Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

THE WHISPERER. Patricia knew that they could never be _ friends again. The point of all this is that Patricia did not, certainly, miss Steve as a husband, but she regretted him mightily as a friend. She went abroad among the world of men, thereafter, and tried to make other friends to take the place of Steve, but she discov- ered that after friendship had progressed to a certain point the finest of men began to grow silent and thoughtful and a certain hungry look came in their eyes. The bitter truth came home to Patricia that she was too beautiful to have a single friend; many a time she bowed her head before her mirror and wept because her eyes were of a certain blackness and her hair of a-cer- tain dark and silken Jength. This sounds like fiction, but to Patricia it was a grim and heart-breaking truth. Now, an average woman of this tempera- ment, at a certain point in her life, would have taken up woman suffrage or prohibi- tion—or Greek. Patricia, however, was not average. She refused to believe that all men are weak-kneed sentimentalists; she looked abroad, like Alexander, to a new world, and new battles. It followed, quite naturally, that Patricia should go West. For she had heard sundry tales of a breed of men who inhabit the mountain-desert, men stronger than ad- versity and hard of hand and of heart, men too bitterly trained in the battle of existence to pay any heed to the silken side of life. She hoped to find among them at least some few who. would look first for a human being, and afterward for @ Sex. This would have been enough to send ‘Patricia to the mountain-desert. There was another reason sufficiently unfeminine to in- terest her. One year before, a second cousin who bore her family name, Mortimer Laur- iston, had been shot in the town of Eagles in the mountain-desert by a man named Vincent St. Gore. St. Gore had been tried, but the jury had always disagreed. Patricia Lauriston decided that it would be her work to tear the blindfold from the eyes of jus- tice and bring an overdue fate upon this Vincent St. Gore. She could live not ex- actly in the town of Eagles, but at the 441 = ranch formerly owned by Mortimer Lauris- ton, and now operated by another cousin, Joseph Gregory. ~ Having made up her mind, Patricia packed her trunk, kissed her mother good-by, and from the train sent back post-cards of farewell to her more intimate friends. Which brings us to Eagles, a white-hot ° day in May, the hills spotted with mesquite, and below the hills the illimitable plains, the stopping of the stage with its six drip- ping horses, and the entrance of Patricia into the mountain-desert. , She was not disappointed. She liked everything ‘she saw—the fierce heat of the day—the unshaven men—the buckboard of Joseph Gregory waiting to meet her. Even Joseph himself was not displeasing to her, though in a population where none were overly attractive Joseph was commonly called “ Ugly Joe.” His forehead was so low and slanting that his dirty-white som- bréro had to be pulled literally over his eyebrows— otherwise it would have blown off. His eyes were small and a very pale blue. His nose was both diminutive and sprawling, as if it had been battered out of shape in fistic battles. Below the nose his face ceased and his mustache began. It was the pride of Ugly Joe. The stiff hairs descended like a host of simitar- shaped bristles far-past his lower lip and at either side the mustache jagged down in points which swept far below his chin. He was like a man in a perpetual mask. _ If he had shaved not even his wife would have known him. Patricia, however, was undismayec. She advanced with her suit- case and claimed relationship. _ Ugly Joe parted his mustache, spat over the forward wheel of the buckboard, con- sidered her a silent moment, and then touched the brim of his sombrero by way of salutation. | “e Evening,” said Ugly Joe, “throw up your grip and climb in.” ‘But I have a trunk,” said Patricia. “Isn’t ‘there room for that behind?”’ Sure! Is that your trunk?” And he pointed to a wardrobe-trunk which was being rolled onto the “ hotel ” veranda. She nodded and offered to get help for the handling of the trunk, for she GOGO (CO