Argosy All-Story Weekly, 4 February 1922 — page 62: what you’re looking at

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

Ze ~~ a = holden to a Haskell!’ What can you do with a woman like that? - When Bill didn’t make any move to beat t but got off his horse instead, like he in- - tended to stay a while, Rose raised her ~ gun and promised him a pound of free lead. That didn’t bother Bill, ’cause he kept his _ grin and walked right up to Rose. I sure __ thought he’d be on his way to meet old _ Steve in a minute, but when she had the rifle leveled at him he sidestepped like one of these dancers, and bent over and kissed yes, sir, kissed—Old Rose right on the cheek. Then he laughed and jumped on his horse, and rode back to me. I don’t know which was more surprised, Rose or me, but you could’ve knocked us = Ben. cold with a love tap We both knew that ___-was no way to run a feud. And little Molly was laughin’ just like Bill, as though it was the funniest thing she had ever seen. Rose _— shooed her into the house and then went ~~ in herself. She couldn’t figure Bill out at all, and neither could I. Z a za s We drove the yearlings into the ain at that end of the ranch and made camp for the night. Then Bill left me there and rode back to the home place. I didn’t know what for, but I suspected he was go- ing to replace the three barrels of water I out. You That’s had punctured with three of our own. see, I was gettin’ a line on Bill. just what he did, too. He brought back three new barrels with- out disturbin’ my slumbers and deposited : Zs them right in Rose’s front yard. He didn’t even wake her up, but I guess Molly must have been restless, the way things turned Bill came on back to me and was = gettin’ ready to turn into his blankets him- self when we were both startled by a rifle _ ghot coming from the direction of Rose’s house. But she wasn’t shootin’ at us, al- though she thought she was. As it happened Molly had been worryin’ ; Ze her pretty little yellow head about Bill’s iy ’ i Si “ ar alk V4 hy ; threats. She had a dream of dyin’ of thirst, and so she got up to see what she could do about the water situation. She went out the back door of the house, so she wouldn’t wake Rose, and out to the barn. Knowin’ their water barrels were all punctured by YT y lead she got three Scere cans, » Put Sa, ae 2 =" ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. = = 6 ’em in a little two-wheeled cart Rose had, and harnessed up the old mare. Going out that way she missed the barrels Bill had left there in the front of the house. As Molly was drivin’ away, to get some water during the night, before they all died of thirst, Rose woke up, grabbed her rifle and ran out in her red flannel nightie. She couldn’t see anything but a dim figure beat- ing it pronto, and she let fire, hopin’ she’d get a Haskell. Naturally she didn’t know Molly was up. Well, she hit Molly, in that round white shoulder of hers, and she start- led the old mare so that she lit out down the road like a regular race-horse. And then little Molly lost her balance, fell back- ward out of the seat, and was dragged along behind. Me and Bill couldn’t see this, of course, and we didn’t know just what to make of it. We didn’t do anything for a while, and I was all for goin’ back to sleep. But Bill had a hunch that something was wrong with Molly, and he jumped on his pony and beat it off after her. By this time the old white mare of Rose’s was pretty far in the lead, and Bill didn’t catch her for a long way. And when he did he found Molly in need of medical help. The only thing for him to do was just what he did. He took her on to the home place, where there’s a telephone, and called the doctor. I can’t vouch for all that happened as he carried her in his arms, careful not to jar her at all, and later bathed her wound and soothed her moans until the doctor came. I can’t vouch for this at all, because I only know about what followed. But from the look on Bill’s face the next time I saw him whatever happened between ’em must have been pretty interestin’. I went back to sleep again, after Bill rode off that way, naturally. The next thing I knew was being waked up—it seemed like only a few minutes afterward— by Old Rose kicking me. She .had found that Molly wasn’t at home and she sus- pected Bill of abductin’ the girl. Can you beat that? She wanted to know where he was. How did I know. We passed a few compliments back and forth, gettin’ no- where, but havin’ a lot of pleasure, and _then Rose decided to go to the home place books ===€O