The Argosy, Vol. 90 No. 1 — page 121: what you’re looking at

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

Also You hit men where they’re proud an’ they’re RIDE goeth before the fall. spring, summer ’n’ winter. always resentful. Which was why Len Has- well got in wrong in Cactus City the minute he stepped into the Au Claire de la Loon. It was the way the iron-faced mutt looked around him as he came in. "I'wasn’t a lingerin’ look. You’d know he wouldn’t linger much. Get a thing done an’ go on to the next; that ’d be him. No, it was a flashin’ look that took us all,in, and the place, at a sweep. And it sort of implied the natural sequence of a clean-sweep; the dust-pan. *T wasn’t a sassy look. 7“Iwasn’t even superior. It was just sort o’ cold and dis- approvin’, as if Cactus City an’ its leadin’ hostlery didn’t look good to him. Cactus Cityites is proud of the town an’ of the West, because they has to live in both of ’em. So, as this palpable tender- foot marches up to the desk to scribble his cognomen, whatever it may be, the boys, who is used to havin’ Easterners enter our precincts humble an’ meachin’ like they had ought to, looks at each other plumb flab- bergasted. Uncle Billy Westlake, who is clerk and handy-man and general swab, is behind the desk in the absence of Jeff Prevost, the proprietor. To uncle, blinkin’ like an old gray dog what’s in the sunshine, the stran- ger delivers crisp and salient a request that sounds like an order. - had to bribe him not to do it. Paul Steele “Give me a good room.” When he’d gone trompin’ up the pine stairs, with Uncle Billy toddlin’ behind him with his grips, Sagebrush Jake Carroll turns to us and sums up the indictment. ~“* Who the hell does he think he is? wants a good room!” Jake glowers something apitetil and sucks his whiskers, like he always does when something tatters his temperament. Some man, Jake! He’s an intermittent. miner. He’s extra long and wide, and he’s often extra dry, which accounts for the in- termittency. And strength! He’s bumped all over with ‘muscles, like they was tumors. One night when lit up like a prairie fire, he wanted to push over the hotel, and the landlord Also, his shaggy head is a cave, in which the bats of malice an’ unkindness is now flappin’. Excuse me for prattlin’ about myself, but if I do say it as should, I’m the only three-, ply, double-dyed California peanut of a philosopher in Cactus City.. What life ain’t done to me she ain’t thunk of. So I am by way of seein’ all four legs of a bucking mustang to once. Lariat Pete Hiscock— that’s me— wad ought to been a judge. Stead of which I’m usually the defendant. Now I raise my voice in mild and rea- sonable reproof of that hasty puddinghead of a Sagebrush Jake Carroll. “Leave the imported guest who has horned into our midst want a good room, He 115 comicbooks CO