Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 34: what you’re looking at

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

408 that he had paid thus far, four thousand dollars. He would pay the thousand. He would seek work elsewhere, save up another thou- sand. Then he would own a good location of his own. Forever then would he be free and independent of the Hendricks Cannery Company. But the thought promgnt him no. com- fort. Entering a door at the end of the can- nery building, an apartment that had been both office and sleeping-room, Tumtum snatched. down his good suit from a nail, thrust it with a miscellany of socks, shirts, collars, into a canvas ditty-bag. He wouldn’t change his clothes. What was the use? He was a fisherman. Why masquerade in gentleman’s garb when he wasn’t a gentleman? No, he’d wear the stag flannel shirt, and the scale-plated tar- paulin pants. As Tumtum emerged from the door, Wil- lie Katimura, a smart, Americanized Jap, who had been boss of the sliming crew, which means the hands who hack off the tails and fin ends from fish missed by the Iron Chink, the half-human machine that cleans the fish, was coming down the dock, a vision of sartorial splendor in yellow, but- toned shoes, tight trousers, and a pinch- back coat. Behind Willie teetered a Japanese girl dressed in a gayly flowered obi. She looked as if she might just have stepped from a Japanese screen from among storks, lily- pads, sprays of cherry-blossoms that seem always to grow and thrive at the base of the mountain of Fujiyama. This was Sei Densu, picture bride. Wil- lie Katimtra had paid seven hundred and fifty dollars cash money for her. She had landed at Kachikan from Japan a few days before, had arrived that morning at Kus- kokwim on the liner that now was to take them all to Seattle. Sei, a gold bodkin thrust through her enamel, black hair, lips scarlet as fresh blood, shuffled by Tumtum, her eyes star- ing straight ahead of her. In one tiny hand she clasped a small, lacquered box, the only treasured keepsake that she had brought from Nippon. On the cover of the box was ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. printed in Japanese characters, one of the cold, comfortless verses so favored among the stoic believers in Buddha: Momiji-ha wo kase nt makasete, Miru vori mo, Hakanaki mono wa Inochi nari keri. “ More fleeting than the glint of withered — leaf wind blown, the thing called life.” Sei plodded on, in one hand the lacquered box, in the other her precious “ chock- chee.” Her chock-chee was her passport to America. Literally it was her bill of sale, for seven hundred and fifty dollars. Tumtum felt sorry, mighty sorry -for Sei Densu. He just couldn’t help putting Lil- lian Hendricks in Sei’s place, imagining Lil- lian sold to somebody, anybody in Japan for seven hundred and fifty dollars. Clasping the chock-chee, that was. legal tender for seven hundred and fifty dollars anywhere on the coast where there were Chinese and Japs, and the little, lacquered box, Sei climbed the gangplank after Willie Katimura. Chu Fan, boss of the Chinese contingent, was chattering away volubly as he herded the coolies to the foredeck, thence to the fo’c’s’l’, telling them off in tens as he slid the colored beads upon the wires of a counting-rack. Then Chu Fan labored up the plank. Last to leave the dock was Tumtum Teller. At the shrill pipe of the bosun’s whistle, _ the deckers cast off the head-line, stern- line, spring-line. Black smoke began to roll from the liner’s funnels. The craft’s asthmatic wheeze became a throbbing roar. The ship was off for Seattle. Tumtum Teller turned for a last look at the cannery he expected never to see again. This cannery, with its long lines of machinery, its shrilling polyglot of help, he had coaxed, teased, threatened and man- handled until it had turned out its ultimate capacity of cases of talls and flats of spring -. and silver salmon. Lillian Hendricks, own- er, had had no word of praise for his faith- fulness, but only scorn for his rude ways and uncouth presence. Tumtum smiled wanly at the thought that came to him. If, by any chance, the ghost of old Heavo Hendricks were hover- GOMLGDOO SS (CO