Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 7, 1922 — page 57: what you’re looking at

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

THE BIRD OF PASSAGE. until he began to roll his eyes and show some signs of life. In that crowd that watched there was complete silence, for no one knew just how Durkin would take a laugh. The situation was funny enough—a man could laugh twice a day the rest of his life and still not exhaust all the possibilities of that episode. Springtime assisted in the resuscitation of his principal. When Roller was clear-headed enough to see who it was that was directing the. first aid he struggled to a sitting position and groaned. ‘“ All my life I’ve been taking stuff from that guy that no man would take from anybody. All my life you’ve been slipping things over on me that would make an angel cry. Ain’t there going to be an end? I work, and you spend the coin, and I put in a month on a rock pile so that you can ride home in style, and then you get stewed. Oh, my Gawd!” “T’m heading west,” said Durkin in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘‘ Come along. There is a fast freight in a quarter of an hour.” “ So help me!” swore Roller, with a. ter- rible oath. “I wouldn’t go to a dog fight with you!” ‘“1’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to head west with me. You don’t suppose I have been hanging around here just. to give you a chance to thrash me, do you? Come, stir your stumps, old chap—it ’1l be cold weather in a few weeks, and we’ve got to get settled in California.” Roller sat in an abyss of bitterness, for something stronger than he was bound to Durkin, and he knew that he would fol- low in spite of shame and in spite of the laughter that would go after him all the rest of his life. There was a movement in the ring about him and he sprang to his feet and glared about—ready to pulverize the first man who laughed, but wherever he looked there was ministerial solemnity and nothing else. | Durkin walked to the entrance of the quarry and waited. Roller stooped to pick up his coat, and Springtime handed him his hat. Then, step by step, the vanquished man went toward the quarry entrance, where his fate, in the shape of Durkin, 203 waited for him. At the entrance Durkin whispered a question and that question ap- parently had to do with money, for Roller put his hand into the inner pocket of his coat. He drew it out again with a bull-like roar. ‘¢ Durk, I’ve been rolled! There was over five dollars in my coat and some dip got away with it while I was fighting!” The circle that faced him was as devoid of expression as the most inscrutable sphinx that ever propounded a riddle. Durkin put his arm through Roller’s and led him away. “‘T say, old chap,” he said. “It’s rather hard having to live with a bird-head aH my life!” For some time after the two had disap- peared, Springtime stood looking at the en- trance. Finally he drew a long breath and said: “ Can you beat that!” “You can’t,” opined the man next him; “no, sir, not with five aces.” Then Springtime sat down and laughed until he was weak. ‘There was something in the whole affair that tickled him right down to his boots. It was one of those sudden turns: of fortune, one of those glimpses into the hidden springs of human nature. For a half second he Mad seen fate’s mysterious engines at their work; such dramatic comedy he could never have seen anywhere but on the road which he loved as some men love the sea. After the departure of Roller and Durkin came a card game—a game broken by peri- ods of Homeric mirth in which one player or another would slap down his cards and burst into a roar as he recalled some es- pecially choice bit of the fight. The’ im- petus of Roller’s fiasco started just after the gust of merriment that Springtime was to remember all his life; it was warm, and the basin quivered with gilden light. So the day wore away—one of the best that Spring- time had ever spent, for it was this sort of thing that bound him to the wanderer’s life. Then some one asked: “ Which way you heading, Springtime?” At the question he grew cold from head to foot, for Johnny came into his mind, and he had a premonition of disaster. With- out answering he got to his feet and circled the quarry, looking into all the caverns and COMmiclboo SS C©