The Argosy, Vol. 90 No. 1 — page 125: what you’re looking at

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

THE WILD EAST. there is yet time, before the tendrils of your girlish affection gets naturally wound around the critter. “Oh, I know you ain’t seen him but once, but you’re allowin’ on seein’ him re- peatedly, an’ I’d Kate ito see you do it, for I know the signs of Cupid’s zodiac. Id hate for you to go farther in this here mat- ter, for a variety of reasons.” ‘What are they?” She asked it soft, without lookin’ at me. Encouraged, I kept on. “TI don’t think he’s just right in his bean, Gussie. He don’t seem to respond to the spur of events hereabout, howsom- ever lively they may be. MHere’s a good man’s size pistol-fight in the mam street, and it makes him drowsy, like it was a cradle song. He’s snoozin’ now, in the daytime! “Then, too, I’m worried about what ‘Hl Sagebrush Jake Carroll say when he knows this import is payin’ his addresses to you. Jake hates him a whole lot now; just natu- rally took a dislike to his gen’ral style. An’ I’d dislike to see you gettin’ yer’ pretty eyes red weepin’ *around on this Haswell person’s grave.” She looked up. Her cheeks is pink as if I’d slapped ’em, and her eyes snaps like they was generatin’ electricity. Her tone is the one her funny sex adopts when it wants to wind up a subject—and winds it so hard the mainspring naturally busts and the action stops right there. ‘“‘ About his drowsin’ at a pistol fight, I don’t know,” she comes back at me. “I suspect he had his reasons. He ain’t a man to spin on one ear about anything much, I take it. About Sagebrush, I guess this Mr. Haswell can take care of himself. About my future tears, leave him get a chance to ask me to marry him, will you? “ He was tryin’ to hint around about it last night, but I switched him. A lady had ought to be courted at least two or three days before the proposin’ starts. When I do let him get it off his chest, I expect he’ll tell me all about who I might prarry, if I felt like it,whether Sagebrush liked it or not. : “ And about ‘the grave Sagebrush might put him in, I’m thinkin’ it will be like the 119 apple core. There won’t be any; not if I read this Eastern party right. I’m obliged to you for wantin’ to help, Uncle Pete. An’ I love you just the same!” What are you goin’ to do in a case like that? I went away with a curious new line on our immigratin’ friend. Him, in his quiet way, hintin’ about their gettin’ married already! He wa’n’t so slow, if he was from the East! You know, it never occurred to me that he might be a fellow who’d hand the little girl a raw deal. Sagebrush might fulmi- nate about him like a fireplace, but the fel- low looked straight as a string tome. And I can judge human nature as well as I can But that night somethin’ occurred that shook my faith in him as far as one requi- site an’ necessary trait o’ manhood was concerned. A number of others felt the same way. An’ most serious of all for Haswell’s chances, Gussie was included. The cause of it arrived in Cactus City in the p.M., afternoon. He was Sagebrush Jake Carroll. He hadn’t gone back to work after all. He had touched some easy mark at the mines for the loan of a modest flock of yellow boys, and he’d come back to the center of the neighborin’ unrest for to resume his interrupted spree. Now Jake had a capacity for ferments like a Standard Oil tank, and what would have had a ordinary performer sleepin’ under a canopy of a table-top, merely irri- tated him. Along with a wilful little group of his own, he began to perform. Mainly im the barroom of the Au Claire. And Landlord Jeff Prevost, noticin’ the levels in the kegs an’ demijohns lowerin’ like a dam had busted, begins to make out a new order on the wholesalers at Piping Frog, on the main line. In the shank of the afternoon some he- gossip, who had eught to ringlet his hair with one o’ them hot irons an’ put on a bombazine dress an’ go set in at a sewin’ circle, whispered tto Sagebrush how the stranger was conversin’ with Gussie Lind- ley at Mangan’s the night before, an’ how they’a been seen later walkin’ together under the jubilant stars. A howl like a gray wolf’s at once parted oO Comicbooe S CO