Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 143: what you’re looking at

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

A PORTRAIT OF HOPE. at the picture; and she brings it out to him. It’s a photograph of a swell-looking lady, and across ttom is written: “ A Picture of Hope!’’ Hooch asks the girl where she got it, and she says her sister found it on the railroad track a few days before, it probably being lost by. somebody out of a car window. She says Hooch can have it if he wants to, and it’s a wonder to see the way his face lights up when she tells him it’s his. He puts it in his pocket careful as can be, and we see there’s tears in his eyes that don’t come from the beat- ‘ing he got. The girls come back with some more eats, all wrapped up, and some nice clean rags and a bottle of liniment. The oldest one, who’s been doing all the talking says we'll be sore and stiff in the morning, and the liniment stuff will come in handy,.and it sure do¢s> We starts to leave, and Tommy makes a little speech. “I ain’t much on talking to ladies like you,” he says, but I’ve got it to say that we’re sure grateful. I had it all fixed up to make a bonfire of this burg to- night,” he says, “‘ but it won’t be done. There won’t be no medals hung on you for what you did for a bunch of bums,” he says, ‘“‘ but every one of us will remember it to the. last day, and be all the better for it. We'd like it a whole lot if you’d shake ‘hands with us, and wish us luck like we wishes it to you.” They does that little thing; shakes hands al] around and wishes us well, and we beats it out, feeling more like men again. The last we sees of them is the little girl waving her hand at us as we drills down the road. _ We makes a camp out in the sticks a few miles frém the burg, and sure puts im a fierce time for a few days, getting the kinks out of our systems. We was as sore as if we'd rolled down every step of the Wash- ington monument, but all of us comes out pretty good except Hooch. He gets well and strong, but he don’t seem just right; there’s something on his mind. None ot us asks him anything about the picture, for it’s none of our funeral, and I guess every man has something hid away in his kick as @ soovenir of other days. Finally we gets started again, but the pep is kind of knocked out of us for a while and we takes it easy, hitting it out for Denver and stopping over in Cheyerme where we cleans up pretty good at faro and roulette and craps by not doing any play- ing ourselves but by sticking up the joint. There’s more chance of doing good for yourself that way; the bones and the little ball have an uncertain way of rolling, but a couple of gats will usually bring home the bacon. Denver's lights burned pretty bright for us for several weeks, and for a wonder, I does good at poker, so good we thinks we'll organize to sell a gold mine. All that it takes is a sucker-list and a nice bunch of green-and-gold shares of stock. Nobody ever bothers about having a mine, and be- sides, if you did have a mine, you wouldn’t be foolish enough to sell it. keeps us from? being financiers is Hooch _ getting sick and having to go to the hos- pital. You remember I tell you about him get- ting the dome looked over in K C? Well, he lives pretty high in Denver: booze and | general rough-stuff, and one day he goes down-and-out. None of us is with him at the time, but some jobbie sees him being took to the city hospital, and tells Tommy about it. _ As I says, we’re all well fixed, so we takes him out of the city dump and puts him where he’ll have more attention, and one of us 1s on the jeb as oftenas they'll let us, and as he always seemed to take to me, I hangs round pretty much of the time. He was pretty bad for a while; uncon- Scious most of the time, but as soon as he gets back to his senses, he recognizes me, and tells me to bring his clothes so he can get the girl’s picture. His duds had been taken care of all right, so I finds the photo in his pocket, and brings it to him. He Jooks at it a long time, and then he tells me about it. It seems that he had lived in a town somewheres near Chicago, and was a regu- lar fellow. He had done a stretch in a law school and they turned him out all fixed up as a mouth-piece, with pretty red ribbons and a gold seal on the documents. He lived with an aunt, his folks being dead a 517° I guess all that — : COUMIUC DOO UN S Colin