard to believe, I know. It’s so wonderful.” The mucker’s face lighted up. He was obviously determined, in case the girl and her friend from the city were making fun of him, to call her bluff. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. ‘Tf that’s the President in Washington givin’ that thar speech,” he said craftily, “Td like for you to put on another pan with another speech.” ‘* What ’ll you have, Jo?” Hallie asked. ‘“Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech! Put that on and I'll believe you!” ; The scornful shouting and yipping of the crowd was cut short by a sudden change of expression on the girl’s face. Instead of joining in with the general laughter, she was staring with an almost frightened look at an insignificant cowman who had entered unobtrusively upon the scene, They observed the serious, firm mouth, and the brown eyes peering under the rim of the big sombrero. The obvious fact that, somewhere in Hallie’s past, this man played an important part, displeased them. The red-haired youth sat up straight and twisted his cigar about in his mouth, puffing warmly. Sam Quiggley, the harness maker, recog- nized Phil Wyndham as the foreman of one of the outfits of the cattle range to the south. But it was Wyndham himself who broke the sudden, tense silence. For the moment every one in the room had the pe- culiar feeling—an intuition common to all guests past and present at the Golden Cloud bar—that this stranger was about to make trouble. Having created this general impression Wyndham, his features almost threatening with the seriousness of his mission, said calmly: ‘“T’d like to talk to you, Hallie—alone.”’ Hallie could not tell by the note in Phil’s voice whether his tidings were bad or not. Optimistic as she always was she refused to succumb to the first natural fear—that something had happened to her mother. She paled slightly—a circumstance which the men about her misconstrued. It was Mr, Frederick Hayden, the gentle- man in the colorful suit, who took matters into his own hands, realizing of course that the crowd was backing him. ‘“‘T am the owner of this establishment,” he said, ‘ that is, I am a partner with Miss Hallie Crockett—Miss Crockett, whom we have nicknamed ‘ Sun-up’s Sweetheart.’ We all obiect to any man horsing in here from COMicloOoe ©