Argosy All-Story Weekly, January 21, 1922 — page 126: what you’re looking at

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

116 He went on. By the time he had kissed ten of them he was definitely settled in his mind that kisses would never be the same to him again. With the twentieth attended to, he was sure he would never be the same to kiss again. He tried to keep his lips away from the brown-blue mouths held up to him; he was convinced that it was the tickle of that in- fernal mustache which made the appeal. He brushed the twenty-third pair of lips quite daintily. He barely dodged a sneeze which must have blown him out to sea. He hurried over a score or so more. He was growing sick with the smell of coco-oil, with the look of the brown faces and the thick lips—with the taste of some of the kisses. He looked hopefully ahead, then hopelessly back. He seemed but to have made a fair start. Then he remembered the lady in the middle of the line. He quit hurrying. A woman as fat as that might die anyétime of heart disease. If he took long enough— but he knew she would live. Many of the faces were adorned with paint. The effect was not exactly enhanc- ing to the kisses. It was hard to decide be- tween a sky-blue upper lip or a yellow low- er one, or between a right cheek with a white circle on it nicely adorned by a black spiral line, and a red cheek set off with green checkers. But paint was not so soul- racking as some other things. The ladies who removed moist-ended cigar butts from their lips; the ones who were caught at just the wrong timing on the salivary operations connected with bee- tle-nut chewing; the ones who got an er- roneous idea of their part of the task and sputtered instead of smacking—and the fat one—he was coming to her. He couldn't keep on kissing down that line without coming to her. Perhaps it was well he had noticed her. The mere prospect of doing his duty in the salute line by her rendered him oblivious to .a lot of highly unkissable features preceding her. And she kept her- self in view. She was mightily interested in this new thing. The chief and his braves followed right along. They were obviously as tickled as the ladies. They fairly gurgled with joy ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. over the novelty. And they saw that the performance was properly attended to in each instance. There was no escaping any one. The fat lady— Dascomb was but three pairs of lips away from her. He lin- gered over the preliminaries, he wiped his mouth more slowly than heretofore. . He got out his handkerchief and mopped his mustache. But the third kiss from the fat lady was finished—and only two remained. And then—there was only one. Then— Dascomb straightened himself slowly— that last one before the supremely awful one was a short dame. He left her regret- fully, sorrowfully, almost tearfully. With downcast eyes he moved on. He reached the point diametrically in front of the vast but tight-fitting skirt. He raised his eyes. He must try to find the point of least resistance on that great expanse of fat face—the spot his mustache might touch with least revulsion to his sto- mach. He looked her face over. It was beaded with perspiration, in addition to the beads which were its eyes. He drew a long breath. And then the unexpected happened. Action gave mean- ing to that gaping void of face. The great lips parted in a vermilion-wet scream of ungodly terror. The great crea- ture threw herself backward upon the ground, and started to roll. She rolled around Dascomb. There was one woman in Mangue who, when it came to the point, did not want to be kissed! The six braves leaped at the human bar- rel. It bounced to its feet. Yelling and shrieking it headed for the beach. The swiftest of the young men managed to get in its way. Then he got out of its way. He seemed to feel as the German soldiers felt about the first tank the English sprang on them. She plunged into the water. Waist deep, she toppled to a horizontal position on the surface, and began to swim, She was headed for San Francisco when Descomb’s - attention was called from her to a boat some fifty yards along the beach. In the boat’s stern stood a tall, serious-minded Englishman. Nothing human but an En- glishman could have looked so serious- minded on that scene. DOOK C©