Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 141: what you’re looking at

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

A PORTRAIT OF “Let him rave,” says Tommy, who | Tommy always says it’s a case ef “ the sur- vival of the fittest,’”’ whatever that means. But it ain't, always happy days. Mere than once we gets vagged and does a stretch in some hoose-gow. Hooch is al- ways on the job and going streng in such cases. Say, you’d think the big jobl:e was a mouth-piece to hear him talk to the stiffs. He puils all kinds of chatter about haebus corpus, and writs, and proneunce- ments and a whole lot of unk I never hears about, and as often as not we gets a cash bail and beats it eut. Of course we always has money for such raps. But we sure gets eur bumps ene day in a town in Kansas. It was along in the after- noon when we unleads, not aiming te stop off at all. But we gets ditched en a hot- box and there’s nothing to de but hit the grit. As luck would have it there’s a bunch of hicks hanging around the station and we don’t see ’em till it’s toe late. ~ There’s four ef us, and about fifteen in the gang, all husky yeung fellews, We ' gtarts down the track the ether way, but it don’t de us no good. ‘’ Hey! You bums, ceme up here!” they sings out, and throws a shot from a gat — Into the side of a car ever sur heads. We keeps on going, not saying a word, and another shot comes along, a little bit closer. “ We'd better stop,” says Tommy, “ but I don't like the looks of things.” Hooch is for getting busy with our own gats, but Tommy says we'd only get.in bad, werse than ever. Another shot comes our way, and I notices another and a bigger bunch of yaps coming up to meet us. We stays where we are, and the two ‘gangs come up, hooting and yelling and fir- ing revolver shots in the air. In the lead is a big mutt and he strides up bold as brass. | “Don’t you know we don’t allow no tramps in this town?” he says, giving us the up and down. The gang gathers around pretty close. I tells him we didnt aim to stop off, and we didn’t know about the rule, and we wasn’t tramps. ‘What are you, then?” he says sar- casticlike: ‘‘ Eastern tourists aiming to in- vest in Kansas real estate?” HOPE. 515 shoots off his mouth too much at times. “We ain’t a going to hurt your little town, and nobody ‘d miss it if we took it with us! PD That was foolish stuff for Tommy to pull, and it made the gang mad. The ring-leader sputters around like a wet dog. ‘ Let’s give ’em the run!” yells one of the yaps, and the whole crowd yells © ‘Come on, boys! We'll give ’em the run!” I gets a kind of cold feeling, and I netices Tommy and Slim don’t look any too eheered up at the praspect. Hooch dan’t know what’s coming and is putting up a good front. He starts to say something, but Tommy’ gives him the eye and he stops. The leader ef the bunch notices him then, and bellies up te him. ‘“‘ You got some- thing te get eff your mind, too?” he asks him, sneering up in Heoch’s map. Hooch kind ef smiles, sticks eut his mit,, and grabs the gink by the arm. I don’t know just what he does,. but Mr.. Yap goes Straight up in the air and comes down on his nob. It was bum stunt number two, for the next minute Heech gets beaned with a club and goes down and eut. The rest of us tries to start something, but it’s three of us now against about fifty, and we’ re laid — eut in ne time. The next thing we know the four of us is lined up in front of what goes by the name ef the City Hall, and the gang was lined up in two rows, with every yap of them helding a club of seme kind. The big mutt comes up again, but he stays away from Hooch. “ Now,” he says, “you bums are going to get out of this town just as fast as you can, and we're going to help you on your way! One! Iwo! Three! Go!” We went, running the only way there was to run, and that was down the line be- tween the two rows of clubs, and every guy taking ag many licks at us as he can. [| won't go into details—you can size the thing up yourself, and you'll miss the cowardly cruelty of it at that. And these husky farmer boys are called “ the back- bone of the country!” Great doing fer COUMIUC AOOLK Colin