Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 6, 1923 — page 163: what you’re looking at

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

we were on the wrong trail. CHEDDAR CHEESE, ing with the sidewalk jam, “if you'll be - good enough to let us through—there are _ two of us needing a hot bath and breakfast “worse than a stray pup ever needed a bone. 2 A couple of hours later, at a table for “three in the Intermountain dining room, _ Barrett, bathed, shaved, clothed, and in his right mind, was sitting opposite a bright faced young woman whose dark eyes were dancing. Between them, at the table end, sat the grizzled elderly man with the un- derslung jaw, methodically putting away == his breakfast as he listened to his daugh- ter’s story of the adventures of the night. --“ What did you think when you came hack and found that I was married, Dad- dykins?” the young woman asked. after the ~ adventures had been duly spread forth. “Auh’ growled the mine owner father, — == you didn’t fool me for a single minute. — Hogan met me at the train and told me you'd married a stranger from Tennessee; and I told him he lied. You see, I knew it was Jimmie you’d married, and not os ~__bedy else under the shining heavens.” “Of course you did. But did you really believe that Jimmie had stolen two hundred — _ thousand dollars from his own bank?” : ~The elderly man looked up from beneath his shaggy eyebrows at the two younglings, first at one and then at the other. Ji] Jeave it to you both!” he exclaimed, “ $f it didn’t look that way. How was any- body going to believe anything else?”’ “You were entirely justified,” said Bar- _rett equably. “It was up to me to prove that I didn’t. been able to do it if Della hadn’t jumped - in and helped. It was her good work and wit that kept me going. At the very last, when we were chasing those fellows out of tewn, I wanted to turn back. Tf thought But Della _ wouldn’t have it.that way; and her hunch was better than my logic.” ____“Humph!” erunted the methodical z breakfast eater. “What gets me is what came afterward. If anybody’d asked me a = week ago if my soon-to-be son-in-law would = = — 20: out in the woods and pick him three pro- sos fessional thugs and gunfighters, 2 ; ee But I should never have — single- _ $0 and bring ’em in all mussed up and hogtied in their own equipment—” Barrett laughed. in-law might not have been equal to it; I doubt very much if he would. But, you see, a Married man has certain responsibili- ties that can’t be shirked. After my wife ‘had led me right up to the jumping-off place, what else was there for me to do? ; 945 = “Your soon-to-be son- Just think; if I had crawfished then what a — — life Della. might have led me all the way. down through the years!” A grim smile flitted across the granite = = face of the elderly man, “The way she tells it, it looks ike She a tried her prettiest to ‘make you crawfish— and you wouldn’t. You didn’t need to make You had the money and could — the fight. have got away with it.” “Oh, well,” said Barrett, half embar- rassed ; “those fellows had it framed up to send me to the pen and I thought it was only fair to give them the same chance they were trying to give me.” **t don’t suppose Jimmie ever will admit that he didn’t do it just for fun,” the young — wife broke i in, sd-blooded—” | “ But if you ever aay. again = that he isn’t rec — ~The erizzled fighter of many rude i = of the mining camps egrunted his disclaimer. — = “T shan’t,” he agreed. get myself all tore up and gouged and bit at my time o’ life. But, say, Della, baby; *“T ain’t aimin’ to it sure does do me a heap 0’ good to know = that you’ve got you a he-man afterall, when > them plug-ugly miners up at the ‘Tittle Della’ ever get on the rampage again and go to shootin” up the camp I’m going to tele- graph for Jimmie to come and put ’em all to bed—I sure am!” it did look so cussedly unlikely a while— = back. And you can bet on one thing: if “Well,” said Barrett calmly, “I don’t __ know but I might try it. Nothing like keep- = ing your hand in, once you’ve got it in, you know.” ‘Whereat the young wife laughed and clapped her hands. - “He’s called your bluff, daddy!” she crowed. “ But please don’t wire him until — after he has had a HiGe tare eae with — = = a six-gun.” = A 5 came i in with a telegram. >