Argosy All-Story Weekly, March 15, 1924 — page 55: what you’re looking at

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

YOUNG ‘Good thing the country is dry, Jim- mie,” says I, suggestive. “TI wouldn’t take a drink if it was as wet as Niagara Falls,” he retorts. ‘“ That one night I told you about was enough for me. I’m no souse, whatever other kind of a chump I am.” Well, that was pretty good.. Vimpsie was ina mood as reckless as any I’d seen out- side ‘of the moods folks gets in moving pic- tures. I didn’t know where he was going to end. I was glad that the Hiquor matter didn’t appeal to him. I would have hated to see him go up against some of Ike’s stuff. When we had finished: eating and I was feeling drowsy and contented, he led the way out to the car again. It was the time when people go up and down Main Street for their evening stroll and folks. stopped and stared at Jimmie and me and at the. car when we got into it. Jimmie just spun ' the car around in the road and left them there, goggle eyed. As I had kind of ex- pected, he headed for the lake again. We parked the car in the same place. Of course me and Jimmie knowed the park up above the beach like we knowed everything about this here summer resort and I wasn’t surprised none when he headed for the dance pavilion. He had seen Sadie gay on the beach, and I knew he looked to find her gay on the dance floor. He wasn’t disappointed none. We crossed a field and came up alongside the pavilion. There was a row of glassless windows along the side nearest us, and we could see the dancers weaving in and out among themselves, trotting all the. latest trots. After I thought I had give them all the once-over, I heaved a little sigh of re- lief. Sadie wasn’t on the floor.. Jimmie begun to mutter to himself like a reg’lar villain in one of the old-time plays. I heard him say: “Some dark, secluded spot,” and I guessed what he was driving at. I give him a glance. He was standing Straight up alongside me, his arms folded on his ample chest. His cap was pulled down over his eyes and his forehead was real puckered in a frown. His lip was lifted at the right side in what you would have most likely called a sneer. “ Well—” he begins. and then he stopped. REBELS, | 683 - He just leaned forward, as goggle eyed as any of those folks we had whirled away from in town. I followed the direction his eyes was taking. Across the pavilion I seen Sadie coming through the door. Golly, she was pretty under the low- hung lamp above her head. I could see the sparkle in her eyes and the rose color in her smooth cheeks. She was dressed all in white and she had a bunch of red flowers at her waist. For just about four seconds de stood there making me think of a little queen, though I don’t know why, me not ever hav- ing associated none with royalty. Then she was surrounded by a bunch of young fellows. Looked for a minute like they was going to mob her. Then out of the press comes Sadie on the arm of one of them. I recognized him for young Billy Noyes. | We had lately got a big canning factory in our town down by the railroad tracks, and the father of..this Noyes boy was the president of the company. Noyes, Sr., didi.’t live in our town, but this Billy and his mother had taken a cottage down by the lake for the hot months. I had seen this Billy a number of times when he had come to town and he didn’t make no great. hit with me. He had fair hair and small blue eyes and a kind of hatchet face and he sported a mustache that looked like it was made out of duck’s down. He made me think of one of these here young lords or something that I read are waiting on table here and there over our fair land of.the free. I suppose he would have been surprised if he had knowed my opinion about him, for, to say the least, he was some fond of himself. Well, him and Sadie hitched up in this dance, and I must say that they put the other dancers in the shade. This here young lord mebbe didn’t know how to use his head, but he surely did know how to manage his feet. I. guess things was kind of upside down with him; all his brains was in what I’ve heard called the pedal extremities. Sadie was as light on her own feet as thistledown, and the way them two went over the floor made me think of au- tumn leaves running along the ground be- comicloookks (C@) —é