Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 59: what you’re looking at

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

SEE AMERICA FIRST. “Acts ’s if he was plannin’ to get drunk,” he thought. “ Just like [ve seen him fifty times before he’d bust for town and try to bankrupt the saloon business. I wonder now, does he know some boot- legger!”’ Several days later, days m which they had lingered at Honest John Burke’s, and the snub-nosed car had lingered, untouched in Honest John’s garage, Newell amended his opinion. He was sitting under a tree, smoking a vile old pipe and watching two figures, a man and a girl, some distance away on the beach. As he watched them, Wally shook his head sadly. “ Poor old Bruce. Poor old bunkie! That girl’s got his goat: It’s like the poet says, ‘ the fe- males of the species is more deadly than wood alcohol.’ ” , IIT. _ Tue Seattle boat was landing at Skoo- kum Inlet, and Wally Newell was at the dock to watch the process. Two days be- fore Bruce Ray had left for the city on a mysterious errand. At the same time Sid Wilcox, the lady-like dancing teacher, had taken his departure. Wally was worried about Bruce Ray. They had spent more than a week at Honest John Burke’s, and Bruce altogether ignored their plans to travel and enjoy their newly gained riches. It was becom- ing painfully evident that Bruce had no desire to travel out of sight of Fancy Burke. . He refused even to learn to drive the Tin Lizzie, and without, his companion- ship Wally would not take the bargain machine from Honest John’s garage. Alto- gether it had been a rather trying time for the patient Wally Newell. Wally was a loyal friend. The last thing he would think of would be deserting Bruce. But it was hard to fret in idleness about a hotel where there were six middle- aged ladies always waiting to trap him into . polite conversations and no: male compan- ionship save Bruce, whom he seldom saw, and Honest John, whom he secretly dis- liked heartily. - He thought with a great wistfulness of the alluring motor vacation that had been put aside in order that Bruce Ray could 4A 433 spend his days playing humble slave to a little yellow-haired, empty-headed girl who, Wally was sure, secretly laughed at his friend. When finally Bruce left for the city, re- fusing to tell why, Wally hoped that it was to patronize the bootleggers. “ Better he got drunk a hundred times, than go on like this,” he told himself. “A headache and an empty poke’s the worst he’d get out of hard likker—and maybe spend a night or two in the hoosegow. Hell, that ain’t nothin’ to what a woman Il do to a‘man!”’ But now he saw that Bruce had not been patronizing the bootleggers. His black eyes bulged as he noted haere was | left of his old buddy. “Shades of John Serpe * he gasped. “It ain’t—it can’t be! Oh, my gosh, is that him?’’. This painful. sight, this awful spectacle, this horrific catastrophe in gent’s clothing that tottered toward him up the long, sun- bitten dock wearing a weak, self-conscious, deprecating grin — this crippled, imbecilie thing was Bruce Ray, one of the best two- fisted barroom fighters and boomtenders in the wide salt reaches of Puget Sound. Wally did not know whether to laugh or cry; heywanted to do both. The secret of Bruce’s sudden desire to go to the city was a secret no more. Stone walls n6ér iron bars could not have made a cage to hold it. It cried its shame to the four winds like the calliope at the the tail end of the circus parade. Bruce Ray ‘had become »& lounge lizard, a cabaret hound, a wrist-watch whiffet, a blaah, blaah! of Whatcom and Snohomish Counties, and the best boomtender in the Pacific North- west had been spoiled to make positively the worst imitation of a summer-resort nothing-at-all that even the worst summer resort on Puget Sound ever had seen. Ray was almost four inches better than six feet, and built in good proportion to that height. His hair was a tow hue with tow-hued evebrows and an ornate tow mus- tache that drooped flaxen plumes from his lip. His complexion was a vivid mahogany and his eyes blue. He now betrayed his wa fl COMME OOOLK The champion log spinner (CO