Adventure, July 1, 1928 — page 107: what you’re looking at

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

ESPECIALLY DANCE HALL WOMEN come. The realization went through her consciousness in widening rings. What- ever else it meant, it meant the end of this; the beginning of uncertainty. He caught her in his arms and swept her into the cabin and danced her about until the place shook. “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say you’d ride in your own auto yet? It had to come, old lady, it jest nacherally had to come!” He gave her a hug and turned her loose. “T knowed it,” he said solemnly. “I’ve allus knowed it. Away down deep in there—” he tapped his breast—‘“‘I’ve had a hunch.” He flung himself into a chair and looked at her hard. ‘“‘Ain’t you glad?” he said suddenly. She was like a boat that has luffed into the wind. For a moment her mental! sails hung flapping. Then they filled and strained and she set out before this new cold breeze. She told him as best she could that she was glad. “To look at you a feller might think you was kinder sorry like,” he said quiz- zically. ‘“What’s the matter?” “T was thinkin’ a little about how happy we'd been right here—just you and me and the house you made yourself.” ‘“°’Twarn’t a patch on what it’s gonna be,” he said, and jumped up and was off with his samples to the assayer’s in Gray Dome. He stepped strongly, as a young man does. Half the stoop was gone from his shoulders. Rosie turned back slowly and sat down heavily at the kitchen table, her occupa- tion gone. Jim didn’t need a grubstaker now. She sat there a long time, while memories of other miners who had got rich swarmed in her brain like little devils that fell over each other in their eagerness to stab her: Senator Sherrill, and Tom Potts, the hotel man, and Hooker Bates, who took his flier in Wall Street; and Mike Watson, who divorced his wife for Dora Schoonmaker, and a dozen others. They made their money and then were gathered in by women like the Schoon- 101 ‘makers. She had seen so many of them. They always left the women they had picked up when they were poor. Espe- cially dance hall women. Even when they were their wives. And she and Jim had never been mairied. ter. Little in her life had gone by default. When the terms of the sale of the mine had been arranged and everybody in Conifer County knew that Jim was going to be a rich man, she capped his plans with hers and squared about to meet what was coming. She went over her clothes and spruced up as much as she could to match her new station. And very carefully she laid down a program of buying to be carried out as soon as the money came in. Among her things she found a picture that she had clipped from a fashion mag- azine twelve years ago—a colored picture of an electric-blue plush dress of a style that she had admired. She felt a twinge of sadness as she wondered how many other things that she had wanted and gone without would look as queer as that now. The dress she had worn when Jim took her out of the dance hall—the red dress with the spangles on it—looked queerer, but that night while Jim was in the vil- Be ROSIE BRIGGS wasn’t a quit- - Jage on an errand after supper she put it on and sat waiting for him by the fire, de- termined to play such cards as she had. When he came in he stopped at the door of the little sitting room with a whistle of surprize. “T ain’t seen that for ten years. Didn’t know you had it.” “Tt isn’t much—” she said, smoothing the skirt. She had lengthened and renovated it as best she could. It was the only piece of finery she owned. “It’s all right. Lord, how purty I uster think it was!” The windows were open to the night. The weather had turned suddenly warm comnlicloooks.com